All the Right Reasons to Ask the Wrong Questions

30 years ago, my 6^th grade teacher at Joshua Middle School stood me up and told me that there was no such thing as a stupid question. Instead of being encouraged as she thought I would, I was challenged to try and come up with as many obviously stupid questions I could conjure. It set me on a lifetime of loving to propose ridiculous queries just for the sake of entertainment. I would like to publicly apologize for tormenting that poor woman and actually thank her for years of mindless entertainment. Here are a few of those I am talking about.

Stupid Questions

I would like to ask people who are for the ethnical treatment of animals, is it ok for Vegetarians to eat animal crackers? My good friend Tommy Cole down at the Mountain Valley Funeral Home might be able to answer this one. If a funeral procession was at night, do you think we would drive with our headlights off?

It Gets Worse

If a turtle doesn't have a shell, would he be called homeless or naked? When sign makers go on strike, is anything written on their signs? Would you call a fly without wings a walk?

Much Worse

Did Adam and Eve have belly buttons? Why isn’t there mouse flavored cat food?
If you only have one eye can you still get double vision?

Brilliant Answers

Because of my love for stupid questions I have become a fount of otherwise useless information. Life is too short to not know that the K in K-mart comes from the company's founder, Sebastian Spering Kresge, who opened his first store in 1899.

I could not bear to wake up in the morning without knowing that C.W. Post came up with the name “Grape Nuts” because the cereal contained maltose, which he thought was "grape sugar" and because the crunch reminded him of nuts.

Why Ask Why?

This crazy world we live in produces so many curveballs and blind-sided ninja slaps that it becomes easy for us to sit ourselves in a place where we need to know answers. When it comes to life’s big questions, if we are not careful we will find our selves stuck on a question we can’t get past. Like a needle on an old record player we repeat, “Why, why, why, why, why?”

As a Christian I find myself connected to the pain and the grief of those around me and as a Texan I find myself in unwanted territory more times than I can count. In those tough places we will never find the right answers if we insist on asking the wrong questions.

We can never expect a right answer when we demand to know why from our creator. Why is the wrong question and though we may feel like we have the right to ask the whys of life, the Christian world view is that it is in fact an invalid question. Sticking with invalid questions will make us invalid or paralyzed, unable to move forward and to progress.

As God pointed out to biblical Job, we are not qualified to ask the whys of life. Until we can wrap our heads around the mysteries of this universe we simply are not capable or even eligible for the why answers. So until then it just isn’t productive to demand a question when there is no way you can swallow the answer.

The Right Questions

In Acts chapter 2 we have the true account of the supernatural power of God’s Holy Spirit descending on believers at the day of Pentecost. There within the text are at least two of the right questions we should be asking. The first one is “What does this mean?” and the 2^nd is “What should I do?”

When you ask why, it is connected to your pain and your grief and your personal hurt. “What does this mean?” is a question for “Big Picture” thinkers and it is attached to God’s purpose. “What should I do?” is attached to humility and adds legs to your faith. These are valid questions for people looking for the true answers that God is willing to answer.

For this short life span, we don’t get most of the whys of life answered. That’s for later when we “know as we are known.” Until then, we are offered the person of Christ Himself as the very answer to all of life’s riddles and that’s an offer none of us should refuse.

Contact: The Brewer welcomes your input at FFTB@OpenDoorMinistries.org or by phone 817-297-6911. Please visit us online at www.OpenDoorMinistries.org