Answering a Question with a Question

The religious leaders asked Jesus by what authority was he doing the things he was doing.  Jesus said he would only answer their question if they answered his question.  They refused to answer Jesus question so he refused to answer theirs! (Mark 11:27-33)

It amazes me that our conventional Christian wisdom of the day is so far from Jesus that we can call it "Christian" when it resembles so little of Jesus and the way he lived.  We teach our kids to get a good education and fit well into society.  In other words, we want our children to be successful.  Jesus lived a whole counter cultural lifestyle but we tell our children we want them to fit safely into society. 

We tell people who have doubts that doubts are bad, ignore them, hide them, and surely, don't talk about them.  When John the Baptist doubted who he was, Jesus still commended him for his faith.  Doubt unchecked can lead people away from God but doubt explored and challenged can lead to greater faith in Christ.

Jesus used humor, irony, satire in his teachings but for today's conventional wisdom, that is too impolite, mean-spirited, or just in bad taste.  Jesus drank wine but Christians can not.  Jesus hung out with all the wrong people and we are told using another Bible axiom, "bad company corrupts good morals."  Worse, people we see as opponents to the Christian faith we neither respect nor show them our love but all they get is our contempt.  Either they are to be pitied for being so foolish or they are simply a fool who has said in his heart there is no God (Psalm 14:1).  Never mine that the fool says with his mouth he believes in God.  Never mind that the larger context is about Israel's apostasy where they say one thing with their mouth and their lives tell a different story.  This text better applies to the Christian who lives like there is no God rather than the atheist who defines oneself as against God or God's existence.

Somehow in this world with all it duplicity and conceit, we are supposed to play it's power and manipulation games over one another.  The world says come out to play and Christians are expected to play by the world's rules.  Some of us are taking a more ancient path that is either not playing the game at all or changing the rules and then asking the world to play a new game so to speak. 

The late Robert Webber in his book "The Younger Evangelicals" wisely told atheists he was not playing the apologetic philosophy game any more when it came to whose arguments are better and may the smartest person win.  Webber challenged atheists to play a new game.  One where it was not one simply about ideas and arguments but stories.  Let me tell you a story of God, Israel, Jesus, and the church and how that has shaped the world and you tell me how your story of atheism makes this world a better place?

Webber comes off too much like Jesus so I am not surprised that it is not atheists but other academic Christian scholars who take Webber to task.  "That is not fair or how the game is to be played!"  Or as one academic Christian scholar said in an article that Webber is going into retreat and simply refuses to answer legitimate intellectual objections people have to belief.  He rightly says that people will probably then not hear your story.  But isn't this exactly the point and what happens to Jesus in his encounters?  The people did not want to listen to Jesus, they wanted to make him look bad.  The religious leaders did not want to follow Jesus, they wanted to destroy him.

In the end, how far does a Christian apologist really think he is going to get with a person who thinks Christianity is the real enemy to life and world peace?  How far does the Christian apologist have to go before he realizes he is dealing with some people who are not skeptical seekers but hostile antagonists.  How long does it take before Christians wake up to realize that our time may be better spent in quiet discipleship and spiritual disciplines that feeds the soul rather than loud debates and long drawn out arguments. 

I certainly believe Christians have to give answers to questions of faith but sometimes a Christian may need to be more like Jesus and answer a question with a question.  And if others refuse to answer our questions, rather than arguing with them, we may be doing them and ourselves a favor to refuse to enter into a whole debate that neither honors God and makes God's people look bad.