Before We Answer

This morning I asked my daughter a question. My son lives 3,000 miles away, but I suspect his answer would have been much the same.

“Am I more of a question asker or an answer giver?”

She thought about it, but it didn’t take long.

“I think you are more of an answer giver than a question asker.”

I couldn’t argue with her answer. I have spent much of my life preaching, teaching, counseling, parenting, writing, and leading. In each of those roles, people generally expected me to have something useful to say.

Offering answers is not necessarily a bad thing. Sometimes an answer is precisely what someone needs. What one person has learned can sometimes spare another unnecessary confusion or pain.

But there is a temptation to answer before we have understood the question.

I know.

Scripture puts it rather bluntly:

“To answer before listening—that is folly and shame.”
—Proverbs 18:13

A wife or husband, a daughter or son, a friend, or a young person may need more time to tell us what is actually troubling them. What sounds like a request for advice may really be a request to be heard. Our experience becomes most useful after we have taken time to understand theirs.

Jesus was an extraordinary question asker.

Beside the pool of Bethesda, He approached a man who had been disabled for thirty-eight years and asked, “Do you want to be healed?” (John 5:6).

I mean, really, what kind of a question is that? The answer seems obvious. But Jesus understood something else was also needed.

Jesus addressed the man himself and allowed him to speak. And the man did not give a simple yes or no. Instead, he told Jesus about having no one to help him into the pool and about others always reaching the water ahead of him. His answer revealed more than his physical condition. It exposed years of disappointment, loneliness, and resignation.

There was a story here that needed to be told. His story.

Jesus already knew how he would respond to the man. Still, he asked—and listened.

Perhaps that is one of the differences between giving an answer and offering wisdom. An answer may come from what I already know. Wisdom begins by paying attention to the person in front of me.

James wrote:

“Everyone should be quick to listen, slow to speak and slow to become angry.”
—James 1:19

Quick to listen. Slow to speak.

That order does not come naturally to many of us—especially those of us who have spent a lifetime being expected to provide answers.

There are also harder questions—the ones we are afraid to ask someone close to us. Perhaps we fear the answer. Perhaps the question might reopen an old wound, uncover a disappointment, or reveal something about ourselves we would rather not face.

Not every question must be asked immediately. Some require patience, prayer, and the right setting. Sometimes letting bygones be bygones is an act of grace. At other times, those words become a way of keeping an important door locked.

Before asking, I might need to examine my purpose. Am I trying to understand or to prove a point? Am I prepared to receive an answer without interrupting, defending myself, or correcting the other person? Can I be trusted with what I may hear?

The most important question may be this:

What am I still willing to learn about the people I think I already know?

This week, dare to ask someone you love a question whose answer you do not already know.

What has been difficult for you lately?

What do you wish I understood?

Is there something you have wanted to tell me?

Then give that person time to answer. Do not hurry to fill the silence. Do not begin preparing your response while they are still speaking.

There may be time for an answer later.

May we listen well.

Before we answer.

Coming soon…

The Kilçılar Letters has moved from decades of ideas, research, and notes to a finished novel. Soon you will finally meet Ibrahim, Katrina, Jeremy, Kris, and the others I have lived with for so long. I have a feeling this may become the book that convinces many readers, if they’ve not already, to go back and read the entire character-driven mystery/suspense Cain Family Chronicles.

Watch for it on Amazon in both print and Kindle e-book editions.