The Right Questions

“Ever since I can remember, I’ve wanted to be clever. Some people are born clever, the way some people are born beautiful. I’m not one of those people. I’ve had to work at it. If there’s a question, I have to know the right answer.”

Starter for 10 (2006)

This little guy seemed vaguely adorable enough to merit a role as this post’s cover picture, considering that anything explicitly University-Challenge-related would definitely be copyrighted.

 This past week, my current flatmate and I, having realised that this year’s series of University Challenge started just a few weeks ago, have passed more than one thoroughly enjoyable half-hour catching up on it and keeping score of our own correct answers while eating Ben & Jerry’s ice cream that was coincidentally on offer in Sainsbury’s this week.¹ University Challenge is, hands down, the most fun to watch of any quiz show out there, because, while knowing the right answer is a pleasing enough moment when watching any quiz show, the fiendishly abstruse questions that populate University Challenge make distinctly more satisfying conquests, so much so that I tend to feel the satisfaction of said conquests easily outweighs their comparative rarity. After all, even understanding what Jeremy Paxman is actually asking is an achievement not to be sniffed at; being able to inform one’s television screen that the right answer is 2003 or Trimalchio or Antigua and Barbuda or a circumflex accent or the Borgias² or whatever it may happen to be, and then to have one’s declaration confirmed, is a pleasing victory indeed.

That said, University Challenge is far from the only setting in which it’s pleasing to know the right answer. It’s pleasing to come face to face, upon opening an exam paper, with the topic one managed to revise most thoroughly; it’s pleasing to inform a friend of the latest news about some matter of mutual interest; it’s pleasing to make a connection that has your Bible study leader nodding enthusiastically and telling the group to turn to the relevant pages of some obscure minor prophet. Everybody likes being right, especially when being right is particularly impressive.

And, for us academic types, I think being right can often become something in which we base no small part of our identity, even of our Christian identity. Being able to make that minor-prophet connection, or to correctly define some grand theological term almost certainly ending in ‘–tion’, or to compellingly explain a Biblically-informed perspective on a particular burning ethical issue of the moment, can easily become the basis on which I assure myself that I’m doing all right in spiritual matters. It’s one of a thousand subtle ways in which I drift into a salvation-by-means-of-my-own-deeds mindset – I say subtle because these genuinely are all very good and commendable things to be able to do, so it’s not the kind of wrongdoing one can immediately identify as such and run from accordingly. The place the trouble arises is when my pride causes me to believe that I can present my ability to know the right answer to God as a means of gaining his approval.

It’s a rookie mistake – pretty much the rookie mistake of the Christian faith – and yet we’re surely all still making it in one way or another. We always have been and always will be incapable through our own efforts of attaining to the level of perfection necessary for God to approve of us, regardless of the sphere in which those efforts are exerted. Think about it: God knows everything; we have, in our wrongdoing and rebellion, disdained knowledge of him; and it’s only by the work of his Spirit in us that we’re able to really understand anything about him at all. And in light of all that, I somehow still get it in my head that my knowledge of him will in some way impress him such that he will refrain from punishing me as my offences against him deserve. It’s mad. And, more to the point, it’s a staggeringly insecure foundation on which to base my being right with God. Even if I could gain access to him by knowing the right answers, nobody could possibly know the right answers all the time. Even last year’s Peterhouse Cambridge University Challenge team, who won the series with a phenomenal victory over St. John’s Oxford,³ once memorably forfeited an entire round of bonus questions by admitting they didn’t have the faintest idea.⁴ Our human brains are very limited: there’s only so much information they can take in, and even then they view it at a skewed angle.

Plus, even on those occasions when one does know the right answer, it isn’t necessarily enough. In Starter for 10, a film whose plot heavily features protagonist Brian fulfilling his childhood ambition of appearing on University Challenge, Brian at one point finds himself left alone with a list of answers for the final round in which he is about to compete. He only sneaks a peek at one before he stops himself, but he then gets over-excited when that particular question comes up and buzzes in so early that his having cheated is obvious, so that his team ends up disqualified. Clearly, there are circumstances under which merely knowing the right answer does one no good at all. It’s all very well, for instance, to be able to give a lovely dictionary definition of the doctrine of justification, but that doesn’t mean one necessarily has any substantial sense of the implications of that doctrine for one’s own life. The Bible calls such lack of putting into practice deceiving oneself, comparing it to staring at one’s face in a mirror and then immediately forgetting one’s appearance.⁵ The point is that a faith of mere words and knowledge – of merely knowing the right answer – is no faith at all; real faith reshapes who we are and so what we do in accordance with our convictions.

So if there’s no security to be found in my ability to give the right answer, where do I turn? Well, Brian’s conclusion was that sometimes, it’s not about knowing the right answer; sometimes, it’s about asking the right questions. That seems like a pretty solid claim. To be determined always to know the right answer is to set oneself up as the highest authority around, which doesn’t seem like a very good idea in light of those human limitations I mentioned a moment ago. Earnestly to ask a question of someone, on the other hand, is to recognise one’s limitations, and in some way to subordinate oneself to that person’s authority by requiring something of him or her.

So what, according to Brian, is the right question? “Do you think you could forgive me? for all the mistakes, all the wrong answers.” Well, look at that – he’s hit the nail on the head. I’d say that, or a variation thereupon, is just about the most important question any of us can ask. The only snag is that he’s asking the wrong person. While the forgiveness of his love interest Rebecca Epstein is certainly a nice thing for Brian to have, at the end of the day she’s just another human being. Her limitations are as constraining as his own, and it’s not to her authority that Brian really needs to subordinate himself. The person to whom we really need to admit that we don’t have all the answers, is the one person who does have all the answers; the person to whose authority we need to first and foremost submit, is the one person who has authority over everything else; and the person whose forgiveness we need most, is the one person able to forgive us for and absolve us of all our wrongdoing.

In short, it’s only by asking the right questions – and by asking them of the right person – that one can ever actually get to know the right answers. Ask God, “Do you think you could forgive me? For all the mistakes, all the wrong answers,” and he’ll not only reply with a resounding ‘yes’ – every mistake and every wrong answer has been paid for by the priceless sacrifice Jesus made of himself on the cross – but start reshaping you so that you become able to discern the right answers. Still, knowing the right answers – being able to make those connections and define those terms and explain those issues – is perhaps best seen as little more than a side effect. The greatest prize God offers us isn’t after all, the opportunity to get to know the right answers; it’s the opportunity to get to know him.

Footnotes

¹ If you fancy doing the same of an evening, all this series’ episodes are currently available on iPlayer: http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episodes/b006t6l0?suggid=b006t6l0. As for the Ben & Jerry’s, I expect you’re a better authority than me on the location of your local Sainsbury’s.

² I don’t think the proper video for Horrible Histories’ Borgia Family song is available online, but here’s a lyric video some kind human has made: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=72wLS-C9Po0.

³ If you’d like to relive the moment (and the endless maths questions), you’re fortunate that some thoughtful human has uploaded the episode to YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7cakkI0uWXs.

⁴ I can’t remember when, so you’ll just have to take my word that it definitely happened. Or maybe it happened in that final episode linked to in the previous footnote; I didn’t rewatch to check…

⁵ That’s from towards the end of James 1: https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=James+1&version=ESVUK. You really ought to check it out, or who knows? I might be interpreting it all wrong.