Asking the tough questions

An increasing trend among my fellow pastors on facebook is the collaboration during message preparation.  Often I’m the one asking for help with a text or thoughts on an illustration.

This week a friend posted a need for info on the topic of the “uniqueness of Jesus” in the context of faith.  I offered my humble and probably insufficient words but as others add to it one has several thoughtful beginning points.

I wonder how many messages could be improved by use of other ideas, research, and viewpoints if we all took time each week to ask the tough questions?

I’ll be honest many times my in-depth study is frustrating as the more I study the more questions I have.  Sometimes Sunday creeps up and I’m still mid-struggle and up to my ears in research without a clear victor.

That’s why you’ll hear me offer options and sometimes say, “I don’t know” – because the simple fact is as I approach the interpretive task many times the questions are haunting.

However I don’t see the message as a mountain-top experience – it’s just another step on the journey, another opportunity for us to talk about what it looks like to try to describe the undescribable.

Sometimes in my life I’ve been afraid to ask the tough questions – it seemed easier to just bury my head in the sand and pretend they didn’t exist.  I’m sure I could have done much more good by authentically trying to answer those questions – even when the answers might never come.

Clive Staples Lewis once wrote, “We all want progress, but if you’re on the wrong road, progress means doing an about-turn and walking back to the right road; in that case, the man who turns back soonest is the most progressive.”

Are you ready to ask the tough questions?  What if doing so meant “loosing” some things that you’d “bound”?