Why does God ask Questions?

I was recently asked this question by a young person. I remember being very disturbed about this same thing when I was about the same age. How can a God who is omnipresent, omnipotent, and omniscient, not know something? However when one looks at all the passages where God asks a question, it is not because God doesn’t know the answer, it is because the person or persons being addressed by God don’t know the answer. Take the very first question God asks. It is the saddest verse in the Bible.

But the LORD God called to the man, and said to him, “Where are you?” Gen. 3:9 

Before this Adam and Eve met and walked with God every evening. God is not asking because He doesn’t know exactly which bush they are hiding behind. It is because they have not considered why they are hiding. It is only just dawning on them that the relationship was forever marred. Until this point man was an eternal being. Now they are mortal and God’s presents is painful. His holiness alone would have been unbearable. Where they had been perfectly made and unashamed of their bodies walking about nude, now their own bodies where shameful, they felt a need to cover themselves. The image of God had been blemished. The entire universe changed that day. Death was now everywhere.

FYI: Pagan mythologies remembers this even quite differently. The serpent is celebrated as the Great Enlightener. There is a stingy selfish god who will not let mankind have light or fire, so the serpent gives them the magic fruit or fire that enlightens them.