Asking question is an interesting topic, not just for the church, but for other areas in life too. I find Prime Ministers Questions an interesting example, where the process is more about scoring political points than actually asking important questions. On the other side, it is about putting the right spin on things, not providing information and answers.
In other areas of life, the focus is in getting answers, not exploring the questions. If you want to know something, the easiest answer is to Google it, and get an acceptable answer, rather than understand the question fully and work with it to find a solution. The important thing in the answer, not the question, and in this, we lose something important.
Even in spiritual exploration, the same approach is so often taken. there is a focus on "quick fix" spiritual solutions. Do a weekend course and find enlightenment. In church courses where questions are, theoretically, welcome, the focus is really on providing set answers to any question that are raised. I know this because I have run such courses, and there are manuals providing the answers to all expected questions.
The problem is that these do not give proper respect to the importance of questions for real spiritual development. It trivialises the question process, and so the spiritual search that is encompassed by these questions. I think real, deep proper questions deserve to be answered, and deserve to be asked.
The thing is, the real questions require time to explore and find what they mean. I like to compare it to my PhD studies, where I start with a question that I want to explore. I then do the exploration of this question, or rather, I start from the general area of the question, and explore around this to see what others have done on this question, to learn as much as I can on the topic, to discover more, to find the areas I can work further on.
After this, I see what I have explored and discovered, and revisit my original question, to reassess it, and redefine my original question based on what I have learned in the process. The exploration has changed the question I was originally asking, because I cannot know the questions I need to ask until I have done some of the research - it is cyclic, because I cannot research an area without a question to focus on, but I cannot know what the questions are until I do some research.
For all serious questions, this is the process. Serious questions of spiritual truth - for example, What should I do? - need to be explored and researched, need to have some serious time spent on them before you return to your original question and realise that it might not be the right question to ask.
Questions are so important. The best question take a long time to work on, and the very best ones result in you understanding that you are asking the wrong question. This doesn't mean that the questions are wrong, just that the only way to progress them is to understand why they are not the question you should be asking - there are more important ones.
If we stop asking questions, we stop being real and honest Christians, because we stop seeking the truth.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment