- One who asks a question is a fool for five minutes; one who does not ask a question remains a fool forever. (Chinese proverb)
- Computers are useless. They can only give you answers. (Pablo Picasso)
- To be on a quest is nothing more or less than to become an asker of questions. (Sam Keen)
- Judge others by their questions rather than by their answers. (Voltaire)
- A prudent question is one-half of wisdom. (Sir Francis Bacon)
- You can tell whether a man is clever by his answers. You can tell whether a man is wise by his questions. (Naquib Mahfouz)
- It is error only, and not truth, that shrinks from inquiry. (Thomas Paine)
- Good questions outrank easy answers. (Paul Samuelson)
- No man really becomes a fool until he stops asking questions. (Charles Steinmetz)
- To find the exact answer, one must first ask the exact question. (S. Tobin Webster)
- Any man who knows all the answers most likely misunderstood the questions. (Anonymous)
The longer I live, the more I appreciate a good question (even though I may not have a clue regarding its answer). Jesus consistently employed questions when He taught. There’s a text in Luke that mentions a visit to the temple when He was twelve years old. This was the occasion when His parents temporarily “lost” Him for a brief time. When they returned to the temple, they found Him in the temple courts “sitting among the teachers, listening to them and asking them questions,” (Luke 2:46).
Do you ask questions? Although there are some who regard asking questions as tantamount to an act of unbelief, I think the opposite is true. Nothing stifles faith (or life) faster than the failure to be inquisitive. All of the great inventions and wonderful technologies that have benefited mankind happened because someone asked questions. If we’re not asking questions it either means we already know everything or we’re not interested in growing in our faith and knowledge. If we believe the first we’re delusional and if the second describes us, then we’re as stagnant as standing water.
More to the point, we can’t expect to come up with the wise answers in important areas such as relationships, spiritual growth, or other kingdom matters if we don’t ask discerning questions. Think about it—asking how you can get somewhere is not the same thing as asking what is the best way. Asking your teenager what they’re going to be doing is not the same thing as asking them who they’ll be doing their activities with. Careful questions lead to quality answers.
A healthy faith is full of questions.
A Taste of Grace with Bruce Green 