"I don't know"

~ by Nathan Brown, author, Editor (Signs of the Times, Australia / New Zealand)

“One of my main efforts as a teacher has been to train people to say those (apparently difficult) words ‘we don’t know,’” commented Christian writer and long-time tutor at Oxford University, C S Lewis. Those “apparently difficult” words don’t come easily to any of us—and perhaps they are even more difficult in the mouths of people of conviction, whether religious or not.

But to admit “I don’t know” is an important spiritual discipline that we need to practice, precisely because it does not come easily. “You think that everyone should agree with your perfect knowledge,” wrote the Apostle Paul in the Bible. “While knowledge may make us feel important, it is love that really builds up … Anyone who claims to know all the answers doesn’t really know very much” (1 Cor 8:1, 2).

To some, this might seem a denial of certainty or hope. But confessing “I don’t know” does not mean we know nothing. Admitting our imperfect knowledge, our fuzzy understanding and our stuttering explanations means we do not have to force our limited knowledge and understandings to answer questions much larger than those for which they are fitted. It is an expression of intellectual, faith-filled honesty and humility that opens us to fresh possibilities.

As Paul suggests, the more we learn, the more we discover we don’t know. But this should not be grounds for either a loss of faith, or discouragement and despair. The vastness and wonder of the world and ways of God are our greatest evidence of who we believe God to be. A God merely like us, understandable by us, managed by us, is ultimately of little use to us. Instead of roadblocks to faith, the challenges of explaining God are the starting points for contemplation.

Drawing on the Jewish tradition of exploring God by intense study of the Scriptures, Rob Bell points out that “the rabbis even say a specific blessing when they don’t understand a portion of the text. When it eludes them, when it makes no sense, they say a word of thanks to God because of the blessing that will be theirs someday. ‘Thank you, God, that at some point in the future, the lights are going to come on for me.'" By doing so, they assume that what they do not know or understand is better than they could guess at or imagine and so are content—for the time being—to trust the goodness of the God they seek.

Of course, such an attitude also has practical significance.  One of the greatest challenges of reaching out to those who are hurting and sorrowing around us is our assumption that we need to be able to answer their inevitable questions. That frightens us—we might be exposed as something less than the confident person of faith we wish we were. But when we are comfortable to say “I don’t know,” we can be simply human together, sharing their pain and grief—becoming agents of hope and healing to them by our presence and openness.

When we recognize that we are able to live by faith, even amid the questions we might try to suppress within ourselves, we realize that others can also live with, learn from and even appreciate our uncertainties. Freed from our assumptions that we have to have it all “nailed down” and “together” as a complete package of faith products to market to those around us, we can be more healthily comfortable in our faith and our faithful interactions with others.

Sometimes, “I don’t know” is the best, most satisfying and honest answer to many of our questions. Indeed, this might be the secret to sustainable faith in a God we will always struggle to comprehend.

Comments

[Sam]

I have to admit, the most ignorant utterance I have ever heard was someone claiming that they knew the absolute truth. Isn't that something that only God can do; and that by claiming to know the absolute truth is actually very blasphemous? I, myself, am very comfortable with the idea that what I believe may not be 100% correct. How could I be? I am only human. I have found that this acknowledgment of the possibility that my thinking may occasionally be erroneous ( "smirk" ) has really enabled me to think outside the box and relate with those that have different ideas of God and of humanity. Thank you Nathan for bringing this idea more to light.