Good Spiritual Questions to Ask
Twenty questions about inherited belief, what happens after death, where a sense of purpose comes from, suffering, forgiveness, where right and wrong come from, and fate against free will. They work in conversation with someone else and equally well as prompts for your own thinking.
The questions
Open any question for the note
What did you grow up believing, and how much of it stuck?
Why ask it
Starting with what was handed down makes the question answerable even for people who would say they are not spiritual at all. What stayed and what was quietly dropped maps someone better than whatever label they use now.
Do you think there is a higher power, and how sure are you?
Why ask it
The second half is the useful half. Certainty varies far more between people than the yes or no does, and anyone willing to put a rough number on their confidence is being unusually honest with you.
What do you think happens after we die?
Why ask it
Expect one of three shapes: a detailed picture, a firm nothing, or an open admission of no idea. Whichever arrives, ask whether they find it comforting, because plenty of people hold a view they do not like.
What makes your life feel worthwhile at the moment?
Why ask it
Asking about the moment stops the answer turning into a general philosophy. If nothing from the current stretch of their life comes to mind, that is worth noticing quietly rather than pushing on.
Where do you feel closest to whatever you would call sacred?
Why ask it
Places answer this better than concepts do. People who reject all religious vocabulary will still name a particular stretch of coast, a building, or a time of morning, which is the same information in a usable form.
Is there anything you keep doing even when it does nothing for you?
Why ask it
A practice continued without payoff shows what someone believes rather than what they enjoy. A blank here is informative too: it usually means their spiritual life runs on moments rather than habits, which is more fragile.
Have you ever had an experience you could not explain away?
Why ask it
Phrased to let in people who wince at the word mystical. Watch how much they hedge before answering. Most people who have had one of these have told fewer than three people about it.
What has shaken what you believe the most, and did it survive?
Why ask it
Belief that has never been tested is a different thing from belief that came through a test. The event named here, often a death or a betrayal, tells you more than any statement of doctrine.
How is what you believe now different from what you believed at twenty?
Why ask it
Movement over decades distinguishes a position someone arrived at from one they inherited. If nothing at all has shifted, ask what they have read or heard that argued against them, rather than assuming it means conviction.
Do you think suffering means anything, or is it just what happens?
Why ask it
Offering just what happens as a permitted answer stops people reaching for a consoling phrase they do not actually believe. Anyone who has been through something serious tends to answer this far more carefully.
Do you believe things happen for a reason?
Why ask it
One of the few beliefs here with immediate consequences for how someone treats other people's misfortune, because it can slide into thinking they had it coming. Follow up by asking whether it applies to strangers or only to their own life.
Fate, free will, or a mix? Where do you land when you actually have to decide something?
Why ask it
The second half makes it answerable. People declare free will and then behave as though everything is arranged, or the reverse, and that mismatch is the interesting part of the answer.
Do you think there is something in a person that is not the body?
Why ask it
Deliberately avoids the word soul, which arrives preloaded for most people. You get more specific answers about what they think ends at death and what, if anything, does not.
Do you have to forgive someone who is not sorry?
Why ask it
The hard case. Forgiveness is easy to endorse in the abstract, so pressing to the unrepentant version is where an actual position shows up, including the honest position of not knowing.
Is there something you are still trying to forgive, in yourself or someone else?
Why ask it
Save this for people you know well, and be prepared to leave it where it lands. If the answer is short, resist filling the pause with reassurance, which usually reads as asking them to stop.
Where do you think right and wrong come from?
Why ask it
Shows whether they hold ethics as commanded, discovered or agreed. If the answer is divine command, the natural follow-up is whether something cruel would be right if it were commanded, and how they answer that is the real content.
Do you notice signs and coincidences, and do you trust them?
Why ask it
Two questions on purpose, because noticing and trusting are different and many people do the first while distrusting the second. Ask for the particular coincidence and you get a story instead of a position.
What do you do with the parts of your tradition you cannot accept?
Why ask it
Almost everyone inside a tradition is quietly at odds with some piece of it. Whether they reinterpret it, ignore it, or carry it as an unhealed argument tells you how they hold belief in general.
What question about any of this keeps you up at night?
Why ask it
Present tense and unresolved, which is why it outperforms asking what someone believes. What comes up tends to be specific and undefended, often a particular person they cannot reconcile with their view of the world.
If you could get one clear answer about all of it, what would you ask?
Why ask it
A good closing question, because naming the unresolved thing does not require defending it. Most people already know their question and have never said it out loud.
How to have a conversation like this
Practical guidance for the conversation itself
Getting in
Answer first
Ask any of these cold and most people give you the socially safe version. Say what you think, including the part you are unsure about, and the answer you get back will be roughly as candid as what you offered.
Drop the vocabulary that puts people off
Words like spiritual, faith and soul carry a lot of history. Asking what happens after we die, or where someone feels most at peace, gets a real answer from people who would decline the same question in religious terms.
Late is better than early
These questions work after dark, on a long drive, or in the second half of an evening. The same question over lunch with an hour scheduled gets a summary, because people can feel the clock.
When you believe different things
Ask how they got there, not why they are right
Why do you believe that invites a defense and an argument. How did you come to that invites a history, which is what you actually wanted and is much harder to argue with.
Do not translate their answer into your terms
Telling someone their experience of God is really about awe, or that your sense of awe is really about God, ends the exchange. Let their words stand as they said them, even the ones you would not use.
Take the unresolved answer at face value
I do not know is a complete answer to most of these. Treating it as a gap to be filled turns a conversation into a recruitment attempt, and the other person will notice before you do.
What goes wrong
- The suffering and forgiveness questions are different for someone in the middle of it. If a person has had a recent death or diagnosis, they are being asked about their own life, not an abstraction, so wait or let them lead.
- Skip the deconversion interview. Asking a former believer to explain what went wrong repeats a conversation they have had many times with people who were not really listening.
- Watch for the second answer. The first response is often the tradition's line and the second, thirty seconds later, is what they think. Say nothing in between.
- If someone offers a specific unexplainable experience, do not immediately supply the natural explanation. They have almost certainly already considered it, and offering it tells them not to continue.
- One or two questions per conversation. Working through the list makes it a survey, and people answer surveys briefly.
Using these on your own
Write the answer rather than think it
Thinking about what you believe tends to circle. Writing three or four sentences forces you to commit, and rereading it in six months is the only reliable way to notice that your view has moved.
Date what you write
These answers change, especially the ones about suffering and about certainty. A dated note turns a vague sense of having changed into a record of when and after what.
Sit with the one you want to skip
The question you would rather not answer is almost always the one carrying something. That is not a reason to force it in a single sitting, but it is worth returning to.