History is, strictly speaking, the study of questions; the study of answers belongs to anthropology and sociology.
Answers
We hear only those questions for which we are in a position to find answers.
Is Donald Trump a fascist? It’s an interesting question that has generated insightful commentary over the past few months, with the best answers situating Trumpian illiberalism within America’s long history of racial oppression, slavery, Jim Crow apartheid, and the ongoing backlash to the loss of white privilege.
I believe everything learned in college is an answer to a question that someone has posed. Questions get posed differently and the answers that come back transport us to places we never knew existed.
There are many who lust for the simple answers of doctrine or decree. They are on the left and right. They are not confined to a single part of the society. They are terrorists of the mind.
Teachers say to me, ‘The internet is full of rubbish, wrong answers.’ But you would be surprised how just long it takes to find wrong information on Google, and where it’s not obvious that it’s wrong.
Sometimes when I visit schools, kids will interview me for the school newspaper. They ask me questions and my answers tend to go on and on, and they try to write down everything I’m saying as quickly as they can. And one day, a kid holds up her hand and said, ‘Do you think you could just answer ‘yes’ or ‘no?’ Aren’t kids wonderful?
In order for answers to become clear, the questions have to be clear.
Live your questions now, and perhaps even without knowing it, you will live along some distant day into your answers.
God the Father lives. He hears and answers our prayers in love. The Savior Jesus Christ, resurrected and glorious, lives and reaches out to us in mercy.