Reading Francis

Asking the right question is a gift, both for the asker and the recipient.

I’ve been playing around with ChatGPT a little – mostly for fun, a little for work – and I’ve noticed that there’s an art to asking it the right question. A lot of times, it takes me 3-4 rounds of follow-up clarifications to get what I wanted from the machine; even though I was clear in my mind on what I wanted, what I asked for was either a little different or made assumptions that the machine couldn’t discern or I guess lacked emphasis, maybe. Regardless, if I ever get what I want in the first try, I think I’ll feel like I hit a hole-in-one instead of three-putting on the green. (To be clear, I don’t know what a hole-in-one feels like, either.)

I used to play a game with myself when I was fielding questions from a group. I’d say “Good question!” if it was a question I didn’t plan to answer, but allowed me to talk about something I wanted to talk about anyway. I’d say “Great question!” if it was a question I actually wanted to answer. And I’d say “Interesting question!” if it was so weird and off-base that I wasn’t at all sure what to do with it except back away from the questioner and change the subject.

One time, foolishly, I let a group of volunteers in on that little game. They all fell over laughing when I reflexively responded to the next question with “Good question!” Busted.

But the right question is different from a good or great or interesting question. It’s also different from the frequent end-of-interview “Is there anything you wish I’d asked?” question. 

For AI, the right question is the one that gives you the response you need. But what’s the right question for us living people?

I saw recently that Jesus is asked something like 300+ questions in the Gospels and asks well over 100 himself, often answering a question with a question. (He almost never gives a direct answer.) In Mark 6 (the Gospel from last week, if this sounds familiar), Jesus goes home to Nazareth and teaches in the synagogue, and it sparks a lot of questions. “Where did this man get all this? What kind of wisdom has been given him? Is he not the carpenter, the son of Mary and brother of James and Joses and Judas and Simon? And are not his sisters here with us?” (6:2-3)

Those don’t seem like the right questions. In fact, they all seem like variations of “Who do you think you are?”, as my friend Fr. Ed Shea likes to point out.

Jesus gets asked better questions elsewhere. Stuff like “What must I do to inherit eternal life?” or “Are you the Messiah?” He doesn’t answer those, either, at least not directly, but they seem more genuine and germane.

My favorite question in the gospels, though, might be one Jesus asks of a blind man. “What do you want me to do for you?” (Don’t ask ChatGPT that, though.)

It seems to me that for us humans, the right question is one that makes us think more deeply about the answer, let down our guard and show some vulnerability, and let out a response that is meaningful and true. 

The blind guy responds with a desperate desire to see.

I’m guessing that each of us has different “right questions” at different times, depending on what’s going on in our lives. It might be “What’s on your mind?” Or “What’s keeping you up at night?” Or “What’s good in your life right now?” Or “What do you wish was different?” Or just “What do you really want?”

To the extent that our deepest desire is to know and be known by another, maybe it’s worth spending more time brushing past the good and great and interesting questions and looking for the right question to ask each other. Even if it takes 3-4 tries.