A Book Created by an Educator—for Educators
Fifty Questions About Faith, Belief, and the Search for Ultimate Truth was written by an educator with more than four decades of experience in the classroom. From the beginning, it was conceived not simply as a book to be read, but as a resource for inquiry, conversation, and discovery. And “educator” is meant in the broadest sense. The book can be used by a minister or rabbi from the pulpit, a leader of a lifelong-learning course, a teacher in an adult-education program, a book-group facilitator, a professor in a college classroom, or anyone interested in bringing people together to explore questions of faith, belief, religion, doubt, morality, science, and the search for meaning.
The fifty questions provide a ready-made curriculum.
A Year of Questions
One possible approach is remarkably simple: spend a year with the book.
Week 1: Explore the introductory pages and consider the purpose and approach of the book.
Weeks 2–51: Take one question each week.
Week 52: Read and discuss the Epilogue and reflect on the journey as a whole.
Such a group need not be a traditional “class.” It might meet in a church, synagogue, community center, college, senior-learning program, library, living room or online. What matters is not the setting but the willingness of participants to ask questions and listen seriously to one another.
Put the Learner Before the Essay
Here is another way to use the book that may be even more valuable.
Don’t begin by reading the essay.
Begin with the questions. Before participants read the essays, ask each person to consider:
How would I answer this question?
Participants might reflect privately, write a short response, discuss their ideas with a partner, or share them with the group. Only then do they read the essay and encounter the religious, historical, philosophical, scientific, or humanistic perspectives presented there.
Afterward, the discussion changes:
Did the essay confirm what I already thought?
Did it challenge one of my assumptions?
Did I encounter an idea I had never considered?
Has my answer changed? If so, why?
This simple reversal—question first, essay second—situates the learning in the learner. Participants become more than readers. They become investigators in their own search for understanding.
Many Ways to Use the Book
The fifty questions do not have to be encountered in order, nor does every group need to consider all fifty. An educator or discussion leader can select questions around a particular theme: belief and unbelief, the nature of God, sacred texts, science and religion, morality, religious diversity, life after death, religion and politics, violence and peace, or the search for ultimate truth. A clergy member might use a single question to begin a sermon or congregational discussion. A lifelong-learning group might choose twelve questions for a twelve-week program. A book club might simply select the questions its members find most intriguing. The book is deliberately flexible.
The Goal Is Not Agreement
Perhaps the most important responsibility of the discussion leader is to establish an atmosphere in which disagreement is not only permitted but expected. These are questions about which human beings have disagreed for thousands of years. The purpose of discussing them is not to arrive at a single approved answer. It is to learn how to ask better questions, examine evidence, consider perspectives different from our own, articulate what we believe and why we believe it, and listen respectfully to others doing the same. A successful discussion may therefore end exactly where it began—with a question. But perhaps it will be a better-informed question, asked by a more thoughtful and curious learner. And that is education.