A comment by Francis Berger yesterday included the significant statement that wrong questions rarely, if ever, lead to right answers.
This is important, because the opposite is so often assumed: for instance, the idea that it doesn't much matter what is our question, because all paths will eventually lead to the truth. Or the related idea that a good way to lead someone to follow Jesus, is to encourage him to ask questions - and answer each of them as they arise. Another version is the idea that the open arena of public assertion, counter-assertion and debate, will tend to lead (by a kind of natural selection) to the emergence of truth.
But if wrong questions do Not lead to right answers; then these common assumptions are dangerously false.
If, instead, truth is to be known by asking the right question; then this frantic business of challenge and response needs to stop; and people should instead be thinking about the questions they are asking - why they ask this question, what assumptions it is based-on, what kind of answer they seek, and what they propose to do with an answer...
Instead of comparing and critiquing; we need to focus primarily on asking the one right question.
The business of a spiritual or philosophical quest - indeed the whole business of mortal life itself! - takes on a transformed complexion when we recognize that the question is more important than the answer; and that wrong questions don't lead to right answers, no matter how many times they are multiplied.
We shouldn't "crack our brains" puzzling over answers - but over questions.
A properly-formed question will answer itself; and in ways that we understand immediately (although implications of the answer will unfold through time).
Furthermore; this explains why we cannot rely on external authorities to supply us either with questions, or with answers - since we our-selves must fully understand the question, in order fully to understand the answer.
If we do not do it for ourselves, it will not be done.
