Asking questions is OK

Thinking about questions today. Christopher Dryden, writing from across the pond as it were, has been asking some great questions that I have enjoyed reading even though he spells favorite wrong and doesn’t seem to understand football. I really liked a recent post that asks questions about the church and whether it should be about observing or participating. Interesting questions to be sure and I like the analogy he uses. I am hearing people asking these questions more and more and as people ask these questions publicly, it spurs even more people to start asking questions.

I like it when people ask questions. When people ask questions it shows that they are thinking about issues even if, or perhaps especially if, they don’t have all of the answers. I find myself writing from a “here is what is wrong and here is why” standpoint when I probably should be asking more questions because I certainly don’t have all of the answers.

As healthy as asking question is, it doesn’t seem that a lot of people will ask them, especially regarding the church. People “change churches” all the time and they do so for lots of reasons but rarely because they are questioning the form of the church gathering at a fundamental level. Why is this?

There are a several reasons why people don’t ask questions when it comes to the church.

One, they don’t know what questions to ask or even that they should be asking questions (see an Alan Knox’s great post I didn’t know something was missing). We are so conditioned to see church as it traditionally exists that to question it seems ludicrous. Compounding the problem is a lack of honest reflection about the church in the majority of church leadership. The way we do church is how Calvin did it, it is how Spurgeon did it, it is how dad and mom did it and by goodness that is good enough for me. The idea that maybe something has been off kilter for over 1000 years never even comes up. Most towns have several or more churches so if something isn’t right you can try a different one and keep doing this for years.

Two, asking questions is honestly frowned upon. Start questioning the way things are and you might find yourself accused of being divisive or rebellious or refusing to submit to authority. I remember one event quite clearly. It was a Sunday after church and my friend James and I were hanging around in Detroit with the pastor of the church we attended. We were eating some lunch when James started to ask a question. I even remember what the question was about, it was an inquiry about tithing. As soon as he started, you could see the pastor start to tense up and get defensive. Granted James, love you buddy!, can sometimes be a bit blunt but the question was pretty innocuous. Asking questions that challenge the assumptions and status quo is not a way to win friends and get asked to teach Sunday school.

Three, people don’t ask questions because they don’t really want to hear the answer. That is the more troubling possibility. I read this the other day at Dan Edelen’s blog and it really resonated with me:

I fear that too many of us not only hate the questions, but we can’t stand the answers, either. We have become a status quo people who do not want to be broken out of whatever reverie we’ve created for ourselves.

In short, too many of us don’t care about improving anything, much less the way the Church functions. As long as we have a paycheck and can buy stuff, put our kids through some elite school, and retire in peace, stop bothering us with questions. And answers bug us too.

I understand much of what Dan is talking about. Asking questions is often going to get people irate because far too many of us, myself included, are pretty comfortable with the status quo. It can be easy as a Christian in America to wander through life, get up on Monday, go to work, do your job, run your kids to activities, grab a quick dinner, collapse in front of the TV for a few hours, go to bed and get up to do it all over again. We similarly sleep walk through the church, week after week, month after month of listening to sermons that blur together, singing the same songs, shaking the same hands. Before you know it, years have gone by and like me you find yourself wondering how you have impacted the world for Christ.

It is a dangerous thing to ask questions. Start asking questions and you might find yourself resigning your position as a paid minister like Eric Carpenter. You might find yourself called to make enormous financial sacrifices. You might have to get out of our comfortable life. You also might find that there is more to this life as a Christian than our culture has led us to believe. You might find some people no longer like having you around but you might also meet lots of new people, people who are OK with asking questions.

So go ahead. Ask some questions. It is not only OK, it is a healthy thing!