The Best Question I’ve Ever Been Asked

I once sat on an international flight next to a young Hindu man. During small talk, it came up that I was studying at a Christian seminary. He was delighted, explaining that he’d never had a chance to speak with a Christian before. We began comparing various aspects of our respective faiths. Then, about thirty minutes into conversation, he asked me a question my theological education had not in any way prepared me for—a question I’m still thinking about more than decade later:

“So, tell me,” he said, “what don’t you like about your faith?”

What? The question didn’t compute. I kept rolling it over in my head, trying to make some sense of it. Dislike something about my faith? What would that mean? Are you even allowed to dislike faith, because that sounded pretty bad. Being an individualistically minded American, I concluded at first that what the man had actually meant to ask me was, “What’s something that your religion says you should believe that you don’t?” But no, he’d meant exactly what he asked. To demonstrate the sincerity of the question, the man began to describe aspects of his own active Hindu belief and practice that he found inconvenient, unsettling, or unpleasant.

Huh.

What don’t you like about your faith? I had zero answer at the time. Truth be told, I was scandalized by the question. But the longer I thought about it, the more it seemed like it was my total lack of an answer that should really concern me. Logic dictated that one of three things must be true. Either…

Worryingly, the odds seemed to tilt heavily toward the likelihood of option (c).

No single question I have ever been asked has more efficiently propelled me to a new frontier of spiritual growth. With the man’s question echoing in my head, I began to notice uncomfortable teachings of Jesus that I had been reading around for years. I began to feel a real sense of friction between Jesus’ worldview and my own. I was forced to ask myself seriously for the first time why I was so sure I knew better than him.

No one has ever asked me that question again. But I wish they would. Because boy do I now have answers. Things I wish Jesus hadn’t taught. Parts of my faith that I find painful, frustrating, inconvenient—parts that rub directly against my intuitions about life and the world. I now have a whole list of bones to pick with Jesus.

And that’s how I know I have a Lord and not an idol.

Are you curious to learn what bones I have to pick with Jesus? I’ll share at least a few. But first I want to invite you to sit for a while with the question yourself. Where do Jesus’ teachings rub against your preferences and assumptions? Where do you feel friction between his Way and yours? What might you learn by engaging the tension?

An idol is a god that humans shape in our own image. We’ve always been prone to making them. Sometimes on purpose and from scratch. Sometimes accidentally and through amputation. If you want to crush an idol and discover a God, the Hindu man’s question isn’t a half-bad place to start.

So, what don’t you like about your faith?

We’ll talk again next week. You bring your list. I’ll bring mine.