Questions?

Not all questions are good questions. And despite what your grade school teacher may have told you, there are stupid questions. And there are also ungodly questions which undermine God's church. We have seen in recent years how certain leader's questions, when they are continually posed and systematically asked, are not really questions at all but are statements about what that leader thinks about a topic. To emphasize this, Scott Oliphint, in his book entitled The Battle Belongs to the Lord, discusses the serpent's questioning of Eve and the resultant truth for the church:

No doubt Satan knew exactly what God had said. His question was not one of simple curiosity. He was after much more than information. The way in which he got his answers is instructive because it was so subtle. The serpent was able, in asking the question, to manipulate Eve's own concerns. By asking the question in the way that he did, he was able to focus her concern on his deception. He was able to get Eve to question God's command to her. First came the question, then the blatant opposition. Only after getting Eve "on his wavelength," so to speak, was he able to present to her the "other" option: "You will not surely die" (3:4).


This is how attacks and assaults operate within the Christian church, within Christian teaching and Christian institutions. They tend to work, subtly and almost undetectably, to bring us into their context of concern. They begin with subtle questions or "concerns." Underneath such questions lies a denial of biblical truth. If we begin to entertain those questions, we can, almost unconsciously, be involved in the same denial. Once there, such questions, with their subtle denials, can begin to "drip" into the foundation of our most cherished commitments in order to make those commitments, if possible, rot away. (Oliphint, K. Scott. The Battle Belongs to the Lord: The Power of Scripture for Defending Our Faith. Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R, 2003. Print. 48) 

Sometimes, a question is not just a question! We must be wary of question that, whether intended by the one who asks or not, undermine or deny biblical truth. There are honest questions that need honest answers. But there are also questions which, even in their consideration, erode and eat away at the foundational truths of Christianity. God help us be discerning in the recognition of the difference between the two.