Theology With Our Hands Over Our Mouth

Knowing your Bible does not guarantee clarity on every issue. In fact, it often produces a God-given ambiguity about the things God has not fully revealed (and there are a lot of them).

Just because God speaks on something does not mean He speaks as clearly and exhaustively as we prefer, or with the kind of precision we might want. “The secret things belong to the Lord our God, but the things that are revealed belong to us and to our children forever” (Deuteronomy 29:29).

There are truths meant for our comfort and hope—“that we through patience and comfort of the scriptures might have hope” (Romans 15:4)—but there are also mysteries meant to remain mysteries. To leave a mystery alone is a godly act. To pretend you’ve solved what God has not fully disclosed is an ungodly act.

Be careful not to act as if you know more than you do. Knowing your Bible means handling God’s Word with humility, precision, fear, and restraint.

Theologically, we are often more like Job’s friends—and even Job himself before he met God—than we would like to admit. We feel the need to explain everything, to resolve every tension, and to speak with certainty where God has not. Job’s friends were not speaking nonsense; they were using real theological categories. But they forced those categories onto a situation that required humility, not certainty. And Job himself, though more righteous than they, reached a point where he demanded answers, as if he were owed them.

But when God finally speaks (Job 40–42), He does not give Job the explanation he was seeking. He gives him Himself. And that is enough to bring Job to silence: “Behold, I am of small account; what shall I answer You? I lay my hand on my mouth” (Job 40:4).

In Acts 1, the apostles ask, “Lord, will You at this time restore the kingdom to Israel?” He said to them, “It is not for you to know times or seasons that the Father has fixed by His own authority” (Acts 1:6–7).

In other words: you don’t know, you won’t know—trust Him. Let’s let our posture mirror Job’s. When he presumed upon God for what he should be told, he ended with his hand over his mouth. Maybe we should be more willing to do the same.

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I am not saying that we start with apophatic theology (theology of mystery or negation). I still believe very strongly that we start with cataphatic theology (theology of revelation). God has truly revealed Himself, and what He has revealed is clear, trustworthy, and sufficient for faith and life. But when we stand before an infinite God who works in often confusing ways, we should be ready to assume Job’s posture when necessary.

We don’t know everything—but we do know what God has made known. We are not that smart, but we are not left in the dark either. There is no need to be insecure in our ignorance when our ignorance is intentional. That is the great thing about our God—we really can trust Him.

I am not saying that we should be ignorant of the times. When bad weather comes, we should respond. But let’s not overreact.

I’m simply pushing back against a real problem: the assumption that deeper Bible knowledge equals certainty on everything. Scripture itself does not support that assumption.