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There Are No Right Answers to Wrong Questions
15 Ways Our Questions Influence Our Choices to Live a Christian Life
Peter C. Wilcox
There Are No Right Answers to Wrong Questions
15 Ways Our Questions Influence Our Choices to Live a Christian Life
Copyright © 2016 Peter C. Wilcox. All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in critical publications or reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without prior written permission from the publisher. Write: Permissions, Wipf and Stock Publishers, 199 W. 8th Ave., Suite 3, Eugene, OR 97401.
Resource Publications
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199 W. 8th Ave., Suite 3
Eugene, OR 97401
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paperback isbn: 978-1-4982-8994-8
hardcover isbn: 978-1-4982-8996-2
ebook isbn: 978-1-4982-8995-5
Manufactured in the U.S.A.
To my wife, Margaret, whose love, understanding and companionship, has helped me on my journey through life to be patient with my questions and encouraged me to live into the answers. Together, we have tried to ask our right questions about life, even as we searched and struggled to find answers. We hope that our choices in life have allowed us to be good to others. Also, for all her editorial assistance and her willingness to be inconvenienced to respond to my frequent requests for help, I sincerely say thank you.
Finally, to my late parents, Mary and Charles, who in their own quiet ways, showed me how to make good choices that helped give direction to my life.
Introduction
In 1902, Franz Xaver Kappus wrote his first letter to Rainer Maria Rilke. In it he asked Rilke to read and critique his poetry. Rilke refused to do so, but began a conversation with the young man. Kappus later published the letters he received from Rilke as Letters to a Young Poet.
Kappus sought out Rilke with one question: is there a great poet waiting to be born in me or should I let that dream go? Kappus wanted a map, some critical help, and a direct answer regarding this, his deepest question. He never got that. Instead, he got a conversation about life, love and purpose. Rilke could have answered directly, but he didn’t. Instead, he told Kappus to “try to love the questions themselves.” Kappus needed to learn that sometimes the answers aren’t as important as the way we learn to live among the questions.
Most of us know the feeling of longing for answers that do not come. Rilke, a devout believer, would have readily extended his advice to the spiritual level. In prayer, we too seek answers to our deepest questions. What am I to do in my life, with my life, with my love, my time, my gifts? Particularly in the dark night seasons of our lives, our questions can be many but the answers few. The challenge in those times is to befriend the questions. It can be good to ask, even when no answers are forthcoming. The questions can both inform and transform our living.
The Scriptures give us many examples of people asking questions and not getting answers, or at least not getting answers to the questions they asked. For example, the rich young man asked, “what must I do to be saved?” He asked feeling pretty good about himself as he was a pious, devout young man. He left with a new set of questions to consider. How could he learn to love the questions? Perhaps by re-evaluating his sense of personal pride in his perceived holiness. The woman at the well asked a diversion question about the place for proper worship. I don’t think she really cared, but she didn’t like where the conversation with Jesus was going. The answer she received left new questions. How might she learn to love the new questions? Maybe by sharing her experience of Jesus with her fellow Samaritans. The disciples, afraid of drowning in the storm while Jesus slept in the boat, asked “don’t you care if we die?” That’s the cry of a heart fearing it will not survive. Jesus’ response left them with a new question about the depth of their faith if they would be right in Jesus’ presence and still be so afraid. How could this new question bless them? By reminding them that neither life nor death in the company of the Lord is the last word.
In Rilke’s first letter, he told Kappus “nobody can advise you and help you, nobody.” What might Rilke’s adamant negative response have produced in Kappus? I can imagine anger, frustration or maybe despair. “If you can’t help me, who can?” But Rilke’s next two sentences are interesting. While refusing to be the solution himself, he does offer a path forward. “There is only one way. Go into yourself.”
This book is an invitation to go into ourselves, to look at the questions we ask about life. Most of us don’t think very much about our questions. We are too busy trying to find answers. But behind any answer, there is always a question. Sometimes, the question isn’t clear to us; sometimes, it is not very well articulated, even to ourselves. But it is always there. And as Rilke told Kappus, there is only one way to find the answer. Go into yourself.
The reason why the questions we ask in life are so important is because they give direction to our lives. It’s the questions we ask that give rise to our answers which in turn influence the many choices we make about how to live our lives. That is why it is critical to ask the right questions. And, as we will see in this book, it’s our choices in life that will determine the kind of person we will become. And our choices will largely be determined by the kinds of questions we ask.
1
Reasons Why People Ask The Wrong Questions
“We do not err because the truth is difficult. It is visible at a glance. We err because it is more comfortable to avoid it.”
—Alexander Solzhenitsyn
Famous author and holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel describes a very poignant conversation in his book Night. One day when he was twelve years old, Elie asked his father to find him a master who could guide him in his studies of the Kabbala. His father told Elie that he was much too young to be studying the Kabbala. So Elie found his own master—Moche the Beadle, an old man who lived humbly and was very poor. One day, when Moche saw Elie praying, he asked him, “why do you pray?” Elie responded, “I don’t really know why.” After that day, Elie and Moche would often get together to talk about their Jewish faith. During their conversations, Moche explained with great insistence that every question possessed a power that did not lie in the answer. “Man raises himself toward God by the questions he asks Him,” Moche was fond of saying. “This is true dialogue. Man questions God and God answers. But we don’t understand His answers. We can’t understand them. Because they come from the depths of the soul, and they stay there until death. You will find the true answers, Eliezer, only within yourself.” Then Elie asked Moche, “and why do you pray?” He replied, “I pray to the God within me that He will give me the strength to ask Him the right questions.”1
Although I read this statement over thirty-five years ago, it is still something that I have never forgotten. Moreover, I have often used it in many talks and retreat conferences. Moche prayed so that God would give him the strength to ask the right questions about life. He wasn’t praying for an answer to
