What or Why?

It’s important to ask questions. It’s even more important to ask the right questions because the questions we ask determine the answers that we find. The what’s, the when’s, and the why’s are all important to answer but often if  we prioritize the wrong question then we don’t find ourselves moving forward.

I believe that one of the common mistakes we make can when deciding on our path forward rests upon whether we ask a “why” question or a “what” question. The existential “why” is a great question to ask to determine reality and provide us with a level of understanding. Sometimes it takes a long time to answer the “why” question. Sometimes we can do it rather quickly and there are, of course, plenty of times when we can’t answer it at all. Either way, I believe that the challenge of the proactive gospel is to move from the “why” question to the “what” question as soon as possible.

I realize that in my own life my bias towards action gets me in trouble because I often ask the “what” before the “why”. However, if we stay too long on the “why”, we never go anywhere. Unfortunately, the “why” question often dominates our thinking. The “why” question tends to have a backward moving, reflective undercurrent to it, while the “what” question speaks to forward movement. It is my belief that the advancement of the gospel centers around the “what are we going to do?” questions rather than the “why should we do it?” kind.

Here’s an example (and I am indebted to Patrick Morley for bringing this scripture to my attention) from Luke 13. To summarize, tragedy had hit the Galileans in two forms. Firstly, there had been some rash murders of innocent people and, secondly, the Tower of Siloam had collapsed, killing 18 people. Jesus speaks to the “why” question that those in his audience perceive (“Why did this happen to these people?”) by affirming that the death of these people was not because of any reason that the Galileans could understand. It was only for God to know the reasons, and only God that could answer the “why” questions. The challenge from Jesus was to become comfortable with not being able to answer the “why”. This is found in Luke 13:1-5. If we are to live by faith, there is always going to be an element of not understanding the “why”. If we to could answer them all, then we wouldn’t be living by faith.

Without missing a beat though, Jesus focuses the attention of the believers onto the next question, the “what?”.  To roughly paraphrase, Jesus is saying “You don’t know the answer to the why, but let me answer the ‘what’ question for you”.  Jesus says that there are two “what next’s?” for his inquirers.

The first is to repent, literally, to turn around from the direction you were going and start walking the right way. Jesus is saying that when we can’t answer the “why”. The first “what“, that we need to do is to get right with God. That really should always be the first “what” answer! The second “what” is to make sure that our life is in alignment and make it count for the Kingdom of God. Jesus calls this “bearing fruit” (vs6). The emphasis of Jesus’ words is us answering the “what” question by doing things that will make an eternal difference.

When we can’t answer the “why”, we need to address the “what”. The “why” question isn’t a bad question, but it should only be a precursor to the more important question – the “what”. It is when we start answering the “what’s” that we are really going to turn our faith into action and faithfully live out the call of Jesus on us.

Think “what”!?