"Always here" means...always here. Right?

May 13, 2022 10:51 AM

If the Christ came back from the dead (again), what would you ask Him? What would you want to know?
posted by sexyrobot to Religion & Philosophy (58 answers total)

Best answer: Why are humans so poorly designed? Why is the reproductive stuff right next to the “sewer?”

Why androgen and testosterone? Those are the drivers of the most of the Earth’s problems! Cut it out with that stuff.
posted by BostonTerrier at 10:55 AM on May 13, 2022 [4 favorites]

Best answer: What does the H stand for?
posted by Freelance Demiurge at 10:56 AM on May 13, 2022 [32 favorites]

Best answer: I can answer this definitively because I had a cough syrup influenced dream where I met Jesus and what I wanted to know was, what was the deal with WW2? He said that, for example, the moon has 3 names. This is not a rich experience.
posted by bleep at 11:05 AM on May 13, 2022 [11 favorites]

Response by poster: It's a legitimate question, I'm doing research for a book. I asked it again.
posted by sexyrobot at 11:05 AM on May 13, 2022

Best answer: I’d ask why did God harden Pharaoh’s heart when Moses asked him to free the Hebrews. And is belief voluntary. And if it isn’t (which I suspect) what’s that all about?
Also free will: I haven’t heard a compelling argument for its existence under an omnipotent God without whom nothing can happen.
posted by Dressed to Kill at 11:10 AM on May 13, 2022 [3 favorites]

Best answer: I’d also ask him when human life really begins because I think his take on it would settle a lot of arguments.
posted by mochapickle at 11:12 AM on May 13, 2022 [8 favorites]

Mod note: This Ask has been flagged as chatfilter. Same as the previously deleted one. We have decided to let it stay so that the OP can do his research for a book. Please go on.
posted by loup (staff) at 11:29 AM on May 13, 2022 [10 favorites]

Best answer: I would ask for the solution to some long standing unsolved problem in mathematics or physics.
If that answer is provided quickly and easily in a verifiable way, then I would... probably ask more similar questions.

No sense in saying what I want to say because if God exists it has no shame anyway.
posted by Acari at 11:34 AM on May 13, 2022

Best answer: Do you actually agree with all the bigots using your name, or no?

Do you do magic?
posted by jenfullmoon at 11:35 AM on May 13, 2022 [2 favorites]

Best answer: I'd ask him why he told Mary Magdalena not to touch him.
posted by Zumbador at 11:40 AM on May 13, 2022 [3 favorites]

Jesus, I'd like to talk to your dad about menstruation.
posted by whatevernot at 11:48 AM on May 13, 2022 [6 favorites]

Best answer: Over time, was your influence in the world a net good or a net bad? Did all the good things you influenced into happening outweigh the bad ones (war, prejudice, suppression, etc.)
posted by sillysally at 11:49 AM on May 13, 2022 [1 favorite]

Best answer: I'd ask him for his solution to the trolley problem. (Being all-knowing and all-powerful, he's likely the only one who can.)
posted by SPrintF at 11:53 AM on May 13, 2022 [1 favorite]

Best answer: Why did you let assholes like Paul and Peter speak for you? Why do you still to this day?
posted by Orange Dinosaur Slide at 11:54 AM on May 13, 2022 [11 favorites]

Best answer: Why do geological radiometric dating methods tell us that the age of the earth is 4.6 billion years old, and why do astronomical measurements put the age of the universe at 13-14 billion years old, when the bible says everything is only 6000 years old?

Why doesn't the bible say anything about dinosaurs existing and dying off millions of years before the appearance of humans?
posted by StrawberryPie at 11:55 AM on May 13, 2022

Where’d I put that half a bitcoin from 2011?
posted by michaelh at 11:58 AM on May 13, 2022 [1 favorite]

Best answer: I meditate a LOT. Crazy devout Tibetan Buddhist.

I’d ask him about his lost years - did he travel to India as they say and train with the yogis? I’d ask him to describe Christ’s Love. My understanding of the Buddhist Brahma Viharas only deepened when I considered them in light of Christ’s Love, so I’d ask Him to elaborate here. I’d ask for His blessing and guidance. And generally just be in His presence to witness an enlightened being up close.
posted by St. Peepsburg at 12:02 PM on May 13, 2022 [6 favorites]

Previously, what were you doing between the ages of 12-30?
posted by BozoBurgerBonanza at 12:03 PM on May 13, 2022 [5 favorites]

Best answer: How do you feel about the other world religions? Where do Mohammed, Buddha, etc. rank in the hierarchy of saints, prophets and 'deities'?
posted by TDIpod at 12:04 PM on May 13, 2022 [1 favorite]

Best answer: Why no signs to repudiate hateful people who use his words to do evil?
posted by wenestvedt at 12:09 PM on May 13, 2022 [2 favorites]

Best answer: Also, how can I learn to walk on water. But if I do so, can I still swim? Or does water become solid to me all of the time. I don’t want to lose the ability to swim, and I think solid water would pose some additional problems as well.
posted by sillysally at 12:09 PM on May 13, 2022 [3 favorites]

Best answer: have you heard what people have been saying and doing in your name?

oh also: *pulls dead cat out of coat pocket and brandishes it with accusatory air*
posted by 20 year lurk at 12:10 PM on May 13, 2022 [2 favorites]

Best answer: Why are some babies born with fatal conditions? Is it just to serve as a learning opportunity for the parents? Isn't that kind of cruel?
posted by StrawberryPie at 12:12 PM on May 13, 2022 [8 favorites]

Best answer: I would ask about other religions. If Jesus of the Bible is real, is Xipe Totec also real? Artemis? The god of water animals? (I really don't mean to make fun of people's beliefs and am sorry if that's offensive. But, that's my honest answer.)
posted by eotvos at 12:16 PM on May 13, 2022 [4 favorites]

Best answer: Pol Pot, Stalin, Hitler, etc. I get it that there needed to be some examples of very bad humans, but did we need that many? They caused a lot of suffering and I'm pretty sure the big guy could've just blinked and stopped them before they got started. And instead of sending us really bad people like that, wouldn't it have been better to send some really positive examples instead? Say, more people like you, Jesus?
posted by StrawberryPie at 12:18 PM on May 13, 2022 [7 favorites]

Best answer: Why did you say that "Whoever has, will be given more. But whoever does not have, even what he thinks he has will be taken away"? I see this in the New Testament at least four times. Whenever I hear that quote, sounds to me like you're really Supply-Side Jesus.
posted by Rash at 12:35 PM on May 13, 2022 [5 favorites]

Best answer: What the actual literal hell did you do between your death and resurrection?
posted by General Malaise at 12:42 PM on May 13, 2022 [4 favorites]

Best answer: What’s up with the problem of evil, and the biblical conception of free will? Why is your dad so into being worshipped? Why this strange story about you being sacrificed and us being damned eternally unless we believe in you, if you died for our sins (wouldn’t that have been enough, also thank you for that)? What exactly does belief entail? What’s the point of putting humans through this trial at all? Is this part of some intergalactic game? If so, what else is out there?
posted by cotton dress sock at 12:49 PM on May 13, 2022 [4 favorites]

Best answer: Assuming the accounts of Christ in the Gospels and throughout the New Testament are 100% accurate (I know, I know, but since the question is already a hypothetical you kind of have to assume it in order to make sense of an answer), it's impossible to ask "gotcha!" questions of the Son of God, because He never let Himself be trapped by his questioners. So not to dump on many of the above questions, but I don't think you'd get too far with them.

The Pharisees were were the most educated and sophisticated people of their day, used to winning arguments and getting the better of people, and Jesus constantly saw through their attempts to trick Him into saying something they could use against Him ("Render unto Caesar's what is Caesar's" when they wanted to get a pull quote to denounce Him to the Romans, for instance). Demanding to know why hell or suffering exists is usually posed in the same spirit as Caiaphas demanding to know why Jesus simply can't bring Himself down from the cross, if He really is who He says He is, or Pilate demanding to know why Jesus is not fighting for His freedom ("because my kingdom is not of this world."), and I think you'd probably get a similar answer that reveals more about you then about Him.

So, I think I'd simply just want to know where Joseph His earthly father went, and if there was a particular story or anecdote not captured in the gospels that He particularly enjoyed.
posted by fortitude25 at 12:59 PM on May 13, 2022 [2 favorites]

Best answer: Can you ask your fans to chill the fuck out?
posted by thivaia at 1:07 PM on May 13, 2022 [12 favorites]

Best answer: I'd ask Him if everything is going to be okay.
posted by missrachael at 1:07 PM on May 13, 2022 [3 favorites]

Best answer: We already know Jesus's likely answer to many of these. To some questions: "I have no idea. I really don't know much about science (or history, or many other things)". To others: "Hey, I can't make anyone do anything, and I can't prevent anyone from doing anything either. I just give advice." The interesting questions here, which he might be able to answer, are the ones about his own life, or explanations of things he is reported to have said.

Many of these are really questions for an omniscient, omnipotent god. Jesus was never described as being that, as far as I know.
posted by JonJacky at 1:08 PM on May 13, 2022 [4 favorites]

Best answer: Well, the "free will" thing has been covered by Smullyan. And one possible explanation for evil in the world and corrupt Christian denominations is covered by Peter Rollins. And many other "what would Jesus say" questions have been addressed in books by Joseph Girzone.

So I think I would ask him about heaven, hell and purgatory. Or maybe if he laughed at that question, I would just ask which he prefers of these movies: The Life of Brian, Dogma, the Matrix or something else? I think you can learn a lot about someone from what movie they prefer.
posted by forthright at 1:16 PM on May 13, 2022

What if I told you that, in a dream, He told me The Never-Ending Story was his favorite?
posted by Rash at 1:19 PM on May 13, 2022 [2 favorites]

Best answer: How can You justify implicating all of humanity with responsibility for a human sacrifice that happened before their time/without their consent that they're supposed to spend a lifetime atoning for?
posted by Occula at 1:23 PM on May 13, 2022 [4 favorites]

Best answer: @Rash, I would say "Hmmmm, I haven't watched that since my now middle age kids were little... but AskMetafilter is not the weirdest way you have spoken to me in 68 years, so I'll watch it again... thanks very much for the answer!"
posted by forthright at 1:25 PM on May 13, 2022

Best answer: I'd ask if there is life on other planets, and if so what do they call him, and do they have to believe in his sacrifice on the cross on this planet far far away or would they have some other story.

If some person grows up and never knows anything about you for their entire life until death, do they go to hell? If not, isn't it better not to tell them because if you do and they laugh you off then they're going to burn in hell. Right?

(I've actually had this conversation with Deity themself during a prolonged fever dream/hallucination. All the way up through levels of angels to the top. They got annoyed and kicked me back down where an angel opened a door to let me out and assigned me a guardian angel. That angel was Elvis. Fun times.)
posted by zengargoyle at 2:45 PM on May 13, 2022 [2 favorites]

Best answer: I would ask him what he is, I think. Like, Son Of God in a literal sense, like conceived by reality-manipulating means by a super being of some sort, or an aspect or avatar of that being deliberately experiencing the constrained form of a human for perspective-having reasons, or something else. I know the bible/writing/art etc has many takes on this, but I’d like to hear it from the horse’s mouth, as it were, who knows how accurate it all is. He could be a nano-engineered avatar of some kind of not-actually-capital-G god intergalactic machine intelligence for all I know.
posted by Jon Mitchell at 2:46 PM on May 13, 2022 [4 favorites]

Best answer: Oh, probably some carpentry questions too . Was he any good? Did he ever cheat? What was his favourite thing to make?
posted by Jon Mitchell at 2:48 PM on May 13, 2022 [2 favorites]

Best answer: I'd like to ask him about his historicity. As in - assuming that there really was a single person known as Jesus - what was your occupation? What did you really stand for? Where were you born, where did you live, what was your life like, and when, where, and how did you die?

I did not grow up with Christianity in any form, and it's always seemed curious to me to hear people talk about Jesus as though they know his innermost thoughts ('Jesus wanted this,' 'Jesus fought for this,' 'Jesus would have said this'). His historicity itself isn't even definitively known. I'd like to know more about this historical figure and who he really was, as opposed to how people characterize him now.
posted by aquamvidam at 3:03 PM on May 13, 2022

Best answer: Is reincarnation real? What is my soul's purpose in this particular lifetime? These specific challenging relationships... what were those about?

And: Did he ever fall in love? With whom? Did he have any offspring?
posted by Serene Empress Dork at 3:12 PM on May 13, 2022

Best answer: I would ask if people reincarnate.
posted by gt2 at 3:13 PM on May 13, 2022 [1 favorite]

Best answer: Best answer: Assuming the accounts of Christ in the Gospels and throughout the New Testament are 100% accurate (I know, I know, but since the question is already a hypothetical you kind of have to assume it in order to make sense of an answer), it's impossible to ask "gotcha!" questions of the Son of God, because He never let Himself be trapped by his questioners. So not to dump on many of the above questions, but I don't think you'd get too far with them.

But his answers (as recorded) are consistently so interesting, even when they are cleverly bypassing the "gotcha" attempts. So I suspect whatever his responses to these questions were, they'd be worth getting, even if they weren't straightforward.
posted by Artifice_Eternity at 3:32 PM on May 13, 2022 [1 favorite]

Best answer: [copied from my response to deleted post]
"Of all the faces you could have had, why did you choose Cesare Borgia?"
and
"How does Chris Hitchens feel about being so utterly wrong?"

plus a new one (personally I hear this one in Michael Palin's voice)
"If you died on Friday and rose three days later, that's Monday, not Sunday. How come Easter is Sunday then?"
and another Hitchens-related
"How is Chris enjoying the eternal party? Has he tried to leave yet?"
posted by zaixfeep at 3:38 PM on May 13, 2022

Best answer: I would ask what I could do for him.
posted by Carlo at 4:42 PM on May 13, 2022 [6 favorites]

Best answer: I guess I'd ask him how he felt about his fanbase that was loudly confident I was going to hell when I came out, made AIDS jokes, and took advantage of weak separation of church and state to take away my rights. I'd preface it with "this is less of a question and more of a comment."
posted by less-of-course at 4:44 PM on May 13, 2022 [7 favorites]

Best answer: Jesus! My man! So, uh........ we cool?
posted by aws17576 at 7:35 PM on May 13, 2022 [1 favorite]

Best answer: Fuck is wrong with your dad, my dude?
posted by We put our faith in Blast Hardcheese at 8:03 PM on May 13, 2022 [6 favorites]

Best answer: Nature of God: Trinitarian or nontrinitarian or none of the above? I grew up in a Christian sect that was nontrinitarian (The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints), whereas most follow the Nicean creed, which seems such an interesting fundamental detail to have differ between sects.
posted by foxfirefey at 8:51 PM on May 13, 2022 [1 favorite]

Best answer: What's with all the uranium and carbon tucked away in easily exploitable deposits underground?

Because your dad should have figured this bullshit out after the whole see that whole see-that-apple-don't-eat-that-apple fiasco.
posted by sebastienbailard at 2:25 AM on May 14, 2022 [4 favorites]

Best answer: How come you never take the wheel?
posted by sebastienbailard at 2:26 AM on May 14, 2022 [3 favorites]

Best answer: What's your relationship with Muhammad and other prophets?

How many half siblings on your Dad's side do you have, and when were they born?

How is heaven not boring?

To what extent does matter matter?
posted by Thella at 3:34 AM on May 14, 2022 [1 favorite]

Best answer: Do you have time to be a guest on my podcast?
posted by harriet vane at 5:04 AM on May 14, 2022

Could you please pass the salt?
posted by signal at 6:37 AM on May 14, 2022 [1 favorite]

Best answer: He could be a nano-engineered avatar of some kind of not-actually-capital-G god intergalactic machine intelligence for all I know.

For those Doubting Thomases, asking about some mid-range Busy Beaver number might be good. Just after the sequence “departs the realm of mortals and enters the realm of God” we find numbers high enough that (we're pretty sure) they can't be calculated in this universe, but low enough that we could check if a supplied answer is correct.
posted by rhamphorhynchus at 8:12 AM on May 14, 2022

As an athlete, I'd ask him why ligaments are so easy to injure, and slow and painful to heal.
posted by ragtimepiano at 1:40 PM on May 14, 2022

Best answer: Why did you come back?
posted by woot at 5:43 PM on May 14, 2022

Mod note: Sorry, coming back around to this, I'm going to go ahead and delete this again. Sometimes asking questions with a fantasy basis because it's going to be used as part of a book or writing project is okay, but it's not "everything goes," and among the guidelines for Ask Metafilter, we ask for concrete questions that have solutions, we ask for people not to do a "poll the readers" sort of thing, and just generally a good guideline is that if every answer is as good as every other answer ("what's your favorite color?"), it's probably not a good question for Ask Metafilter. All of these issues sometimes require evaluation in the moment, and we evaluated and re-evaluated this one. Sorry again for the delay and confusion.
posted by taz (staff) at 10:22 PM on May 16, 2022 [3 favorites]