Some Questions for A New Year

If you know we very well, you likely know that I LOVE questions. I tell students, even still, to LEARN to ask good questions. We all meet interesting, knowledgeable, wise people and it is a shame to not have any questions. And, we have to LEARN to ask questions. In my view Randy Newman's book on evangelism, Questioning Evangelism, is the best there is.

I just read a short essay by the Colson center on asking good questions. Here are six questions they shared that might be helpful in conversations: 

A great beginning question is, What do you mean by that? He who has the power to define words, can always end any argument. And, people will use words differently, so agreeing on what the key words mean is clearly crucial. What is "marriage"? What is self-esteem? What is "fairness".

One of my favorite questions is, "How do you know that is true?"  We believe some things without really considering our basis. Passion sometimes leads us astray. We sometimes draw our information from UNreliable sources. The news media, the www, and sometimes even our friends can be sources of misinformation. Thomas Jefferson once said, "...I will add that the man who never looks into a newspaper is better informed than he who reads them." And it is attributed (sometimes disputed) to Mark Twain, as having once said, "If you don't read the newspaper, you are uninformed, if you DO read the newspaper, you are misinformed."

Another good question is, "Where did you get this information?" This is a follow-up to the previous question. Be prepared for responses like: "I don't remember." and "It is common knowledge". Neither of these are helpful answers, so be patient.

"How did you come to this conclusion?" This question gets to the heart of the matter. Often people's positions have gradually evolved, and you sometimes get unsatisfactory answers to this question too. For this type question, the question may be more useful than the answer. Like the frog in the pot of gradually warming water, we sometimes wind up in places without be conscious of how it happened.

Two questions which can be asked as a pair are, What if you’re wrong? and What if you’re right? Some issues are merely hypothetical, but most ideas do have consequences, so thinking through the consequences is important. Here's a short example that just occurred to me. Taking transgenderism to it's obvious conclusion, men will soon hold most women's physical performance (e.g. sports) records. How does a feminist handle this? Fortunately, I don't have to resolve this one, I just watch with interest.

One more question, with another question as a follow-up is, "For what are you thankful?" The follow-on question is, “To whom are you thankful?”