If God then What? 2 (Andrew Wilson)

IF GOD THEN WHAT 2 – SEVEN REALLY GOOD QUESTIONS

In my last post, I talked about the central importance, when discussing the message of Jesus with those who don’t follow him, of asking really good questions, not just providing really good answers. So I thought it might make sense to give a few examples of some good questions. The following questions form the chapter titles of my book, If God Then What? Wondering Aloud About Truth, Origins and Redemption, so if you’re interested in how we might develop these ideas, you can always check that out.

Which of these questions do you find most helpful? Why? How would people in your world answer them?

1. What’s wrong with the world? This is one of the best conversation starters I know. Almost nobody says, ‘nothing’, which is interesting, and if you can get past a superficial current affairs answer (like ‘Republicans’), you’ll get to the heart of the problem of evil in minutes, which is even more interesting.

2. What’s the solution? This is a question that, in non-religious language, effectively asks, ‘what’s your gospel?’ I talked to a guy in Starbucks about this a year ago, and he said the world’s solution was simple: no wars, no national boundaries, no religion and no poverty. When I joked that this was exactly the vision Josef Stalin had in mind, he looked genuinely surprised; he’d just never thought about it, or thought about why his version was achievable when Stalin’s wasn’t. 3. How did we get here? Asking about origins is always interesting, because with the exception of the very scientifically literate, lots of people haven’t got much further than ‘the Big Bang and then evolution’. But why was there a Big Bang, do you think? Why did it cause planets and stars to form afterwards, given all we know about how finely tuned the universe is? It gets people thinking.

4. Why do you think? If 4.6 billion years ago the earth was just a lump of lifeless rock, why isn’t it still? Where did information come from, and DNA, and life, and consciousness? Did matter produce minds, on its own, or did a mind produce matter? Does the fact that humans love thought, and poetry, and spirituality, suggest anything about the nature of ultimate reality?

5. What is possible? If God is possible, which he surely is (and not just because of the above), then presumably ‘miracles’ are possible. Aren’t they? So surely the only way we can be sure miracles don’t exist is if we can be sure God doesn’t exist. But if we can’t be sure there’s no God, then anything could be possible. Couldn’t it? Dead people rising again, for instance?

6. What happened on 9 April AD 30? At some point, I think it’s important to ask people what they make of the resurrection of Jesus (which well-instructed Jesus Creed readers, I’m sure, already do!) That is: what do you think happened? How do you account for the evidence? Do you think Jesus rose from the dead, like leading scholars Michael Licona and N. T. Wright? Or do you think science has made that explanation impossible, like Gerd Ludemann and Geza Vermes? If the latter, then doesn’t #5, above, give you a problem?

7. So what? Funnily enough, a lot of people in the UK (I can’t speak for the US) believe in a god/God, and miracles, and even that Jesus might have risen – they just have no idea why it might matter. So it’s good to ask what they think it might imply if Jesus was alive, and how they might process that or respond to it. Who knows? They might even ask you what you think it implies. That’s when you get them a copy of The King Jesus Gospel :o)