I Asked Why And Got Weather

There is something worse than being given no reason, and a great many people have had it and could not explain why it was worse.

Picture the man in the meeting. He asked for feedback, which is the correct thing to do and which everybody had encouraged him to do.

And he was told that it had been a very strong field, and that the decision had been extremely close, and that the panel had felt the other candidate was slightly better aligned with where the department is heading.

Every word of that is pleasant. Not one word of it is information.

He walked out of that room with exactly as much understanding as he had walked in with, and one extra thing, which is the feeling of having been handled.

Now here is why that is worse than nothing. Silence is a closed door and a person can eventually stop knocking at a closed door. A non answer is a door that is very slightly ajar, and a person will keep pushing at it for months.

He has spent three weeks on the phrase slightly better aligned. He has taken it apart. He has considered whether it means his technical work, or how he comes across, or the thing he said in November. He has constructed four separate theories, and two of them are about his personality, and one of them is about something he cannot change at all.

None of the four is what the panel meant, because the panel almost certainly meant nothing at all. It was a sentence produced to fill a gap in a difficult conversation by somebody who wanted to be kind and had nothing usable to give.

And he has built four theories about his own worth out of a piece of furniture.

The line about secret things

There is a verse in Deuteronomy that draws one of the most useful boundaries in the whole Bible, and it is almost never applied to ordinary life.

The secret things belong unto the LORD our God: but those things which are revealed belong unto us and to our children for ever, that we may do all the words of this law. (Deuteronomy 29:29, King James Version)

Two categories. Secret things, and revealed things. And a line drawn between them with an owner named on each side.

Notice what the verse does not do. It does not explain the secret things. It does not offer a hint about them or promise they will be disclosed later. It simply assigns them elsewhere and then tells the reader to get on with what they do have.

Which is precisely what a man with four theories needs, because the actual reason he was not chosen is, right now, a secret thing. Not a mystery in a grand sense. Just a set of facts inside four other people's heads that he has no access to and will not be given.

You are holding a question that belongs somewhere else, and Deuteronomy 29 assigns the secret things to God and hands you what has actually been revealed (Deuteronomy 29:29), and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes that boundary a relief rather than a frustration.

And notice the second half. What is revealed belongs to us, that we may do. The purpose of having the revealed things is action rather than understanding.

You have been given enough to act on rather than enough to explain everything, and Deuteronomy 29:29 attaches the revealed things to doing rather than to knowing (Deuteronomy 29:29), and the Spirit of God is the one who moves a person from theorizing to Monday.

The question that gets answered with a question

There is a moment at the end of Job that people find difficult, and it is exactly right for a man with four theories.

Job has asked why, repeatedly and legitimately, for thirty seven chapters. And God answers him.

Where wast thou when I laid the foundations of the earth? declare, if thou hast understanding. (Job 38:4)

That is not an explanation. It is a very long series of questions about the natural world, and at no point does God tell Job why any of it happened.

And Job's response afterward is not resentment. He says he has been speaking about things he did not understand, and he stops.

The book does not resolve the question. It resolves the man.

You are held by somebody who did not answer the question either, and Job 38 gives a whole speech without ever explaining the reason (Job 38:4), and it is the Holy Spirit who does for a person what an explanation was never able to do.

And Ecclesiastes says it plainly, in a way that is almost a comfort because it is so blunt.

Then I beheld all the work of God, that a man cannot find out the work that is done under the sun. (Ecclesiastes 8:17)

Cannot find out. Not should not try. Cannot.

You have been told plainly that some of this is not findable, and Ecclesiastes 8 says a man cannot find out the work done under the sun (Ecclesiastes 8:17), and the Spirit of God is the one who lets a person stop searching without it feeling like giving up.

What this is not

Let me be plain, because this could shut down something useful.

This is not saying feedback is worthless. Sometimes it is real and specific and worth acting on, and a person should take that seriously.

It is also not saying he should not have asked. He was right to ask. The asking was correct even though the answer was empty.

And it is not saying the panel were being evasive on purpose. Most of the time they are being kind badly, which is a different thing.

And plainly: if the not knowing has become the kind of thing that runs all night, if you cannot get out of bed, or if some part of you has begun wanting it all to stop, that is bigger than a piece of feedback. Call or text the 988 crisis line, and say the true version out loud to a doctor or a counselor or a pastor you trust. Getting help is not a failure of faith.

You are not being told to stop thinking, and Deuteronomy 29 hands over what is revealed rather than asking anybody to become incurious (Deuteronomy 29:29), and the Holy Spirit is the one who tells a useful question from an unanswerable one.