Never ask Jesus a question if you don’t truly want the answer. Right? You know what I’m talking about! You ask him a question, and he either returns your question with another question, he tells you a tricky story, or he somehow turns the tables on you, since he already knows why you’re secretly asking!

Ask him what he means by neighbor, and you’ll get a lesson in the kind of active compassion you’re not enacting in your own life. Ask him if you should pay your taxes, and you’ll get an entire theology lesson in one sentence about your own bad priorities. Ask him how many times you should forgive your neighbor for allowing the dog to do his business on your lawn, and you’ll be challenged with your own inability to forgive even once for real!

For every smart aleck remark, he’ll have just t…