I Qualify It Into Nothing

Wade has told it four times in nine years and by the end of each telling there was nothing left standing.

The thing happened. He prayed about something specific, on a specific night, and it went a specific way, and the timing was such that he sat down afterwards.

And every time he has tried to tell it, this is what comes out.

He starts. He gets about two sentences in. And then he begins adding: it might have gone that way anyway, and I am not saying it was anything, and there was a lot going on at the time, and the doctors had said it was possible, and by the time he has finished, the person listening has been carefully talked out of the thing he opened his mouth to say.

He does it every time. He has heard himself do it. Twice he has stopped in the middle and started again, and the second run has more qualifications than the first.

He is fifty-eight.

And what he told himself for years was that this is honesty, and there is something in that; he is not a man who overstates and he has watched other people overstate and it made him uncomfortable.

But nine years and four attempts is not honesty operating. Honesty would produce an accurate account, and an accurate account of that night would include the timing, and the timing is the one thing that never survives to the end of a telling.

He is not being accurate. He is being safe.

You may know the four attempts.

Maybe you also have something that happened. Maybe you have also heard yourself dismantle it on the way out. And maybe you have also called that honesty and half meant it.

Four words with nothing hedged in them

There is a line at the top of Psalm 107 that is short and that contains no qualifications whatever.

Let the redeemed of the LORD say so, whom he hath redeemed from the hand of the enemy.Psalm 107:2

Say so.

Two words. Not: say so with appropriate caveats. Not: say so if you are sure. Not: say so in a way that leaves the listener free to conclude otherwise.

And notice who is asked. The redeemed of the LORD. Not the confident. Not the theologically careful. People who have had something done for them are asked to say that it was done, and the psalm does not add a single hedging clause to the instruction.

The rest of that psalm is a series of accounts. People in trouble, people who cried out, people who were brought out. Four times over it repeats a line about giving thanks, and it does not attach a disclaimer to any of the four.

And you are permitted to say the plain version. The written word gives the instruction as say so with no hedging attached anywhere in the sentence, and it is the Holy Spirit and not my paragraph who makes that reach a man who has dismantled the same story four times.

And you are not required to leave the listener a way out. The word asks the redeemed to say what happened rather than to present a balanced case, and the Spirit bears witness with your spirit rather than requiring you to argue it.

What the qualifying protects

Now let me name what the clauses are actually for, because it is not honesty and I think you have suspected that.

They protect you from being the man who claimed something.

If you tell it plainly and the listener is unconvinced, you are a man who has just made a claim that did not land, and there is nothing worse for a person of your temperament. So you build the exits in advance. Every qualification is a door you leave open so that if the room does not go with you, you were never really saying it.

That is not dishonesty and it is not cowardice exactly. It is a man managing his own exposure, and he is doing it so fast and so habitually that he cannot hear it as anything other than accuracy.

And the cost is that four people over nine years have been handed a story with its own refutation attached, which means the thing you actually wanted to tell them has never once been in the room.

And you are not being asked to prove anything when you say it. The word says say so, which is testimony rather than argument, and the Spirit is the one who makes the difference between reporting and persuading real to a man who has been doing the second while calling it the first.

And nothing about you is under review for nine years of hedging. The word says there is now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus, and the Spirit supplies that to a man who has heard himself do it and could not stop.

What accurate would actually be

One practical thing, because I do not want you to swing the other way by Friday.

Accurate is not the same as unqualified, and I am not asking you to overstate.

Accurate would be: this is what I prayed, this is what happened, this is when it happened, and I do not know what to make of it.

That last clause is an honest one. It is a very different object from it might have gone that way anyway, which is not a report of your uncertainty but an argument against your own account, offered pre-emptively on the listener's behalf.

One of those leaves the facts standing and admits you cannot interpret them. The other removes the facts.

And you are able to report a thing and leave the interpreting alone. The word asks the redeemed to say so and never asks them to explain the mechanism, and the Spirit is the one who separates telling from arguing in a man who has never had them separated.