Charismatics Need to Get Better at Saying “I Don’t Know”

I am on sabbatical, so this isn’t work.

I am sitting in Starbucks reading Numbers 21, and I get to this poem:

Numbers 21:27–30 (NASB 2020)

27 For that reason those who use proverbs say,
“Come to Heshbon! Let it be built!
So let the city of Sihon be established….

And I say to myself, what does, “those who use proverbs” mean?

I read the Bible a lot, but I read commentaries almost as much. After decades of reading the Bible without any scholarly training, there is a great joy in finally being able to tap into 2,000 years of scholarly work.

So I fired up Logos and went to my go-to NICOT commentary, and the first line is:

“These verses are difficult and ambiguous. Scholars have not been able to agree whether this poem or song is Amorite or Israelite, and when and for what purpose it was written.”1

Of course, the commentary goes on in great detail about the prevailing opinions on the text, but the point remains: we don’t absolutely know.

And I love that.

Divine Downloads

In the Charismatic world, the remedy for not understanding a passage of the Bible is often to pray and ask God. The thinking goes, “Since the Author of the text is there with you, He will reveal the real meaning.”

Only, there is a chance that might produce useful application but almost never produces faithful interpretation.

And here is the real problem.

In my tribe, not knowing something somehow reveals a spiritual deficit. It communicates an inability to hear God, receive revelation, get answers, or understand deep mysteries. There is enormous pressure to have an answer.

I think that is part of why there is so much pressure for ministers to just make stuff up and call it prophecy.

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A More Faithful Way

We have created environments where saying “I don’t know” can cost you credibility, while confidently saying something you cannot possibly know can increase it.

The more access I have had to serious scholarship, the more aware I have become of how much there is to know. So I am not making excuses for people not to learn. And I certainly need to learn more than most.

But there is an absolute joy in telling people, “I don’t know,” especially on issues that don’t really matter in the end.

I normally don’t have any problem having an opinion on everything, but I want those to be informed opinions. And I am learning to distinguish between what I know, what I think, and what I simply do not know.

Those are three very different things.

There are things Scripture says clearly. There are things where I think one interpretation makes better sense than another. And then there are poems in Numbers where people who have spent their lives studying the Old Testament tell me, “We’re not completely sure.”

I find that incredibly freeing.

If truth actually matters to us, then we should care about the difference between what is true and what we merely want to sound certain about.

And I am learning that real spiritual maturity is not having an answer for everything but doing all you can to understand while leaving room for divine mystery.