Jesus: Not Just Nice, Brilliant (At Asking Questions Among Other Things)

One of the things that I've argued here many times is that the best leaders are the ones that ask the best questions, not the ones who have all the right answers--be that real or imaginary.

Something that I often challenge students to do during small group leader training is to spend their summers looking through the gospels looking at the questions that Jesus asked, how he led with questions, how he taught with questions.

Boundless wisdom, of course! Except I'd never done it.

But coming into my new job as an Area Director supervising campus staff in the Central Carolinas, I've had a deep conviction that I need to re-dedicate myself to asking questions more than giving answers. I started asking questions out of necessity 14 years ago. I want to get back to that.

So I'm taking my own advice: this summer I'm working through the gospels and each day I camp out on one or two questions that Jesus asks.

I'm part-way through Matthew and the thing that stands out so far is how perfectly Jesus used questions in the context of his teaching. It re-confirms one of Dallas Willard's favorite statements: Jesus isn't just nice. He's brilliant.

Take the Sermon on the Mount--one of the longest recorded sermons in all the Bible. It's no surprise that some of the phrases, images and teaching points that are most remembered have questions at the center of them.

Consider:

"You are the salt of the earth. But if the salt loses its saltiness, how can it be made salty again?" (5:13)

"Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more important than food, and the body more important than clothes? Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? Who of you by worrying can add a single hour to his life?

"And why do you worry about clothes? See how the lilies of the field grow. They do not labor or spin. Yet I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splendor was dressed like one of these. If that is how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today and tomorrow is thrown into the fire, will he not much more clothe you, O you of little faith?

So do not worry, saying, 'What shall we eat?' or 'What shall we drink?' or 'What shall we wear?' For the pagans run after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them. But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own."
(6:25-34)

"Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother's eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye? How can you say to your brother, 'Let me take the speck out of your eye,' when all the time there is a plank in your own eye?" (7:3-4)

Asking a question in the midst of a long sermon is exquisite: it changes tempo, tone, pace and the type of imaginative engagement required by the listener.

That these images and phrases still have a place in our cultural lexicons and have stuck after 20 centuries is further proof--Jesus, not just nice but brilliant.