As teachers we ask many different kinds of questions. Some require our students to recall information; some require them to understand concepts; others require them to apply principles, and still others require them to exercise good judgment.
In the process of his teaching, Jesus asked all of these kinds of questions and more. Try this little exercise to see some of the kinds of questions that Jesus asked. Which of the following questions requires the learner to recall basic facts? Which ones require comprehension? Which one calls for immediate application, and which one is a vital evaluation (i.e., judgment) question?
And he said:
“Are you also still without understanding? Do you not see that whatever goes into the mouth passes into the stomach and is expelled? …” (Matt 15:16-18).1
“When I broke the five loaves for the five thousand, how many baskets full of broken pieces did you take up?” (Mark 8:19).
“Who do the crowds say that I am?” … “But who do you say that I am?”(Luke 9:18, 20).
“When he had washed their feet and put on his outer garments and resumed his place, he said to them, ‘Do you understand what I have done to you?’ ” (John 13:12, 15).
It is not entirely easy to analyze these, is it? The questions that Jesus asked were sophisticated. The question from Mark’s Gospel is a recall question, and the first question from Luke’s Gospel requires recall as well. The question from John’s Gospel requires comprehension before disciples can put a demonstrated principle into practice (application). And, although it may seem like a very simple question for us to answer, the second question from Luke’s Gospel demands the very best observation and evaluation skills possible.
The point of this exercise is to recognize that Jesus asked questions that called for a wide range of thinking skills. In other words, Jesus required his ‘students’ to use their heads, and to use them to the very best of their abilities! Even when Jesus asked a simple recall question, the answer was never an end in itself. It was always a springboard to something more probing and profound as Mark 8:20-21 illustrates.
What is particularly important for us as Sunday school teachers is to recognize why Jesus asked the questions he did. What was he trying to accomplish when he asked a question? Often the answers to his questions are extremely simple: each of the questions above can be answered in one or two words! But the implications are life changing.
Never a pointless question
Teachers ask a lot of questions, and Jesus was no exception. He was an absolute master of the questioning process. And he never asked a pointless question.
Look at the questions that Jesus posed in the Sermon on the Mount. His teaching method in this case was one of discourse, not dialogue, so his ‘students’ — his disciples, Matthew 5:1 — probably did not get to answer him directly. They had to remember the questions that he posed and ponder the answers for themselves. Reflective disciples do this!
Here are some of his Sermon questions. Answer them for yourself. Try answering each question in five words or less. It can be done!
- “You are the salt of the earth, but if salt has lost its taste, how shall its saltiness be restored?” (Matt 5:13).
- “Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing?” (Matt 6:25).
- “Look at the birds of the air: they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they?” (Matt 6:26).
- “Which of you by being anxious can add a single hour to his span of life?” (Matt 6:27).
- “But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which today is alive and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you, O you of little faith?” (Matt 6:30).
- “Why do you see the speck that is in your brother’s eye, but do not notice the log that is in your own eye?” (Matt 7:3).
- “You will recognize them by their fruits. Are grapes gathered from thornbushes, or figs from thistles?” (Matt 7:16).2
Not one of the answers to these questions is an end in itself. What is the point of the Lord’s questions, then? It is the personal implications of the answers that matter. If you and I know that life is more than food and the body is more than clothing, why are diet and fashion so incredibly important to us, and what are we doing with our lives and our bodies?
If we are reflective disciples, our Lord’s questions lead us to contemplate the most fundamental things of life: what we are like, what God is like, our relationship to God; our priorities, trust, worry, self-(un)reliance.
And in the process of contemplation, we need to recognize our need to change. The point of the Lord’s questions is to make us better people before God; to make us better disciples of the Teacher.
“A disciple is not above his teacher, but everyone when he is fully trained will be like his teacher” (Luke 6:40).
What is the point of the questions we ask?
The education that Jesus provides is dynamic.
“If you know these things, blessed are you if you do them” (John 13:17).
By comparison, Western education can be very academic, all but detached from daily life in many instances. Most of us are products of Western education and we replicate it in our own teaching. Because of this, there is almost certainly room for us to re-examine the questions that we ask our Sunday school students and evaluate just how much they really contribute to the development of discipleship.
The value of the questions we ask is not measured so much by the ‘right answers’ as it is by their ability to change lives, the more so as our children grow up.
Recall questions are valuable and important as long as we understand that the answers are not an end in themselves. A recall question, at the moment it is asked, can measure a bit of current Bible knowledge. Bible knowledge is good, but at the end of the day it is what a person does with their Bible knowledge that matters. The nature of our questions needs to mature with our students; or, more precisely, we need to help our students mature with the questions we ask them.
Questions that require our students to articulate their understanding (comprehension) of Bible principles in their own words, and questions that ask them how they would personally apply Bible principles in a given situation (application) help move them along the road of discipleship. Beyond this, questions that encourage them to willingly do discipleship in some way or another can begin to move Sunday schooling out of the purely academic realm and into the dynamic, living realm of the Lord Jesus.
Are we getting what we ask for?
Questions measure something. Good questions can give us useful insight into the knowledge and thinking of our students. But do the questions we ask always do this?
Years ago, I used a formal Sunday school curriculum with a class of teenage students. Each lesson had questions that went with it, and, week by week, it was my students’ job to read an assigned lesson and write answers to the questions.
One of my young students was extremely conscientious about doing her Sunday school homework. She turned in pages of written work every week. But her answers to the questions were uncharacteristically eloquent. The reason for this was not hard to find. The questions that accompanied each lesson were always fully answered in the lesson itself. All a student had to do was find the right place in the lesson and copy out the answer — in someone else’s words. My little girl had quite innocently caught on how to do this.
The lessons and questions were designed so that a student could work the system. If you got really good at it, it wasn’t necessary to read the entire lesson in order to answer the questions. Answering questions was simply a process to be carried out, and doing homework was a job to accomplish; at least it was easy for my students to see it that way. As the teacher, I did not get a useful insight into the mind of my little girl, except, perhaps, to find out that she was pretty clever and that she seemed anxious to please me. It was the mind of the lesson writer that she was presenting to me, and there was no way for me to know, from her homework at least, whether she understood or agreed with it.
We need to do a thoughtful — and often more thought-provoking — job with the questions we ask. The education of disciples calls for it.
The Origin of the Organic World – Part One