Questions

I love questions. I don’t often get to go to actual quizzes, though they’re fun. Assembling around a table to pool collective knowledge, only to find there is no one on my team who knows the rules of croquet, eating posh crisps and having a good laugh with friends; there’s no better way to spend an evening. I also love taking part in online quizzes. These are a mixture of general knowledge, and the more fun, more esoteric “What pet dog are you?” type, revolving as they do around personality and choices in seemingly random situations. I just had to do that one! (Answer at the end for the curious.)

I love them all, and I think it’s partly because of my love of questions. For a good part of my adult life I’ve been involved in education, where the key to learning is often asking the right question. In fact, this is held to be so important that there are regular courses on how to pose the best questions. For behaviour, we’re taught to give choices - Would you rather have pizza or pasta? – rather than a closed question  - Would you like pizza? – giving both the questioner and the responder choice.

Questions are often important in tough times, too, I think. “How can I help?” or “What kind of cake do you like?” would be good questions for me to ask someone going through difficulty; much better usually than “Let me know if there’s anything I can do”, which leaves the onus so much on the person who’s often already overwhelmed by chaos and circumstance.

The Bible is full of questions. Right near the beginning, God asks “Adam, where are you?” Until this point God and Adam have been friends, walking together in the garden that was paradise. Adam has decided to break one of God’s rules, and all of a sudden he is hiding from God. This question is really surprising – surely God knows where we are? It is also a comfort – God is looking for me, I may have let him down, but he will look for me because he wants to be with me.

One of my favourite questions is asked by Paul in a letter to the Christians at Rome: “If God is for us, who can be against us?” It really goes against the type I would ask in education, because there is only one answer: there is no one who can be against us, and God is for us. This is such an important question that Paul then details all the kinds of circumstances that people might think could become between us and God, continually repeating that nothing can come between us and God - just in case there is any doubt.

Just from two questions I learn that God is looking for me, and nothing can come between him and me; no wonder I love questions.

Oh, and in case you’re wondering, I was a terrier.