They Explained It Afterwards

Kalani had about four months of it being a wonder and then somebody explained it and he has not known where to put it since.

The explanation is good. That is what makes this difficult rather than simple. It is not a stretch and it is not somebody being determined to explain things away; it is a genuine, sensible account of how the thing could have happened by ordinary means, offered by a person who was not trying to take anything from him and who did not know what those four months had been.

And it fits. Kalani has checked it, more than once, and it fits.

So now he has a thing that happened, and a mechanism for how it happened, and he has spent two years unable to work out whether the second one cancels the first.

What he notices, and does not like, is that he has stopped telling it. Not because he thinks it was nothing. Because the story now requires an appendix, and a story with an appendix is not a story, and after two attempts he simply stopped.

He is forty-five.

And underneath there is a question he cannot get to the bottom of, which is whether a thing with an explanation is smaller than a thing without one, and whether he was only glad for four months because he did not yet know how it worked.

You may know that appendix.

Maybe somebody explained yours too. Maybe the explanation was good. And maybe you have not been able to work out since whether anything was taken.

The man who would not argue about mechanism

There is a chapter in John where a man who had been blind is interrogated at length, repeatedly, by people who want to establish how it happened and who was responsible and whether it counts.

He is asked the same things over and over. His parents are brought in. He is pressed on the theology.

And at the point where he has clearly had enough, he says this.

He answered and said, Whether he be a sinner or no, I know not: one thing I know, that, whereas I was blind, now I see.John 9:25

One thing I know.

He declines the entire argument. He does not defend a mechanism, he does not claim to know things he does not know, and he does not let the unresolved question about categories touch the one item he actually possesses.

And notice what he concedes. Quite a lot. I know not is in that sentence and he says it without embarrassment.

What he does not concede is the fact.

Which is precisely the move that has not been available to you for two years, because you have been treating the explanation as an argument you have to win or lose, and it is not one. It is an account of mechanism, and mechanism was never the thing you had.

And the thing that happened is still what happened. The written word has a man concede everything about mechanism and categories and hold the one item, and it is the Holy Spirit and not my paragraph who makes that reach a man who has been unable to file something for two years.

And you are not required to defend a mechanism to keep an account. The word puts I know not and one thing I know in the same sentence without contradiction, and the Spirit bears witness with your spirit rather than requiring you to win an argument about how.

Whether an explained thing is smaller

Now the question underneath, because you deserve it taken seriously rather than deflected.

Is a thing with an explanation smaller than a thing without one?

Here is what I would put to you. Every single event in the world has a mechanism. The ones we call ordinary have known mechanisms and the ones we call remarkable have mechanisms we have not identified yet, and the difference between those two categories is a fact about human knowledge rather than about the events.

Which means that if explained equals smaller, then everything shrinks as we learn more, and the amount of God available to a person is a function of how ignorant they are.

Nobody believes that when it is stated plainly. It is only believable while it stays unstated, which is where it has been living in you for two years.

And notice that the four months were not based on ignorance. You were glad because of what happened and when it happened, and neither of those changed in the fourth month. What changed was that you acquired a description of the middle.

And He works through the ordinary and that has never made it less His. The word says of Him that in Him we live, and move, and have our being, which puts Him inside the ordinary rather than in the gaps between explanations, and the Spirit is the one who makes that steady rather than diminishing.

And nothing about you is under review for two years of not knowing where to put it. The word says there is now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus, and the Spirit supplies that to a man who checked an explanation more than once because he was being honest.

The appendix

One practical note, about the telling.

You are right that a story with an appendix is not a story. That is a real observation about how accounts work.

But the appendix is only necessary if you are claiming the mechanism. If the claim is this happened, and here is when, and I do not know what to make of it, there is nothing for an appendix to correct, and the explanation somebody offers later is simply additional information about a middle you never claimed.

The man in John did not tell it with an appendix. He told the fact and refused the rest, and he did it in front of people who were considerably more hostile than whoever explained yours.

And you are able to tell the fact without claiming the middle. The word has him state what he knows and decline what he does not in one breath, and the Spirit is the one who makes that a usable form rather than a clever one.