The first day of the Alpha Course, was after a very long day at work, and I almost skipped it. When I walked into the room I saw a giant sign asking “why am I here?” I couldn’t come up with a good answer. I nearly turned around and left. I know their intent is the broader question of “why do we exist at all?”. I’m not sure if they’re going for the double meaning. They obviously know that a lot of people attending the course will be questioning their decision to show up, because they discuss that in the video. But I’m not sure why they would think encouraging people to question their attendance would be likely to convince them to stay.

I did stay. After introductions and dinner and the video we got into discussion. The main discussion question for the day was “If you found out that God really existed, and you could ask him one question, what would it be?” My first thought upon seeing this question was that the Alpha Course teaches that you can ask God questions, and he will answer. And yet he’s never answered a question for me. So my first instinct was to ask “Why should I believe you’ll answer now?”.

But I didn’t say that out loud. Part of the reason was that no one else had answered, and I didn’t really want to start out the whole course by being argumentative. And I especially didn’t want to start by arguing against a claim that no one had even made yet. For all I knew the course had changed, or I wasn’t remembering it correctly, or this Church didn’t agree with that module.

But more importantly, after my initial gut reaction passed, I knew that wasn’t the right answer. The question implies that I would actually be convinced that this God exists, and I have the opportunity to ask him one question. I’m not going to waste it being snarky. Based on my past experience I wouldn’t expect him to give me an actual answer, but asking a worthwhile question costs me nothing, so I should ask one if there’s even the slightest chance of getting an answer.

So what question? I was stumped. Eventually TL and a few other people at my table gave answers. There were a lot of “why” questions, like “why do we exist”, “why is the universe the way it is”, etc. None of those seemed particularly valuable to me. I suppose if I was unable to think of a better question I might ask one of those just to satisfy my curiousity. But I feel like there must be a better question to ask.

The other answer given by a person at my table was “what do you think of me?” I thought that was an interesting question. Whether it’s worth asking depends on the properties of this God. If we’re talking about the traditional Christian God who’s going to judge my life and determine where I spend eternity based on that, I’m going to find out eventually anyway, so that’s kind of a waste of a question. I suppose if I was getting this opportunity to ask the question before my life is over I could use his answer to determine my future behavior. But if that’s my goal a direct “what do I need to do to get into heaven” would make more sense. But if this is a traditional Christian God, then presumably all that matters is whether I believe in him, and the question has established that I already believe in him. I suppose certain interpretations would require me to “trust in him” or whatever. But it seems to me that all of those things would come naturally if I knew he existed.

Of course, if wrangling my way into heaven is the goal, I should probably make sure I actually want to be there. In learning that God exists did I figure out why I would want to just worship him for eternity? If not maybe I should ask what heaven’s like? Or if there’s a way I can just cease to exist?

What about a God that wasn’t going to judge me whether I asked him to or not? Would I be interested in getting his opinion of me? I’m not sure. It might be interesting to get an opinion on my life from an omniscient being. But ultimately I think I’d still have to take it with a grain of salt. If God really believes having sex before marriage is worse than beating your slaves to within an inch of their life, do I really care what his opinion of me is? And if he doesn’t, but I have no knowledge of his beliefs or standards, does it matter what his opinion is? In a lot of ways it would make more sense to ask someone I respect who’s not omniscient than someone who’s omniscient that I know nothing else about.

What if God is the “ultimate standard of good” or whatever? Wouldn’t it be interesting to know what the ultimate standard of good thought about me? But I honestly don’t understand what that means. In that case the best question might be to ask him what that means. If I did understand what it meant, but still didn’t agree with him on what was good and bad, I’m not sure that would be a good question. Just having him tell me I was bad without any clarification of why those things were bad would be rather unsatisfying. Without follow-up questions it could just be a really aggravating discussion.

In general most questions really depend on the properties of the God in question, and I don’t know if the knowledge that God exists would come with understanding that God or not. If it didn’t, then questions to understand him would probably be the way to go.

I never did answer the question. Answering is optional, but I did intend to participate as much as possible. But I still haven’t come up with a question that really feels satisfying.