I don't know

I was meeting with some RCCers the other day just knocking some ideas around, and I mentioned another church had done a series on tough questions. I wanted to play off that with a series on tough answers and headline it with the answer I don't know

That was when a person who just got back from a sales training seminar told me that I don't know is not an answer they are ever supposed to give to potential clients. Since I believe all truth is God's truth I have been giving that statement a lot of thought and I just don't agree with it.

Saying I don't know and leaving it at that would be bad in a business situation. But adding but I'll look into it and get back to you is a response I have given countless times in my career as a software engineer, and I believe people appreciate the honesty of the response.

In the church world, I think the response I don't know has a ton more value. If we could explain all the mysteries of God, isn't that making Him too small? If there is an answer to everything we can think of about God doesn't that diminish Him? It's the mysteries of God that continue to astound me and keep me looking for the next. The fact that bumblebees can fly. The vastness of nature and the delicate balance that keeps it all functioning. The miracle of a single seed growing into an entire plant that not only feeds my family but makes hundreds more seeds never ceases to provoke a response in me.

Some people worry about the hard questions we ask of God, but I think sometimes the hardest isn't a question, but rather the answer I don't know. We like to have things tied up in a bow. We like periods at the end of sentences and we hate the last page of a book missing, so having mysteries of God can be discomfiting at times, but I believe it is an important part of who He is and who we worship.