When You Ask an Honest God-Question, What Kind of Answer Do You Want?

Imagine that you want to ask a Christian to recommend a church in your area.  It isn’t that you believe in Jesus or that the Bible is true or that miracles are possible, but you are feeling the need to explore a positive environment and find a community to belong to. Church represents one of the potential communities you have in mind. Perhaps you have a child and you want good experiences with moral spaces for her.

As you ask your questions, would you like for the Christian to “contemplate” your questions or to “enjoy” them?

Ok. That sounds weird. I should explain further what I mean.

Contemplation or Enjoyment: Which Do You Prefer from a Christian?

Perhaps you’ve heard of C.S. Lewis, the author of the Chronicles of Narnia series, and atheist who changed his mind and began to follow Jesus. Lewis said we all have two perspectives regarding any given concept: he calls these perspectives “Contemplation” and “Enjoyment.” 

Contemplation is thinking about something apart from the experience of it or analyzing it from the outside.[1]  Enjoyment is the opposite; it is the experience of a thing from within.[2]  Contemplation is what we do when we learn the ingredients of chocolate and the process of making it.  Enjoyment is tasting a piece of chocolate.  

Now perhaps our earlier question makes more sense.

A Christian who contemplates your questions will answer you by classifying your views about God, naming the worldview you seem to espouse, offering pieces of evidence for miracles, the Bible, or Jesus; seeking to discuss your worldview intellectually while pointing out inconsistencies and invitations in your thinking.

A Christian who enjoys your life and the questions that flow from it, will answer you with empathy; wondering what experiences have made you curious about a community that has God as its reference point?  What is it about your family’s story that makes you hesitant to enter a community that follows Jesus or views the Bible authoritatively? Are there pains behind the question?

The contemplating Christian will quote a book, cite statistics, appeal to recognized authorities.

The enjoying Christian will share something of their own life with you. How they too experience an inkling of God, a thirst for the possibilities about Jesus, and what it can be like to experience a community of Jesus, first-hand.

Contemplation or Enjoyment: Which Perspective Do You Normally Trust?

As you ask your questions, do you tend to engage Christianity by Contemplating or enjoying it? By analyzing historical evidence for the Bible, thinking through propositional arguments about the existence of God, or questioning philosophically or historically whether miracles are possible or have occurred? OR do you tend to reason from your first-hand experiences with church people? By your awareness of what it feels like to be alone or hurt, happy or soul thirsty.

I appreciate both. Reading parenting books and blog posts for new mothers helped me contemplate childbirth. But going through the experience of childbirth in general, along with the unique details of my personal experience, has its own knowledge to offer.

Jesus Both Contemplates and Enjoys Our Questions

Which kind of question and answer do you find most trustworthy? The one who tells you the ingredients and process for making chocolate (contemplation) or the one who has tasted chocolate and tells you her experience (enjoyment)?

If you venture toward Jesus as the Gospels present him, you will encounter him using both approaches. At times he will contemplate your questions about God. “God is spirit and those who worship him must do so in spirit and in truth” (John 4:24), he will answer.  At other times he will take up and echo your God questions from within his own experience. “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (Matthew 27:46).

Jesus’s earliest followers learned from him to likewise use both approaches. Paul will ask his hearers to contemplate the resurrection of Jesus, “Why is it thought incredible by any of you that God raises the dead?” (Acts 26:8).  But Paul will also tell out his own experience with God.  “I myself was convinced that I ought to do many things in opposing the name of Jesus of Nazareth” (Acts 26:9), but all that changed.

For Further Conversation

1. Which approach have you most experienced from Christians?

2. Which approach do you most prefer?

3. Do you think contemplation or enjoyment is more trustworthy as knowledge? Why?

4. What encourages you or bothers you about how Jesus will both contemplate and enjoy your questions?

[1] See C.S. Lewis, Surprised by Joy (San Diego: Harcourt Brace, 1955), 217-18.

[2] See Ibid.