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Foreword

Have you ever questioned what Jesus questioned? Have you ever thought about what Jesus was thinking? Have you ever wondered what Jesus wondered about? If only we could know his questions. But we can! Jesus was the master questioner of history.

Jesus asked questions on approximately 115 different occasions. And yet, as Chris Bozung asserts, the Savior’s questions are truly unique. That’s the premise of his book, Uncommon Questions from an Extraordinary Savior.

A decade ago while visiting Regent University in Virginia Beach, Chris asked me to sign a copy of my own book, Soul Tsunami. While I was autographing the inside cover, he said, “I’m working on a book that asserts that Jesus never asked a question because he needed to know the answer.”

It was an intriguing thought, a thought that I couldn’t shake off when a few months later I picked up for the first time Letters to a Young Poet (New York: W. W. Norton, 1934). These ten letters were written by the Bohemian-Austrian poet Rainer Maria Rilke (1875-1926) to a young man named Franz Xaver Kappus (age 19) about to enter the German military. Kappus sought advice from the senior Rilke (age 27) on what it means to be an artist and a human being. My favorite letter is this one dated 16 July 1903:

You are so young, so before all beginning, and I want to beg you, as much as I can, dear sir, to be patient towards all that is unsolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves like locked rooms and like books that are written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, that cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. LIVE the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer (33-34).

Chris got me thinking about what it might mean to live the questions of Jesus. What can be learned from examining the questions of Jesus? What is true about any single question of Jesus, yet true about all the questions of Jesus at the same time? Stated simply, what do His questions have in common?

Chris’ book overflows with astute perceptions on Jesus’ mode of questioning. His starting point is bold yet simple: Jesus asked questions in a way no one before or since has ever done. He contends that with Jesus, we never have to wonder whether the correct question was being asked. Chris asserts Jesus did not ask questions simply to gather information or secure facts. He writes from the perspective that Jesus’ use of questions emphasized inward change in those Jesus’ was questioning.

I came away from this book realizing that Jesus didn’t ask questions to get an answer so much as to provoke a re-start. Sometimes certain areas of our lives need restarts more than answers. I did not know how much I needed this book until after I read it.

Chris’ concept is fresh, different, solid, and interesting. His book includes provocative interactions to get small groups to ask great questions. As you read Uncommon Questions I hope you’ll agree that Jesus never asked a question because he needed to know the answer.

Leonard Sweet

Madison, New Jersey