I heard a story of a teacher wanting to impress upon his students the importance of thorough observation.  He purchased several dead fish from a local market and placed them in trays in front of his students.  His instructions were simple:  Describe the fish in detail.

Look Again

The students wrote their observations and handed in their assignments.  The teacher read their assignments and told every student to go back and continue their work.  “You missed something,” he told them.  They handed in their revised assignments, each with new observations they had missed the first time.  He repeated his instructions.  “Tell me more!  Use other senses.  Tell me what you smell.  Tell me what you feel.”  They did.  They observed more and differently.  They wrote more, and handed in their assignments.  He read their work and repeated his instructions.  “You missed something.  Did you look on the inside?”

This went on for several days.  Each time the students observed more, and wrote more, and observed differently.  Even though they thought they had observed everything the first time, when encouraged to take a second look they saw the fish differently.  In many cases, the second or third observation led the student to revise what they had concluded before because they had gained more information. 

Did the educator care about fish?  No.  He wanted his students to learn a valuable lesson about inquiry.  Human inquiry.  Asking questions, more questions, better questions.  Have you learned everything there is to know?  If not, look again.  Ask again.  Look differently.  Ask differently.  Wonder differently.

I Might Be Wrong

When I teach my social work students how to conduct research, one of the first principles I tell them is that everything is open to question.  This is one of the principles of scientific method.  Do not assume you know the truth.  Do not assume what you already know is right.  Question everything.  Keep an open mind.  My eighth grade algebra teacher Miss Nolfi hung a poster on the wall of her classroom with this caption: “Keep an open mind, something might drop in.”¹

Is my mind open?  Am I willing to question everything, even my sacred conclusions?  About the world, about myself, about others, about God?  Can I accept that what I already think I know might be wrong?

Consider this:  There is a subtle but significant difference between my willingness to learn additional information, and my willingness to exchange what I already assume is true with something new or different.  The first requires persistence.  The second requires humility.

I am enjoying David Dark’s new book, The Sacredness of Questioning Everything ((Dark, James David (2009). The Sacredness Of Questioning Everything. Grand Rapids: Zondervan Press.  See pages 14 and 16.))  He meddles in sensitive areas.  The subtitle of his first chapter is “Questioning God”.  Yikes!  Question God?  Do we dare?  Dark explains:  “I believe deliverance begins with questions.  It begins with people who love questions, people who live with questions and by questions, people who feel a deep joy when good questions are asked.”  Dark tells the story of his grandfather who often qualified his rather rigid claims about God with “as far as I know” or “as far as I can tell”, eventually concluding late in life that these were not very far at all.  His grandfather “even remained open to the possibility that he was most wrong when he was most intensely sure of his rightness.”    

I Wonder

I might be wrong.  Do I dare not question my assumptions about the world around me and about God?  Do I dare not question what I think I know?  Like the fish story above, the point is not to learn everything there is to know about the world.  The point is to continue to wonder.  Theologian Abraham Heschel reminded us, “Wonder rather than doubt is the root of all knowledge.”  Am I willing to release my illusory firm grasp of the so-called facts just long enough to wonder, just long enough to reach out for something more, something closer to the truth?

Only a fool will say “I know God.”  As far as I know, the more I learn about God, the more I realize how little I know.  So, I think I’ll go back and take a second look.

© Copyright by Jeffrey Y. Harlow, Ph.D (2009).

1. Does anyone know where Miss Nolfi is?  I’d love to thank her!