Everyone Else Already Knows This

You have been operating on inference since the second week.

That is what it is. Nobody has explained anything, so you have been watching what other people do and reverse engineering the rules from their behavior, and you have got quite good at it.

You know roughly what is expected. You have worked out most of the vocabulary. There are four or five things you are still not sure about, and you have developed workarounds for all of them, and the workarounds cost about twenty minutes a day.

And every one of those things could be settled by asking somebody a question that would take them eleven seconds to answer.

You have not asked one of them. Six weeks now.

Here is what is actually stopping you, and it is worth naming precisely, because the reason is not shyness.

Everybody in that room looks like they already know. And the moment somebody asks a basic question out loud, that person becomes the one who did not know, in a room where everybody else apparently did, and there is no way back from that.

That is the calculation. And it is a completely reasonable calculation based on the evidence available to you, and it is wrong, and I want to show you exactly where.

He giveth and upbraideth not

There is a verse in James about asking for what you do not have, and there is a clause in it that most people read straight past.

If any of you lack wisdom, let him ask of God, that giveth to all men liberally, and upbraideth not; and it shall be given him. (James 1:5, King James Version)

Upbraideth not.

That is an old word and it means: does not scold, does not reproach, does not make a point of the fact that you had to ask. And it is in that sentence for a reason, and the reason is that God knew exactly what would stop somebody.

It is not the asking. It is the anticipated face afterward.

You are being met by somebody who does not do the face, and a basic question has never once been received in heaven with a scold attached. James 1:5 puts the upbraideth not into the promise itself, and the Holy Spirit is the one in a courtyard with somebody who has been inferring since week two.

And notice what is being asked for. Wisdom. Not a small thing, not a practical detail, the whole of the thing a person is short of.

And the verse assumes the shortage without comment. If any of you lack. Stated plainly, as a normal condition, in a letter to people who were presumably meant to be fairly advanced by then.

You are permitted the lack and offered the filling of it, and a person who is short of something has never once been asked to be embarrassed about it first. The written word states the shortage as an ordinary condition and moves straight to the remedy, and the Spirit of God is the one who removes the anticipated face from the front of a question.

Where the calculation is wrong

Now let me show where the reasoning breaks, because reasoning will land better here than reassurance. The inference is that they know, and the only evidence for it is that they are not asking.

That is the whole of the evidence. Nobody in that room has ever said the thing that is unclear. Nobody has demonstrated knowing it. What they have done is not asked, and not asking has been read as knowing.

But one person in that room is also not asking. And that person does not know.

Which means the behavior being read as evidence of knowledge is exhibited, right now, by at least one person in that room who does not have it.

You are looking at a behavior that proves nothing at all, and a roomful of people who are not asking has never once been a roomful of people who know. The Holy Spirit is the one who takes apart a piece of reasoning that has run since the second week, and James 1:5 states the lack as an ordinary condition and moves straight to the remedy.

You are treating a silence as a report, and a room where nobody is asking has never once been a room where everybody knows. James 1:5 puts the asking at the front and the receiving at the end with no assessment in between, and the Holy Spirit is the one who takes apart a piece of reasoning that has run for six weeks.

And here is the second thing, which is what actually happens when somebody asks.

The relief in a room when one person asks a basic question is one of the most reliable things in human life. Two or three other people lean in slightly. Somebody says, actually I was not sure about that either. The person answering enjoys answering, because being the one who knows a thing is a pleasant experience and it is being handed to them.

The person who asks is not marked. The person who asks is quietly thanked by everybody who was also inferring.

Not knowing something is not a verdict on a person.

You are able to be the one who asks and find out what a room actually does, and one basic question has never once made anybody the person who did not know. James 1:5 attaches the giving to the asking with nothing in between them, and the Spirit of God is the one present in the four seconds after somebody finally says it out loud.

Ask it with no sorry in front of it

So here is the thing to do, and the condition on it is the whole instruction.

Ask the most basic question on your list, out loud, to one person. And do not put the word sorry in front of it.

The question, plainly. Not: sorry, this is probably a stupid question. Not: you probably know this already, but. Not: I might have missed this somewhere.

Every one of those is an apology, and an apology in front of a question tells the room that the asking was an imposition, and it installs the exact thing you are afraid of, in advance, by your own hand.

You are able to ask without apologizing for asking, and a question with no sorry in front of it has never once sounded like an imposition on anybody. The Holy Spirit is the one standing beside somebody who asks a plain question in a plain voice, and it is written in James 1:5 that God giveth liberally and upbraideth not.

Just the question. How does this actually work. What is that. When is that supposed to happen.

And to one person rather than to a room, if the room is what is frightening. In a corridor, walking somewhere, at the end of something else. Same question, smaller audience, and the smaller audience makes it possible today rather than eventually.

You are able to make it possible today by choosing the audience, and one person in a corridor has never once been a lesser place to ask than a room. Scripture offers the giving liberally, which is a word about the manner rather than the amount, and the same Spirit who kept that clause in the verse is beside you in the corridor.