Is there a question that drives all other questions? Sometimes there is. At least there is in our house.

The initial question might be something theoretical like this:

“Daddy, what dessert is the healthiest?” Now that sounds suspicious to me. It’s crafty, especially when coming from a particularly wily 8-year-old. But that’s not the real question. You only get to the real question a bit later after you go through a series of others. The REAL question is this:

“Can we have ice cream tonight?”

That’s what he really wants an answer to, and I think we do the same thing when we ask bigger, more substantial questions about the nature of life, God, and humanity. Most of the time these initial questions come in the same hypothetical forms. You know, the “could God make a rock too big for Him to move” kind of stuff. But I’m beginning to think more and more that the real question – at the basis of most others – is one that we might not even be aware of. Oblivious though we might be, the real question is still there at the bottom. And it’s not what you might think it is.

“Is there a God?”

“Does this God love me?”

“Can God be both all powerful and loving at the same time?”

“Why do bad things happen?”

These are all fine questions. Questions that should be engaged and pondered. Questions that do have answers, even if we think those answers to be unsatisfactory. But as valid as they are, they aren’t the real question. The one at the bottom. More and more, I think the real question is this:

“What is the Bible?”

Clear that up in your mind that most other questions start to fall into place. Funny thing about this question: For being as important as it is, it’s also relatively simple. Is the Bible just another book, or is it something else entirely? Is this simply a collection of religious writings, or is this the inspired Word of God? That’s what must be answered. That’s at the core. That’s at the root.

Let me, then, state the obvious: If indeed the Bible is the inspired Word of God, then the Bible is where we look to find who God is. And how God is. And who we are. And how we are. It’s where we find the dealings of God with men and women, and how we know how God deals with us. It’s how we can be sure of the unchanging nature of this God despite what our circumstances might tell us.

What you and I believe about the Word of God is the hinge on which the other questions swing.