I have always been a “collector”. If there is more than two of an item, I feel compelled to collect it. Sometimes I resist the compulsion. Sometimes I fill my closets with future garage sale items. I’ve collected baseball cards - a normal, healthy and relatively benign collection – though a few people give us a bad name by going way over the top. I even imagined that my efforts would become known as “The Cole Collection” and be talked about in hushed, reverential tones like Jefferson Burdick, who donated his card collection to the Metropolitan Museum of Art (It didn’t happen). I’ve also collected Quaker oatmeal boxes (remember the round ones?) and Kretschmer wheat germ jars. The latter eventually became part of a hardware sorting system in my workshop, so it could be justified as normal – really. The former became compost eventually. I’ve collected maple syrup taps (or “spiles” as they are called). Our daughter thought it was weird to pay by the pound to move them back and forth across the country. I differed with her, knowing that some day I would mount them in an attractive way and they would become the newest rage among people afflicted with my compulsion. You’re beginning to get the idea.

As I grew older I realized I would need to either collect something that weighed less or reinforce the floors of every place we lived. I chose the former and began collecting questions – they’re relatively easy to store and to retrieve. They amaze (or amuse) your friends when you display them. I thought that some day they would make the basis for a book that would literally write itself. Unfortunately, someone else had the same idea. (See Bobb Biehl’s The Question Book: What 90 Experts Recommend You Ask Before You Buy a Car, First Home, Make Career Change or The Complete Book of Questions by Gary Poole. There are books of answers to frequently asked questions like (my former professor) Norm Geisler’s When Critics Ask: A Popular Handbook on Bible Difficulties -  it is one I highly recommend for the library of every Christ-follower.)

There are questions that are rhetorical like the ones a wife will ask: “You’re not wearing that to the office, are you?” There are questions that ring in your ears for years afterward – the mere thought of them can make you sweat all over again. “Are you eye-balling me, maggot?” is a question like that. For those unfamiliar with the Marines, it is the one your DI asks (up close and personal enough to smell the nicotine and Old Spice) when your feet are firmly planted on “the yellow footprints”. Unlike the questions a wife might ask, there is no right answer to this question.

Jesus was a master teacher. Much of His teaching consisted of asking questions skillfully. We could learn a lot from him – he rarely dispensed answers but he did have, as another seminary professor of mine said, “…a whole bunch of apple cart upsetting questions”. As Herman Horne said (in Jesus the Master Teacher) “He came not to answer questions, but to ask them; not to settle men’s souls, but to provoke them.”

Jesus asked questions to:

¨      To secure information  (Luke 8:30 NIV)  Jesus asked him, "What is your name?" "Legion," he replied, because many demons had gone into him.

¨      To express emotion  (John 3:10 NIV)  "You are Israel's teacher," said Jesus, "and do you not understand these things?

¨      To recall information  (Mark 2:25-26 NIV)  He answered, "Have you never read what David did when he and his companions were hungry and in need? {26} In the days of Abiathar the high priest, he entered the house of God and ate the consecrated bread, which is lawful only for priests to eat. And he also gave some to his companions."

¨      To awaken the conscience  (Mat 23:17 NIV)  You blind fools! Which is greater: the gold, or the temple that makes the gold sacred?

¨      To elicit faith  (Mark 8:29 NIV)  "But what about you?" he asked. "Who do you say I am?" Peter answered, "You are the Christ."

¨      To create a dilemma  (Mark 3:4 NIV)  Then Jesus asked them, "Which is lawful on the Sabbath: to do good or to do evil, to save life or to kill?" But they remained silent.

After I wrote my first blog entry, one of the Luc-i responded with a question: “What is the best or most interesting question that was asked of you?” It's a question that isn’t “situation specific”. It’s the best in my collection. It can be used almost any where. Here’s the answer:

“Are you content with who you are becoming?”