Asking the Best Questions
— Link and Source: Continuation of Andrew Katay’s article in Gospel Coalition 

Often in the macro-cultural opposition to Christianity (see last week’s discussion), we find ourselves at the end of a string of accusatory questions, all of which pre-suppose that the obvious answer is the secular answer.

As Andrew Katay, Chaplain at Sydney University says, “When we get locked into a conversation where what we do is answer those kinds of questions, it’s very hard to make headway.”  Instead:

We need to get much better at asking questions.

Jesus was the master of this. “He almost always answers a question, even the most aggressive and loaded ones, with a question himself. And in doing so he turned the tables, he pivoted to get out from under the battery and change the balance of the conversation.”

Some questions simply express curiosity and interest, finding out things (see previous FCMM article on wondering questions). We should ask those questions.

Katay argues however that “the best questions open up the assumptions of an issue, lay bare the often unexamined presuppositions the other person holds, and invites them to do a bit of reflection.”

You know you’ve asked a really great question when the tone of the conversation changes and the person you’re talking to says something like, ‘You know what, I haven’t really thought about that. What do you reckon?’

Suddenly, you’re in different territory. You’re not in a boxing ring at all, contending for ideas in an atmosphere of accusation. You’re two people actually trying to come to grips with the thorny bits of life.

Within Faculty Commons, we are learning the skill of asking more questions than we answer.

In an increasingly moralistic environment, with judgment and finger-wagging more prevalent than ever, there are always dozens of opportunities to ask friends, colleagues and neighbors interesting questions about what they think about various issues. And then some more questions to dig a little deeper into the worldview assumptions behind that stance. And then, eventually, some fundamental questions — which are always spiritual in character — that open the conversation to gospel content.

Next week, we’ll summarize some approaches from Greg Koukol’s book, “Tactics: A Game Plan for Discussion Your Christian Convictions.”

Proclaim Christianity as Public Truth

In our interaction with “macro-culture” challenges to the gospel, it’s tempting to default to “moralistic therapeutic deism”—where we focus solely or primarily on the gospel’s therapeutic results, on personal happiness and interpersonal niceness.

Author Trevin Wax warns us to avoid speaking of the gospel only in this way, for it excludes or minimizes the gospel’s public nature. He writes:

To be clear, the gospel as public truth does not exclude benefits to believers, but it is only because the gospel is public truth that those therapeutic benefits are available. As Leslie Newbigin says: There can be no true evangelism except that which announces what is not only good news but true news. . . It is a very serious matter when the gospel is marketed primarily as a panacea for personal or public ills.

In other words, as we learn to ask the best questions, we’ll do so because we believe the gospel is true and only because it is true will people find it helpful. Present the gospel as merely helpful and people will consider it neither true nor helpful.

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