Jesus is the Question...

My friend Marty put me onto this great book the other day called "Jesus Asked" by Conrad Gempf. In my search for the book online, I came across an audio version of it, read by the author himself. It is great! I have been listening to it over and over while I have driving in my car or on the train going to and from work. I recommend it to you. You can find it by clicking here. You can download the 20 or so, 10 - 15 minute "audio readings" from the site or get the podcasts through subscribing on i-tunes.

The basic premise of the book is that if you met Jesus on the street, he would actually be more likely to ask you a question or tell you a riddle, than to actually teach you something. Gempf goes into considerable detail on this and recounts Biblical account after Biblical account where Jesus simply refused to "tell it straight" to his listeners. Instead, he used clever questions to evade, confront, and even baffle. In one instance, Jesus "pretended" to be doing one thing when his intention was to do something else, and on another occasion he said that he does not know the answer to a question posed to him. It is all very interesting stuff and worth a listen to...

But "why?" I hear you ask... Why is this observation about the teaching style of Jesus so important? What could it mean for us? (Good questions by the way, well done)...

This is important because Christians often put themselves forward as having all the answers and put themselves under lots of pressure to have the answers. Reams of "apologetics" literature has been produced so that we can have answers to the meriod of questions that people ask us about God, life, the universe and everything. The interesting thing for us Christians, is that upon closer inspection, it would appear that Jesus did not take this approach. His approach was to not always give clear answers, but to ask the probing questions that got people thinking about what they thought and where they stood on issues. He often ignored the questions that were asked of him and completely highjacked the conversation to the issues that he felt were more important or lurking underneath the questions asked of him.

Gempf says that the most important question for Jesus; the one he was constantly looking for people to answer for themselves; was, "Who do you say that I am?" So, rather than "Jesus is the answer", it would seem that the more appropriate cliche should be, "Jesus is the question."

Go listen to those podcasts. It will make more sense to you then.

Shalom...

So,