Asking Questions in Torah

I’ve got a questions about asking questions in Torah, and maybe you can help. I am trying to collect questions in Scripture and think about how they relate to questions in our lives. I am also thinking about how we group questions. A few cursory searches have revealed several interesting approaches to grouping questions from a range of viewpoints including teachers developing questions for tests, philosophical questions, grammatical questions, rhetorical questions and more.

Even as I ask questions about questions in Torah, I want to hear how other people think about questions in their own lives.

If I think about learning a new skill, questions play a vital role between parent and child, teacher and student, master and novice. Think about a fundamental question children ask. “Why?” At a certain stage in formation, they ask why over and over and over throughout the day. They are gathering knowledge about the world, about the people around them, about the relationship with their parents and siblings. It appears to me that in this context, the question why actually has multiple meanings. They might be asking boundary questions, they might be asking existential questions about life, they might be asking definition questions, and so on.

Along the way, they are piecing together a way of thinking about life. This looks like Torah. The interchange of instruction and command in a relationship that involves learning a language (a symbolic structure of the world that involves speaking and interpreting verbal and non-verbal symbols), a set of actions (ritual and ethical), a way of connecting perceptions and more.

If a parent is teaching a child a specific skill like baseball, building, boating or surfing, the child will learn new words and new symbolic connections (hearing, seeing and encountering the alien word), and new physical skills that take time and practice to master (word becoming flesh). At the same time, the relationship between child and parent or teacher and student will also be shaped for good or ill.

Some teachers/parents have patience and wisdom to instruct and coach the novice in a way that helps the learner to master the skill while also strengthening the underlying relationship. Some teachers have good relational skills and may help the child feel loved, but may not help the child master the skill. Some teachers may help the child learn the skill even though they damage the child’s self-perception.

These type of dynamics are working in the formation of humans within Scripture. Asking questions in Torah plays a vital role in development, in growing up, in becoming wise. The first question in Scripture is asked by the serpent. It is a question of examination (and temptation). It appears to me that God, the Satan or Tempter (and enemies) and friends/family can all ask vital questions of examination.

Here are a few types of questions I’ve noted. This is incomplete but it’s just a few things I’ve noticed this morning:

Knowledge Questions

• acquiring knowledge
• clarify knowledge
• apply knowledge

Testing Questions

• judge, examine, evaluate, interrogate – These are directed to humans and also directed to God

Relationship Questions

• complaint
• permission
• threaten
• defining relation

There may be better ways to characterize the vital function of questions in Torah, in learning knowledge, in shaping knowledge into physical form (in our bodies and through our bodies). Since all our action (whether we eat or drink or whatever we do) is unto the glory of the Lord, I am cautious about distinguishing between secular and sacred action. In one way or another, Torah makes a claim upon our lives as lived out fully before the Lord in art, in business, in church, in government, in friendships and so forth.

I would love to hear any other questions you notice in Scripture, in the process of learning, or in the living of life. (Leave a comment or send an email.)

Images used via Creative Commons

• Father Teaches Son Torah image by Ze’ev Yanay
• Father and Son Surf by David Holmes