Modern discussion and debate is full of unanswered questions.

Prime Minister’s Questions, First Minister’s Question and BBC Question Time produce many examples of questions that are ignored and not answered.

People respond, but they do not answer; they reply, but they do not answer.

An answer addresses the question, but the person responding may reframe the question or goes off on a tangent to answer another question.

It happens commonly in political debate, where politicians are often constrained by their political party’s straitjacket.  They cannot go “off message” to say what they really think, and as they are speaking on behalf of the Party they are expected rather to say the two or three things that the Party wants them to say, whatever the question is. This is very common in public debate.

Sometimes preachers do the same.  Instead of admitting that the plain teaching of Scripture contradicts what they are saying, they obfuscate or reframe the topic so that they can impose their own opinion on top of Scripture.  This is called eisegesis, reading one’s own opinions into the biblical texts instead of taking the real meaning out of the text, which is exegesis.

Questions asked of major corporations often obfuscate by answering other questions than the one that was asked. Questions addressed to one’s MP will receive a standard Party-reply to the topic in hand but not the question that was asked.

Not answering

This behaviour falls into the category of foul play.  Footballers speak about “a professional foul”, a deliberate foul to slow down a winning move by one’s opponents. Similarly, failure to answer the question is quite deliberate.

Poor losers

We teach children to play games and sports so that they may learn to play by the rules.   Thereby they also learn to be “good losers”, to lose games with dignity rather than throwing a tantrum as “poor losers”.  We teach them to be magnanimous in victory and gracious in defeat.

Teenage tantrums at losing a vote are not only symptoms of immaturity but also of God’s judgment on a nation Isa 3:12 especially in the area of political debate. So keen are people to win by fair means or foul that it is evident that such people can never be trusted to play fair in public life.  They are poor losers, because they never learned to play fair.  They never learned to discuss properly, to answer the question, and to win the argument fairly and squarely, commending themselves to every man’s conscience 2Cor 4:2.

This arises from an inability to tell the truth.  Many years of obfuscation and telling lies results in such behaviour.

A recent example

A recent example I witnessed was a news item on BBC Scotland, which is not the most important example but one of the most recent in my experience. Last week, the new First Minister of Scotland appeared at his First Minister’s Questions. The news reader read the first item on the BBC Scotland news immediately following: “Today, it was all about his choice of Deputy First Minister, Kate Forbes, and her views on issues like gay marriage, abortion and trans-rights.”

Whoever wrote this narrative for Sally Magnusson to read from the autocue was telling plain lies.  It was not “all about” this.  Rather, First Minister’s Questions was about John Swinney’s poor record on education. Green Party Patrick Harvey‘s attack on the new Deputy First Minister was simply a blip in the 45-minute session.  However, this is what the media wanted to highlight, because the next media assault will be on Kate Forbes MSP.  It is the latest in a long line of poor losers in the media who think that their narrative should prevail.  They went for Donald Trump from the first day of his US Presidential election win, and for Boris Johnson, then one by one for the Brexiteers in the Tory cabinet.

There is much more that one could say, but my point is the failure to win a debate because of the failure to tell the truth and to answer the question.  This is the source of so much misunderstanding and animosity in public life. It is time for Christian truth to be used in debate and in public life.

It might help all my readers to consider Jesus’ warning in the Gospel of Matthew 12:36-37:

“Every idle word that men shall speak, they shall give account thereof in the Day of Judgment. For by thy words thou shalt be justified, and by thy words thou shalt be condemned.”