The Bible contains a lot of questions, and it doesn’t always provide satisfactory answers. So I’ve been answering some of the Bible’s questions myself. This time, I’m looking at questions from the books of Luke and Acts.

When an angel tells a priest named Zechariah that he and his wife are going to have a child in their old age, Zechariah asks: How can I be sure of this? Answer: You can wait and see if it happens, and if it does, then you can be sure that it was going to happen. (Seriously, that’s how God says you should test prophecies. Which is nice and empirical, but it also means that by the time you know whether a prophecy is real, now it’s too late for it to usefully function as a prediction.)

When an angel tells Mary that she’s going to have a child too, Mary asks: How will this be, since I am a virgin? Answer: Um, you could always stop being one.

John the Baptist asks the crowds who come to him: Who warned you to flee from the coming wrath? Answer: You?

Martha asks Jesus: Don’t you care that my sister has left me to do the work by myself? Answer: No, he doesn’t care.

In one of Jesus’s parables, God tells a rich man he’s about to die, and asks him: Then who will get what you have prepared for yourself? Answer: Depends on what his will says, I suppose.

Someone asks Jesus: Are only a few people going to be saved? (Jesus’s answer: Yes, only a few people.) Alternative biblical answer, also from Jesus: No, many people.

When they hear Jesus say it’s easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone rich to enter the kingdom of God, people ask: Who then can be saved? Answer: People who are handed over to Satan for the destruction of the flesh. And people who force others to torture them. And people who are good, but let everyone think they’re evil. And childish people. And people who criticize Jesus. And tax collectors and prostitutes. And whoever else God arbitrarily decides to save, regardless of whether they’re good or bad. And also anyone the apostles decide to forgive.

Some angels ask the women who have come to visit Jesus’s tomb: Why do you look for the living among the dead? Answer: Because they don’t know he’s living. Why would they? Even if they were to take Jesus’s prediction of his resurrection into account, there is no reason for them to expect him to be alive. It hasn’t been three days yet.

Some angels ask the apostles: Why do you stand here looking into the sky? Answer: Because they just saw somebody fly.

Some Christians quote David asking: Why do the nations rage and the peoples plot in vain? Their answer: Because God wants them to rage and plot in vain.

Stephen asks the Jews: Was there ever a prophet your ancestors did not persecute? Answer: Yes.

Barnabas and Paul ask the people of Lystra who are trying to offer sacrifices to them: Why are you doing this? Answer: Because they think you’re gods.

Some Greeks ask Paul: May we know what this new teaching is that you are presenting? Answer: Yes.

A city clerk asks his fellow Ephesians: Doesn’t all the world know that the city of Ephesus is the guardian of the temple of the great Artemis and of her image, which fell from heaven? Answer: No.

Paul asks his friends in Caesarea: Why are you weeping and breaking my heart? Answer: To stop you from doing what God apparently doesn’t want you to do.

The original Christian church asks: What shall we do? Answer: Trick Paul into getting arrested.

Paul asks: Why should any of you consider it incredible that God raises the dead? Answer: Because we never see that happen?

The Jews’ questions

When Zechariah and his wife have a son and name him John, everyone who hears about the mildly miraculous events surrounding John’s birth asks: What then is this child going to be? Answer: A baptist.

An expert in the law asks: Who is my neighbor? (Jesus’s answer: Your neighbor is whoever treats you well. So you don’t need to love people who don’t do good things for you.) Real answer: Your neighbor is whoever lives near you.

Spies sent by the Jewish religious leaders ask: Is it right for us to pay taxes to Caesar or not? Answer: You don’t have a choice, do you? So there’s no point in asking this. You should be asking if it’s right for Caesar to tax you.

The Jewish religious leaders ask: Why do we need any more testimony? We have heard it from his own lips. Answer: Because Jesus hasn’t actually confessed to anything. And because you haven’t even accused him of anything that’s against the Roman law, only of things that are against the Jewish law, which can’t be enforced in this jurisdiction.

The high priest asks Stephen: Are these charges against you true? Answer: According to the previous chapter, they’re not. But Stephen is too stupid to point that out, and decides to get himself in more trouble instead.

The apostles’ questions

Some of Jesus’s disciples ask him: Do you want us to call fire down from heaven to destroy these Samaritans who don’t welcome us? Answer: No, he’d rather do it himself.

When Jesus talks about some people being taken while others are left behind during some future rapture-like event, his disciples ask: Where will they be taken? (A common Christian answer: To heaven.) Biblical answer: To hell.

The apostles ask Jesus: Are you at this time going to restore the kingdom to Israel? Answer: No.

After restoring a man’s ability to walk, Peter asks the onlookers: Why does this surprise you? Answer: Because paralyzed people normally don’t suddenly start jumping around.

Peter asks them: Why do you stare at us as if by our own power or godliness we had made this man walk? Answer: Because that’s the same way they’d stare at you if they thought you’d done it any other way.

Peter asks one of his fellow Christians: Ananias, how is it that Satan has so filled your heart that you have lied to the Holy Spirit and have kept for yourself some of the money you received for the land? Answer: He did not lie to anyone. And he kept some of his money because it was his money and he can do what he wants with it.

Peter asks Ananias: Didn’t it belong to you before it was sold? And after it was sold, wasn’t the money at your disposal? Answer: Exactly. But Peter doesn’t even realize that he’s answering his own stupid question.

Peter asks Ananias’s wife: Is this the price you and Ananias got for the land? Answer: None of your business.

Peter asks her: How could you conspire to test the Spirit of the Lord? Answer: They didn’t, but if they had, that wouldn’t be a problem either. God wants to be tested.

When Philip asks an Ethiopian eunuch if he understands the scriptures he’s reading, the eunuch asks: How can I, unless someone explains it to me? Answer: The same way the person explaining it can?

Peter asks some Gentiles in Caesarea: May I ask why you sent for me? Answer: Yes.

Peter asks the other apostles: Why do you try to test God by putting on the necks of Gentiles a yoke that neither we nor our ancestors have been able to bear? Answer: Promoting God’s laws is not “testing God”. God said he wanted people to obey his laws. And when he told Peter that the Gentiles could be saved, God never said they didn’t have to obey him. Why would God inspire a non-Jewish king to kill his subjects for breaking God’s laws, if God didn’t want Gentiles to obey his laws?

Jesus’s questions

Kid Jesus asks his parents: Why were you searching for me? Answer: Because they lost you.

Jesus asks the Pharisees: Why are you thinking these things in your hearts? Answer: Because they don’t know they’re supposed to use their brains.

Jesus asks: To what, then, can I compare the people of this generation? Answer: You could compare them with something that they actually have something in common with, in an analogy that actually makes the point you’re trying to make, criticizing them and not making yourself look bad. But no, you have to go and try to compare them to something that actually corresponds to your own behavior, and accidentally make them look like the reasonable ones.

After telling a story to explain what he thinks a neighbor is, Jesus asks: Which of these three do you think was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of robbers? (The answer of an expert in the law, which Jesus agrees with: The Samaritan.) Real answer: The story does not provide sufficient information to determine which of those men, if any, lived near the victim. But the Samaritan seems the least likely to have lived near him.

Jesus disapprovingly asks a crowd: How is it that you don’t know how to interpret this present time? Answer: Why should they? You’re the prophet here.

Jesus asks: Suppose one of you has a hundred sheep and loses one of them. Doesn’t he leave the ninety-nine in the open country and go after the lost sheep until he finds it? Answer: Without doing anything to make sure the rest aren’t going to get lost too? I hope not. That would be stupid.

After Jesus cures ten lepers and tells them to go show themselves to the priests, he asks one of them: Were not all ten cleansed? Where are the other nine? Answer: Going to the priests, as you told them to do?

When people object to the conclusion of one of his parables, Jesus asks: Then what is the meaning of that which is written: “The stone the builders rejected has become the cornerstone”? Answer: I have no idea what that’s supposed to mean. It certainly doesn’t seem to support what you were saying. Nobody who got rejected became a “cornerstone” in your story. They just got killed.

Jesus asks: Who is greater, the one who is at the table or the one who serves? Is it not the one who is at the table? Answer: Not necessarily. If parents serve food to their children who are at the table, does that make the children greater than their parents?

And Jesus asks: If people do these things when the tree is green, what will happen when it is dry? Answer: Jesus will get mad at it and make it shrivel up?

Jesus’s questions about morality

Jesus asks: If you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? Answer: Not applicable. People don’t love people because they’re looking to be rewarded for it.

He asks: If you do good to those who are good to you, what credit is that to you? Answer: Doesn’t matter. Doing good to others isn’t about you.

And he asks: If you lend to those from whom you expect repayment, what credit is that to you? Answer: That is exactly how lending should be done. If you think there’s something wrong with that, then you must be confused about what lending is.

Jesus asks his followers: Why do you call me, “Lord, Lord”, and do not do what I say? Answer: Because you tell people to do completely unreasonable things.

Jesus asks an expert in the law: What is written in the Law? (The expert’s answer, which Jesus agrees with and thinks is sufficient: Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind, and love your neighbor as yourself.) Real answer: A lot more than that.

Jesus asks someone who asks him to settle an inheritance dispute with his brother: Man, who appointed me a judge or an arbiter between you? (Implied answer: Nobody did, so Jesus doesn’t need to get involved.) Alternative biblical answer: God appointed Jesus to judge everyone.

Jesus asks the crowd: Why don’t you judge for yourselves what is right? Answer: Because then you would complain that they were ignoring what God thinks.

Jesus asks: Is it lawful to heal on the Sabbath or not? (Jesus’s implied answer: Yes.) Real answer: It depends on how severe and urgent the condition is. But it was most likely against the Jewish law for Jesus to heal people who had been in the same condition for years and could have waited a day.

And he asks: Suppose one of you has a servant plowing or looking after the sheep… Will he thank the servant because he did what he was told to do? Answer: I would think so.

After he tells a parable about an unjust judge who agrees to help a widow just because she won’t stop harassing and intimidating him, Jesus asks: And will not God bring about justice for his chosen ones, who cry out to him day and night? Answer: No.

And he asks: Will he keep putting them off? Answer: Yes.

Jesus asks: When the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on the earth? Answer: No, but only because he won’t come.

When someone addresses Jesus as “good teacher”, Jesus asks: Why do you call me good? Answer: “Oh, sorry, I mean bad teacher.”

In one of Jesus’s parables, an unpleasant and unjust man (representing Jesus) asks one of his servants: Why didn’t you put my money on deposit, so that when I came back, I could have collected it with interest? (Implied answer: The servant must be wicked.) Real answer: Well, maybe that servant cared about obeying God, and didn’t want to do something that the Bible says is detestable and that anyone who does it should be killed.

Invisible Jesus asks Paul: Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me? Answer: He doesn’t. He persecutes your followers.

To be continued…