Who Is Dr. Anette?

I am Dr. Anette Ejsing and I love questions.

Questions got me through childhood, elementary school, more school, a Ph.D. program, and six years as a college professor. I am confident they will carry me through the remaining stages of my life, all the way to my grave. In fact, I dream of a white casket with this one big word written across the top: “Why?”

My vision is to bring all good questions forward…

• In our online communities
• In our classrooms
  
• In our minds and our lives

I contribute toward the fulfillment of this vision by asking questions in my own professional field, theology and ethics. Discussing these two fields in combination is attractive to me. Partly because it hit some personal nerves:

• What we believe about God
• What we believe about ourselves
  
• What we believe about right behavior
  
• What we believe about others
  

Asking questions about these things is also very rewarding, because it helps us grow as individual persons. And when we grow individually, we change the world in which we live. That’s why I have a particular love for questions about theology and ethics.

Why I ask questions in the first place?

We all know from experience why questions are so attractive. It is because they have power to change us. They change what we think, and they change what we do.

I remember a paper I wrote in graduate school, for instance. It was about 19th century Continental philosophy and a topic I knew well. I no longer remember my argument, but I remember the question my professor asked in the left margin on page three. He wrote this: “Really?”

That question haunted me for years. Not so much because it helped me learn something new about 19th century Continental philosophy, but because it challenged me to go back and think again. Plus, it forced me to admit that just because I think I am right about something does not mean I actually am.

So…

We should never underestimate the power of a good question. It helps us think more deeply about the things we care about, and it helps us live more fully. I mean, who wants to zoom through life on auto-pilot and miss out on all the good stuff?

Let’s therefore face it. We do each other a favor when we ask a good question. It doesn’t have to take a lot of time. It just has to hit the mark.

Let’s face the question.