Core magazine

Is life all about answers or more about questions?

On every single website you come across, especially from businesses, you’ll see this section called FAQ’s, Frequently Asked Questions. We all have questions we want to know the answer to.

Today we all want answers, but what is more important? Is it the answers, or the questions? How do we learn? Do we learn by getting the answers, or do we learn by asking the questions? As a Christian we look and we think, ‘how did Jesus go about things?’ If you look in the Gospels you will see Jesus answering direct questions not with direct answers, but often with more questions. Jesus’ method of learning all the time was for the listener, the learner, to ask the question, to discover the answer…

I sometimes work with teenagers in high school, and I was asked to speak to a group of year 10 boys (aged 14-15). Academically these boys would struggle to write down answers to difficult questions; but these boys could think, and they were thinking. I went in there just to talk, on request, about death and afterlife, and all of those things, which was exciting as you can imagine. I began by asking questions, and they asked questions of me and we interacted. There were hardly any answers given, but an amazing thing happened in that lesson.

Is there an afterlife or not? Is there a God or not? If there is what does that mean for us? If there’s not what does that mean life is? What’s life worth if there’s nothing afterwards?

They were engaging with these questions and one young guy stuck his hand up and just said, ‘Why can’t God just come down and tell us? Why can’t he just come down and show us?’ and as he was asking the questions out loud to me, I simply stepped forward, looked him in the eyes and didn’t say a word, and as he was thinking out loud and asking the questions, he paused. He stopped. And then he said,‘Oh yes. He already has come down hasn’t He?’ I don’t know where that young man will go with that discovery, but that day I did not tell those boys any answers, I asked them more questions. But in doing so, I believe they discovered more than if anybody had lectured them.

To know the truth may take you a lifetime’s journey of asking questions…

…read more of this article in Core issue 1

Des Wadsworth is Youth & Teaching Pastor at Longton Community Church. He is married with four kids, and has an equal passion for the Chicago Bulls andLiverpool Football Club.