Why do Christians come here for answers?

Question

I was answering a question the other day and my eight year old daughter read the questions and said to me, "That's stupid. Why don't they just go look it up in the Bible?"

Fair point. I personally come here to see what types of questions there are, in order to challenge my assumptions, and force me to find scriptural, doctrinal basis for my beliefs. In other words, to sharpen my faith. I see that several atheists come here to bash us and try to make us feel stupid. (Good luck with that.)

Why do YOU come here, fellow Christian?

Answer 1

SE is about learning.

You could ask similar questions about why people come to any SE site. Why do I ask my gardening questions on Gardening.SE or my Dungeons & Dragons questions on RPG.SE there are other places to go for those answers, in fact sometimes I could just look them up in books I own. Instead I choose to go to these sites for the answers for several reasons.

1. By asking the question here and getting a good answer I leave a lasting record on the Internet in the event that someone else has the same problem, they can simply and easily ask their question to Google and get their answer quickly and easily.

2. By asking the question here I help a struggling (in the case of Gardening/RPG) or just starting (in the case of this one) site gain a question base and eventually more google hits.

3. There are experts on SE sites that answer questions with regularity. On RPG.SE we have folks with 20+ years experience in game playing, we have some game designers who show up and we have lots of other experienced Game Masters and Players who ask and answer questions. On gardening we have several experienced gardeners. Here we have a couple of pastors and lots of folks who have studied theology on their own time (though more real live professional type experts is something we are currently lacking both here and on gardening)..

4. I almost always get a good answer to a good question on SE. If I ask a question here at C.SE I usually get a good answer, often several good answers sometimes from multiple view points. It helps me learn what different people believe and how different people implement solutions to the same problems.

Basically we ask and answer questions here because it exposes us to a knowledge base that is broader than the one we have access to locally and because the answers on the SE network in general (not necessarily here yet) tend to be very high quality and on point.

Answer 2

I come to Christianity.SE because:

1. It adds fuel to the fire of my own study of the Scriptures. There have been countless "Hmmmm" or "wait a second" moments while browsing questions or answers that send me to study a topic or passage in more detail or in a different light then I may have otherwise done. I would say that my study over the last 2.5 years I've been active here has been tremendously intensified when compared to my study methods previous to my involvement on C.SE.

2. C.SE answers to my questions are often more scholarly and detailed than pastors or elders at church are able to or have time to provide and more specifically geared toward my curiosities than an article or website.

3. I would be discussing these things somewhere anyway, and C.SE is exceptionally well-moderated. The SE format is much more productive than the typical message board style forum.

4. It allows me to develop and air-out ideas about doctrines that I think are detrimental to the Gospel and eliminate misconceptions about them by interacting with those that hold them in a format that does not encourage back-and-forth debate, and informs my discussion in real life with people who hold those doctrines. Case in point: my top tag is "Catholicism", even though I am ardently Protestant.

5. I believe that my participation genuinely benefits the community.

6. I enjoy the chat room very much, and find it simultaneously tremendously frustrating and very entertaining to conversate with Lee Woofenden.

7. If I'm bored and decide to surf the web, I have developed the habit (compulsion) of visiting C.SE first, and I appreciate that this often turns boredom into productive study of the Scriptures. Unfortunately (fortunately?) have not been bored very often lately and so my participation has dropped in recent months.

Answer 3

I come to Christianity.SE for five major reasons

This might make me a heretic, since Catholics tend to do things in threes ...

1. To learn about other Christian traditions' beliefs and doctrines.
2. To see how others who are well versed in Scripture present various important passage in Scripture.
3. To be helpful where I can in explaining some things about Christianity, mostly Catholic things since I spent a few years as a Catechist in the RCIA ministry.
4. To find new things and insights that I had no idea about regarding Christianity.
5. This site has the best signal to noise ratio on the internet on the topic of Christianity, by an order of magnitude.

Answer 4

I come here to ask questions in hope that a priest may show up and answer them. That doesn't often happen.

I also like to ask questions to get an idea of the protestant understanding of things.

And to defend Our Lady's purity.

And to ask questions pertinent to my Religious Ed. Class.

I think I mentioned wanting to do this on a previous Meta post a few days after the site started and so far, it's lived up to what I wanted it to be.

Answer 5

As iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another. - Proverbs 27:17 (ESV)

Answer 6

1. If I ever choose to look for a different church to serve, I want that church to know what i think Christianity is. Kinda like Stack Overflow, it rounds out "who I am".

2. I enjoy having to defend what I believe, and question what I really do. Books are good for answers, SE is great for raising questions.

3. It gives me practice at concisely communicating complex concepts. I preach*, and let me tell you, if I can't answer in under a few paragraphs, I'm not doing anyone any good.

*I also work a full-time job, so I don't preach every week. This keeps me in good practice.

Answer 7

My academic work deals heavily with questions of religious cohesion as an element of national identity. Obtaining answers to questions from a variety of perspectives--some mainstream, some not--really helps me see how people interpret their own relationship to the world around them.

I wouldn't cite Stack Exchange in a formal work, of course, but what I learn here informally can be useful in understanding the perspectives of the historical cultures and peoples I study.