Asking Better Questions

Deepening our spirituality, our Christian faith, is sometimes just a matter of asking better questions.

It is our inclination, more over than not, for example, to ask, What do I want God to do in my life right now? Now, there is nothing particularly wrong with us wanting God to do something. And there's nothing particularly wrong with us asking God, in our prayers, to do this or that. We all often pray such prayers. Asking that particular question, though, can, if we let it, blind us or deafen us to what God is currently doing, keeping us from leaning into the Spirit's activity in our lives in the moment.

A better question to ask, however, might be: What is God doing in my life right now?

Asking the question thus can, if we allow it, lead us to a deeper awareness of the presence of God in our lives and a greater awareness of the ways in which God, who is the God of acting, is indeed acting in our lives.

Again, it is our inclination, I'm inclined to think, to ask, What do I want God to be doing in the world now and in the future. As with the previous question, that's not necessarily a bad thing. We should long for, and pray for, God to do this or that in the world around us. After all, we do pray for peace, if nothing else.

But phrasing the question like that seems to put us in the planning business for God; as if we are deciding what we want to do and asking God's involvement in and blessing on that plan.

But recasting that question another, perhaps better way, can again deepen our awareness of God's actions in the world around us. Maybe we could ask, What is God doing in the world around me right now and how might God be inviting me to participate in that?

A fancy theological/philosophical way of looking at that is in terms of "thinking God's thoughts after God."

These are questions which congregations (or Sessions or Presbyteries, Vestries, Synods, or denominations, etc.) should pay attention to, also.

Very often in our communal life (whether local churches or larger bodies) we plan and plan; we vision and revision; we devise plans and budgets accordingly. Not that there's anything wrong with that, it just seems like a good idea to turn those questions and processes around. What is God doing now in the life of our congregation and how can we lean into that? What is God doing now in the life of our denomination and how might God be inviting us to participate in that? What is God doing in the world right now and how might we, as disciples of Christ, participate in God's activity. Rather than asking God to join us in our cause, rather than asking God's blessing on what we have decided to do, maybe we should be asking how we can join in what God is doing, how we can participate with God in that re-creative, reconciling work in the world.