"Stay away from that switch! Running the factory lights at night begs a German bomb right on top of us."

"I beg your pardon?"

"That's an interesting link, but it begs the question, 'why does an archaic idiom invalidate the plain meaning of a phrase?'"

The English language is well prepared to deal with ambiguities. There are countless words and phrases with multiple meanings. This one is not even confusing! One is always followed by the question it raises, which makes it quite obvious what they meant.