How to Deal with Hostile Questions. | Anita Mathias: Dreaming Beneath the Spires

Matthew 21

²³ Jesus entered the temple courts, and, while he was teaching, the chief priests and the elders of the people came to him. “By what authority are you doing these things?” they asked. “And who gave you this authority?”
Do you think they truly wanted to know. Or was this a hostile question?
Of late, I do not answer hostile, rhetorical questions.
And here, neither does Jesus.

And so how does he deal with them? Sometimes, he refuses to answer. Sometimes, he answers a question with a question, “a unique cultural predisposition” of Jewish people, according to the website Stuff Jewish People Like.
What were these things? Cleansing the temple, for one! Healing and teaching in the temple, because he is neither a scribe, nor a priest.

²⁴ Jesus replied, “I will also ask you one question. If you answer me, I will tell you by what authority I am doing these things. ²⁵ John’s baptism—where did it come from? Was it from heaven, or of human origin?”

They discussed it among themselves and said, “If we say, ‘From heaven,’ he will ask, ‘Then why didn’t you believe him?’ ²⁶ But if we say, ‘Of human origin’—we are afraid of the people, for they all hold that John was a prophet.”

²⁷ So they answered Jesus, “We don’t know.”

Canniness meets the creator of human intelligence.
Jesus counter-traps them. If they do not know whether John was from God, how can they judge if Jesus is?

Then he said, “Neither will I tell you by what authority I am doing these things.”

He calmly and quietly refused to answer their hostile tricky question.

I am increasingly refusing to engage when it is clear that the intent of the questioner is hostile.