Good question

Rev. Meg Barnhouse
March 17, 2013

Sometimes you are halfway to a good answer when you finally formulate your question in a helpful way. What are some ways to come up with better questions?

SERMON: GOOD QUESTION

Great teachers are always asking questions. They know that if you give people the answer before they even ask the question, it’s a waste of breath. Socrates is famous for asking questions, so were the Jewish rabbis, so were Jesus and Buddha. This morning, picture me giving you a brightly wrapped box. As you open the box, out spill a pile of smaller presents. Those are my gifts to you this morning: some of the best questions I know. A good question can open your mind; a good question can make you think things you never thought before.

In my work as a therapist for the last twenty years, I can say therapy is certainly a question-driven process, from “How can I feel better?” to “What should I do now?” to “Why does watching movies with monkeys in them make me nuts?”

Sermon writing, much of the time, is a question-driven process. Often the sermon explores a question one of us has. Also, one of the ways I write a story or a sermon is to picture myself in the congregation or in the audience and ask “what would I want to hear about this subject if I were you?”

I had a religion professor at Duke who was in love with questions when my friends and I in the campus Christian organization were in love with answers. He had his work cut out for him. We kept trying to give answers to the ethical dilemmas he posed. He would shake his head impatiently and say we were going to the answer part too fast. I wasn’t used to getting C’s. That’s what I got on his midterm when I answered his question, which was something like “Talk about the meaning of life” by talking about my understanding of the meaning of life. I was frustrated, angry, confused. I thought “Fine, I’ll show him!” The final exam was, I think, “what is the meaning of death?” I answered with all questions. I mean, every sentence was a question. I got an A. I also learned something: I learned how much fun it was to ask question after question, and how one question led to another, and another.

If you have the right question, you are more than halfway to a good answer. If you are asking the wrong question, then you will get stuck. Lots of people come to couples counseling at first asking the wrong question. “How am I being controlled?” “What can I do to change you?” “What is wrong with you?” “What are my rights here?”

Better questions for couples are: “What part of my anger is anger at myself?” “How can I understand you better? How can I help you feel heard and understood? How can we both feel safer with one another?” Other good therapeutic questions can be: “What is your problem doing for you?” “What scary changes might occur if things got better?

When we do a child dedication in my church, I ask the parents “What is your job description for this child? So many of us grow up not knowing what is required of us. The default setting for this is “we just have to be perfect, then we will get our parent’s blessing.’ When you ask parents what they want for their kids, most of the time they will say “I just want them to be happy — you know — have a happy life.” It’s strange, then, that their kids have this sense that they have to be perfect. Anyway, it’s good for both sides for the parents to ask themselves that question. “What do we really want from this child?”

Asking questions is the thing to do when you are in disagreement with someone. Not like “What’s WRONG with you?” But “Tell me more about what you think about this. ” ” What led to you feeling like this?” Try to understand what they are saying before you try to make yourself understood.

If you are feeling attacked or misunderstood, a good thing to do is be quiet for a minute, breathe, and ask this question: “What are you doing?”

I was a chaplain in training at Walter Reed Army Hospital. My trainer was a wild man who asked great questions. If you answered him with “I don’t know,” he would look at you for a second or two and ask “Okay. And if you DID know, what would it be?”

Sometimes the gift of a good question can trick that inner mule you’ve got. Of course, you may not have one. it might just be me….

Another teacher, years later, asked me if I could figure out a system for doing laundry or something. “Oh, I don’t figure out routines very well,” I said. She looked at me somewhat sharply and said,” So — if someone paid you 1,000 dollars to figure that out, how might you do it?” WOW, that made it clear immediately!

What question are you dying for someone to ask you? Is there one? I would like to close with of my favorite questions: Think about a problem with which you are struggling in your life.

THE MIRACLE QUESTION
If you woke up and your problem had disappeared, how would you know a miracle had happened?
How would you behave differently? (be as precise as possible)
How would your family and friends behave differently?
How would they know a miracle had happened?
How would they see the differences in your behavior?
Are there parts of the miracle that are already happening in your life?
How did these things happen?
Can you get more of them to happen ?

Podcasts of this and other sermons are also available for free on iTunes. You can find them here.

http://itunes.apple.com/podcast/first-unitarian-universalist/id372427776