Are You Asking God the Right Questions?

30 August 2025  Matthew 25:14-30

“For to everyone who has will more be given, and he will have abundance; but from him who has not, even what he has will be taken away.’”  Matthew 25:29

In his memoir of his childhood during the Holocaust, Elie Wiesel remembered Moche the Beadle, who gave him the most excellent advice about prayer: “Man raises himself toward God by the questions he asks Him. That is the true dialogue. Man questions God and God answers.” Young Elie asked, “And why do you pray, Moche?” He replied, “I pray to God within me that He will give me the strength to ask Him the right questions” (Night, pp. 14-15).

There are many lists of the “right questions.” Philosopher Peter Kreeft has such a list. Here are some of his questions.

1. Are you going to be honest, or dishonest? At the end of the day, there is only one reason to believe anything, and that is because it is true. There are many charming beliefs that perhaps will make us happy, like Santa Claus. We don’t believe them because they are not true. Truth trumps everything.

2. Do you love the truth? Will you seek it? Ultimately there are only two groups of people: those who seek the truth, and those who do not; those who keep asking questions and follow the answers, and those who do not. All who seek eventually find. The only ones who do not find are the ones who stop asking questions, or never start.

3. Does God exist or not? If there is a divine Being, is there only one? Philosophers have found that truth must be just one thing. The alternative is competing truths. Two competing truth claims can both be false, but they cannot both be true, or all reason collapses. If 2+2=4 and 2+2=5 can both be true, then there is no mathematics, no reason, no thought. If truth, in the end, is just one thing, it can only exist in one very large and very powerful Mind. We know the truth because we have access to that Mind.

4. If there is just one God, how do we know Him, and what does He want? Asking the right questions inevitably leads to the examination of holy books, like the Bible. The Bible describes how Israel encountered God, trusted God, followed God. The poets, prophets and sages of the Old Testament all pointed to a divine figure, the Messiah, who would fulfill all God’s promises and desires.

5. What do you make of those who claim to be God? In other words, what do you make of Jesus? He claimed to be the Messiah, “God with us,” the One who is the fulfillment of God’s promises and is the Savior of the world. If Jesus is not the Messiah, then he is either a lunatic of the highest order, or a liar. If he is not a lunatic, or a liar, then he can only be exactly who He claimed to be, “God with us.”

The Bible’s promise is that all those who continue to ask questions will receive answers. Some already have. Some are still asking, and have not received answers yet, but if they keep asking they will. No one who fails to ask, or who stops asking, will receive answers.

Take a guess who winds up in heaven?

“For to every one who has will more be given, and he will have abundance; but from him who has not, even what he has will be taken away.”

“Ask, and it shall be given you; seek and you shall find; knock and it shall be opened unto you. For every one who asks receives, and he who seeks finds, and to him who knocks it shall be opened” (Matthew 7:7-8).

“I pray to God within me that He will give me the strength to ask the right questions.”