Questioning the questions

I have a friend on Facebook who's a hardcore fundamentalist. We always end up in discussion about things - he particularly doesn't like my not being a creationist or Christian Zionist. He recently found out that I don't condemn my gay friends to Hell and he was shocked and appalled.

The other day there was a moment of clarity in his otherwise rather scatterfire approach to debating. He said something like, "You're always saying 'The question is this or the question is that.' But the Bible is a book of answers, not questions!"

Someone, I don't quite remember who, once said that the truly closed minded person is not the one who thinks he knows all the answers. No, the truly closed minded person is the one who thinks he knows all the questions.

By the same token, I would say that deep thinking entails thinking about the questions, first and foremost, while shallow thinking only deals with the answers.

Not that this is a profoundly deep sentiment, but I think it's an important one to have in mind, both when thinking things over by yourself and when engaging others in dialogue. Am I, are we asking the right questions? So much discussion gets lost because the different parties are asking different questions, but don't know it. So much more clarity and understanding would be achieved by thinking about questions first, answers second. Not that questions are easier than answers. They're not. But even if we agree to disagree regarding which ones are the right ones, we are at least not talking past each other.

To go back to my fundamentalist friend. I think it's extremely important to always question the questions, so to speak. The Bible might well be said to be a book of answers, in many regards. But we must always question the questions those answers answer or we'll never understand.