One of the first times I went to Sunday school, it was a random visit. I’d never been, and as I joined a few other pre-teens around a small table, someone handed me a Bible. I’d never read the Bible before that point, and I don’t remember what we read or what anyone said that morning. I can’t remember a single word. All I remember was not knowing how to find the book and verses we were supposed to turn to. What I remember most was how it felt to not know what was going on.

I never went back to Sunday school after that, even when my family sporadically attended that church during the time we lived nearby.

Years later, I would still carry that feeling around, even after becoming a follower of Jesus, even after becoming more familiar with faith communities and how to navigate the Bible. After all those years, I was still afraid of being found out — that everyone would discover how much I still didn’t know. Despite how committed I was to Jesus, and how much I thought I knew that Jesus loved me, I was afraid of other Christians and what they knew that I didn’t.

I was afraid of all the invisible lines I often felt in Christian circles – and the inside jokes I still didn’t understand.

It’s been decades since then, and in that time, I’ve worked in vocational ministry and left vocational ministry. I’ve been part of a handful of churches near and far from where I call home today. I know most of the things I didn’t understand all those years ago, but I never want to forget what it felt like to sweat in my seat and feel small, clueless, and so far on the outside. In fact, sometimes I look back and see a sweetness to that unknowing. I was so ready to know Jesus’s love; I had no idea then that receiving Jesus’s love had nothing to do with how many Bible verses or inside jokes I knew, or what issues of the day I was supposed to be on one side of instead of the other.

Knowing what it feels like to be on the outside has given me an incredible guide to hospitality – more than any Bible study, event, or ministry ever could.

Not knowing much about how to be a Christian has helped me receive and rely on Jesus’s love in a way that “knowing it all” never could. Sometimes “knowing it all” can be a barrier to Jesus’s love.

In our age of non-stop information, the temptation to know all the things and profess what we know is heavy. I feel a constant pull towards this posture and I see it everywhere I turn, from my own family’s dinner table conversations to conversations in the larger community I live in.

What would it look like to model “not knowing?” What would it look like to relate to others while always keeping Maya Angelou’s wise words in mind, “I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel”?

In a culture obsessed with how-tos and telling others what to do, and in a society obsessed with accolades, levels, awards, and markers of “intelligence,” what would it look like if we lived with deep concern and care for how we made others feel, instead of concern over what we know and who knows more? How could that posture change the atmosphere around our dinner tables, in our classrooms, at the office, on Zoom screens, or in our churches and neighborhoods?

May it be so in my life and yours!

These days, I try to say “I don’t know” as often as I can. And I’ve been praying, “I don’t know” about an ongoing challenge for some time now. And while sometimes I’m bone-weary and angry about it and wish God would show up and answer so I could know why and how and what to do… I’ve been given comfort and presence and room for faith to stretch and grow in God’s nearness in a way that quick solutions and answers could not offer me.

For the longest time, I would look back on that first Sunday school experience and think, “If only I’d known more about the Bible,” or, “If only my parents (or fill in the blank) had explained more or prepared me better, then I wouldn’t have felt so embarrassed or alone in not knowing.” I would focus on how it could’ve been different and how I could’ve blended in better, instead of seeing what not knowing had given me.

Now I know how much of a treasure and compassion-builder it can be to say and pray, “I don’t know.”

I love Jesus’s words to the disciples who were arguing about who was the greatest in the Kingdom of God:

“At about the same time, the disciples came to Jesus asking, “Who gets the highest rank in God’s kingdom?”

For an answer Jesus called over a child, whom he stood in the middle of the room, and said, “I’m telling you, once and for all, that unless you return to square one and start over like children, you’re not even going to get a look at the kingdom, let alone get in. Whoever becomes simple and elemental again, like this child, will rank high in God’s kingdom. What’s more, when you receive the childlike on my account, it’s the same as receiving me.”
Matthew 18:1-5 The Message

Not knowing might be hard and it can be incredibly lonely. It might also be just the teacher that shows us how to love deeply and how to recognize the face of Love itself.

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