Camp
“Contrary to some common assumptions, Jesus is not the ultimate Answer Man, but more like the Great Questioner. In the Gospels, Jesus asks many more questions than he answers. Asking questions was central to Jesus’ life and teachings. In fact, for every question he answers directly he asks—literally—a hundred.”
- Martin B. Copenhaver
I was a child of uncertainty. There weren’t a lot of clear boundaries placed on me from an early age. We moved numerous times and our economic situation felt very feast or famine. Life felt arbitrary and unsafe.
And I didn’t know what to do with those degrees of freedom. I made really bad choices and would describe my early adolescence and teen years as pretty chaotic and destructive. I had no answers to my bigger questions and no clear understanding of the right way forward.
People raised in chaos either live that way for the rest of their lives or make hard and determined choices in a different direction. I was looking for a system of control, truth, moral absolutes, and clear right and wrongs. I embraced the faith I found in college with open and fervent arms. But all that narrative leading up to that time translated that message of freedom into a system of control.
In very much the style of a Western philosopher, I was seeking answers and certainty. An Eastern philosophical approach made me very uncomfortable. I surmised that every question had only one right answer. Life was found in knowing all the right ones, not wrestling with big questions. My absolutes were the only thing that made me feel safe, especially in terms of my Christian faith.
The more I looked past religion and all the absolutes of the box where I had safely placed God, the more unsettled I became. In particular, by Jesus in the gospels:
He asked 307 questions
He was asked 183 questions
But he answered only 3
Wrestling with God to find the answers seemed like the place he wanted us to be rather than landing on some subset of truth where we could set up camp and get comfortable. Asking more and better questions without having the answers seems more true. And having to constantly source him to figure out the right next step, seems to require the greatest faith.
These ideas have completely transformed the way we coach. We used to sit in front of others, Western philosophy intact, with bucketloads of wisdom, experience, knowledge, practices, and ideas. We knew all the answers before the questions were asked or even before the situation in front of us was fully understood.
But true coaching doesn’t rest in having all the answers. It essentially rests in knowing the right questions to ask. To have a process of self-discovery that allows the person you are coaching to mostly figure it out on their own. To partner with the Holy Spirit to reveal things previously unseen or understood.
But it also requires that we set all ego aside. Our own need to come through, have all the answers, and be seen as valuable, are not helpful. Ironically, all those decades of experience, best practices, systems, etc that we hold are incredibly valuable, but way more so as appropriated correctly.
Rather than standing at the ready to unload rounds of everything we know and can offer, we are doing something different. We are more thoughtfully reaching into the quiver to pull out just the right arrow a process of questioning and discovery has warranted. We are asking bigger questions as we are being guided and helping others find even bigger answers.
We are setting up camp there. We sit around a fire that is ever-changing, gives us exactly what we need, and allows us to rest more comfortably in not having it all figured out.
Consider
Do you feel like you have it all figured out?
Are you wrestling with big questions?
Are you finding big answers?
Are you surrounding yourself with people who are asking big questions or those that think they have all the answers?