Nobody Here But Us Paralytics - How I recently discovered a new way to look at grace.

Lately, whenever I feel like a failure for missing my (self-imposed) weblog deadlines, I tend to think of posts on the subject of grace. If it's a pattern, I've only just now begun to realize it.

Patterns are fun, right? I get pretty psyched about palindromes and finding abecedarian words. But I've never taken the time to look back through my now 150 posts to see if there are any long-running themes to The Press.

Do you know how many times I think I've written a post before, but don't take the time to confirm my suspicions? I'm on a tight schedule most days. I'm busy. Or my wife wants me to watch Battlestar Galactica with her.

If I were to look back through my posts, I wonder how many of them would have comparisons of how I understood the Bible as a kid and how I understand it now. Having read the Bible a few times already, I became familiar with many of the passages. While that's sort of a goal in reading the Bible, I also find it's easy to skim over the familiar parts because I don't think I need to learn the same thing twice.

But then, if I take the time, I always learn something new in the familiar. This time it happened while I read the story of Jesus healing a paralytic man in Luke 5:17-26.

A large crowd had gathered around a house where Jesus taught and healed people. "And behold, some men were bringing on a bed a man who was paralyzed, and they were seeking to bring him in and lay him before Jesus, but finding no way to bring him in because of the crowd, they went up on the roof and let him down with his bed through the tiles into the midst before Jesus. And when he saw their faith, he said, "Man, your sins are forgiven you." Then Jesus heals the guy. The dude carries his own bed (I imagine it was more like a rug I slept on for a few months) out of the meeting.

Now this is interesting. Jesus forgave the sins of the man and healed him. But this could give you a theological headache if you think about it. What did this guy do to receive either forgiveness or healing? Did he pray a certain prayer of repentance? Did he even ask for healing? Based on the text, it looks like they just wanted to be near Jesus.

Here's my new reason for loving this story. The guy couldn't do anything for himself. He was completely helpless. Just like me. By forgiving and healing this man, Jesus gives an amazing demonstration of grace.

Now I'm sure there's more to this story, more lessons, more ways to understand my relationship with Jesus. I expect this story will get more interesting the more familiar I become with it.

"What Made You Want To Worship God?" - Part two of Questions From the Lifehouse Youth Group

My wife, Chelsea, used to manage a coffee shop in Franklin. Before she left for her new job, she hired a sixteen year old girl who lives near the shop. During her first training shift, the girl said she was interested in learning more about Jesus. This sort of stunned Chelsea because they had only just finished going over how to make Gelato. Nobody handed anyone else a wordless book. Chelsea encouraged her to keep asking questions and invited her to church one week.

After a few visits to Sunday services and Youth Group meetings, Chelsea invited the girl to our house to hang out. When they arrived at our house, Chelsea excused herself into the other room. I think I was writing a weblog post at the time, not really paying attention to the teenager I had just greeted. The girl sat down on the other end of our couch and asked, "So what made you go from believing God exists to wanting to worship Him?" I'm not sure she realized I was wearing headphones, so I had to ask her to repeat herself.

"What made you go from believing God exists to wanting to worship Him?"

Having had no time to think about it, I started rambling about the time I began taking Him seriously in prayer and study. Ugh, forty-five minutes of frantic storytelling about stuff that didn't much answer her question. While prayer and study did have something to do with my conversion experience, the simple answer could have been, "When I understood that God is more than real, He's active."

The Civil War was real. Long Division is real. But either those things are either history or they require you to do all the work yourself. In the past, I might have compared my faith to long division. It existed before I did, it's more complicated than I think it is, and it does me no good unless I make it work for me. Like that moral to Aesop's Fable which some people confuse with a Bible verse, "God helps those who help themselves".

The truth is, God moves when He wants and how He wants. Yes, an answer to prayer does mean that I pray first. And learning something from the Bible means I have to read it first. But I also think God created a desire in me to talk to Him and study His word. Besides, He's moved in my life and the lives of people in my family without anyone even thinking to ask. When he rescued my brother from a life of total destruction, when he healed me of a decade long dairy allergy, when he gave my parents the idea to listen when we prayed together as a family, He showed Himself alive and at work.

Realizing God was more than a story or a specter to fear if I misbehaved made me look at Him in a completely different way. He became bigger, wiser, more gracious, and so on. I began to see myself as more selfish, foolish, and bad-tempered. Verses in Psalms began to make more sense. "What is man that you take thought of him, and the son of man that you care for him?" (Psalm 8:4) " O Lord, what is man, that you take knowledge of him? Or the son of man, that you think of him?"


And yet God sent Jesus to bear the burden of our punishment. He doesn't need me, but He still decided to rescue me and adopt me into His family.

That's why I want to worship Him.

On the Outpouring of the Holy Spirit.

Remember a few months ago when I lamented the end of my Systematic Theology group? Well it's back. Whereas most of these studies would start with things like scriptural authority or the character of God, we decided to start with the Holy Spirit. We have our reasons.

Since summer began, my church has seen the Holy Spirit move in greater power through miracles and spiritual gifts. People have learned how to hear the voice of the Holy Spirit and respond in obedience. Others have been healed of long-term, debilitating pains. Two people had their legs instantaneously grow during prayer, eliminating their back pain. At one Thursday night meeting downtown, the Holy Spirit showed up and kept us in worship and prayer the whole evening.

Naturally, some people have had questions. A woman at work asked me about my church and the Systematic Theology group. I told her that our theology is reformed, but we have charismatic expressions during worship. When she asked me to explain what I meant by "charismatic expression", I talked about the Holy Spirit working through people, speaking to us, healing people, and so on. She asked me if we believed in the Bible. I assured her we do. As I walked away, she spoke to the woman next to her, "I don't know about that sort of thing. I think it's dangerous."

I'd like to take this moment to assure you, the Holy Spirit is not "safe" in the way some Bible teachers might portray Him. He operates outside of our control and it scares many to see Him move beyond comfortable perimeters. Consider this story in Numbers 11:24-29.

"So Moses went out and told the people the words of the Lord. Also, he gathered seventy men of the elders of the people, and stationed them around the tent. Then the Lord came down in the cloud and spoke to him; and He took of the Spirit who was upon him and placed Him upon the seventy elders. And when the Spirit rested upon them, they prophesied. But they did not do it again.

"But two men had remained in the camp; the name of one was Eldad and the name of the other Medad. And the Spirit rested upon them (now they were among those who had been registered, but had not gone out to the tent), and they prophesied in the camp. So a young man ran and told Moses and said, 'Eldad and Medad are prophesying in the camp.' Then Joshua the son of Nun, the attendant of Moses from his youth, said, 'Moses, my lord, restrain them.' But Moses said to him, 'Are you jealous for my sake? Would that all the Lord's people were prophets, that the Lord would put His Spirit upon them!'"

The Spirit of God supposedly only resided in the Tent of Meeting, where Moses and the priests went into His presence. So when the Spirit came upon two people in the camp outside of the church, away from the pastors' conference, it caused a stir. Moses, in humility, recognized that God wanted to put His Spirit on more than the accepted leadership. He wants to move in His people, the church.

Joel prophesied of a time when the Spirit would move as Moses wished. Joel 2:28-29 reads, "It will come about after this that I will pour out My Spirit on all mankind; and your sons and daughters will prophesy, your old men will dream dreams, your young men will see visions. Even on the male and female servants I will pour out My Spirit in those days."

Peter referred to this prophecy saying that God had begun its fulfillment in Acts 2:16-21. But this promise was not for a chosen few. Rather, for all mankind. This goes beyond God only using the Apostles, or the seventy who followed Jesus, or any other kind of restrictive explanation given by spooked theologians. Even as Paul taught the Corinthian church on how to use and recognize spiritual gifts (including the gift of miracles), he said in 1 Corinthians 14 to "desire earnestly spiritual gifts, but especially that you may prophesy." This echoes Moses's hope that all God's people would have His Spirit upon them.

There are many passages where Paul teaches on spiritual gifts (1 Corinthians 12-14 and Ephesians 4:11-12) and acknowledges Holy Spirit activity in other churches (Galatians 3:5). A good portion of the book of Acts details how the church interacted with the Holy Spirit and the miraculous. I think it's important to remember that God inspired the authors to write these things in the Bible. Why would He do this? To convince those already saved in the church or to teach us how to use the gifts to glorify Him?

When the Holy Spirit moves in the church, it won't be for the glory of a man, a particular church, or even an experience. Jesus is alive and at work in the church. The miraculous testifies to those outside of the church and draws them closer to saving faith, so they glorify God. The miraculous also testifies to the church and continues to build our faith, so we also glorify God. And that's the point. We must glorify God in everything.

A Working Faith

Even though I write about my life as a Christian, I spent a good deal of my life detesting books listed under “Christian Living”. The books I would take off of my dad’s shelf sometimes had phrases like “living by faith” or “taking steps of faith” or “developing faith”. There are certain phrases that I had heard enough Bible teachers say without ever explaining what they meant, eventually my mind would pass over the topic whenever I encountered it. So I could never explain “faith” whenever my friends outside of the church ever asked me about my faith. The word had meaning the same way that “glory” has meaning in some churches. They know it means something, and that it has to do with God, but they stutter whenever you ask them to define their terms.

I’ve begun to see the importance of defining terms. I recently told a story about a man challenging me on how I used the words “belief” and “faith” interchangeably. It took me months before I could understand the difference. I felt a certain satisfaction in finally understanding a word that I had used hundreds of thousands of times in ignorance while unknowingly (or secretly) hoping that listeners would understand.

Think about this in your own life. How many times have people asked you to explain or define faith and you find your mouth hanging open absolutely puzzled? And how about this brain bender: if we’re saved by grace and not by works, then why does the Bible say that faith without works is dead? Like a college essay question, I used to BS my way through the whole thing.

As I write this, I am sitting in the lower level of the library at Belmont University. They’ve hidden all of the theology, religion, and philosophy books in the depths of the building behind inconspicuous doors marked “Not An Exit”. Not many of my friends on campus are even aware of this place, which means it’s really quiet. I’ve been coming here nearly every day since last week to study and write. But today, for some reason, I’m unable to use my usual online study guides. I think maybe the shadowy lords of Belmont Wi-Fi have figured out that I’m not a paying student. All of this to say that I will be using the Complete Jewish Bible for my scripture references. For the sake of the reader, though, I’ll use the glossary to translate names and words that might not be familiar. I just made you read this whole paragraph to make that one point. Now, moving on…

Here are a few things Paul states in Romans 10. In verses 9 and 11, he says, “that if you acknowledge publicly with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and trust in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be delivered.” Then, “For the passage quoted says that everyone who rests his trust on him will not be humiliated (referring to Isaiah 28:16).” If you read this in other translations, note how the Hebrew translation uses the word “trust” for “faith”. Many people have heard what Paul says a few verses later how faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God (Romans 10:17).

Hebrews 11:6 says, “without trusting, it is impossible to be well pleasing to God, because whoever approaches him must trust that he does exist and that he becomes a Rewarder of those who seek him out.” To restate my definition of terms, “belief” is mentally ascribing yourself to something. My belief rests on the truth that I find in the Bible. I demonstrate this when I tell people that the Bible is absolutely true. “Faith” is acting upon the truth to which I have mentally and verbally given myself. This is why the Bible can say, “believe in the Lord Jesus and you will be saved” and that a public acknowledgement of Jesus as the risen Lord delivers us.

But “faith” is something else. Faith takes the truth of the Bible and stirs a real change in our day-to-day lives. That means we have to act as if we really believe ourselves when we say that the whole Bible is true. I mean, to say we believe it and live as if we don’t places us in a frustrating situation. That’s why James says faith without works is dead. Without evidence of some change by the power of the Holy Spirit in our lives, a person who claims belief in the Bible speaks empty words.

So if living by faith, as a Christian, means living in moment-to-moment reality trusting that the whole Bible is true today, this presents a question of responsibility to believers. Hebrews 11:6 made it clear that it is impossible to please God outside of faith. If faith means that we have to base our actions on what we read in the Bible (Romans 10:17 again), then doesn’t that mean it would be sin for us to read something in the scripture and not apply that to our everyday lives? If I make a decision about a situation on my own wisdom apart from the Bible, am I not basically saying that I don’t need God to figure it out? Isn’t that ethically living outside of faith? Isn’t that sin?

Now what if we could depend on the Bible as truth, that it does apply in reality today? Let’s look at a few verses. Matthew 10:1, “Jesus called his twelve disciples and gave them authority to drive out unclean spirits and to heal every kind of disease and weakness.” And what about the redemptive work of salvation? Because Jesus came to earth, lived, died, rose again, and ascended into heaven, those who trust in this have great promises. Not only will their sins be forgiven, but according to Isaiah 53:5 and Psalm 103:3 says that salvation brings physical healing. James 5:14-15 says, “Is someone among you ill? He should call for the elders of the congregation. They will pray for him and rub olive oil on him in the name of the Lord. The prayer offered with trust will heal the one who is ill – the Lord will restore his health; and if he has committed sins, he will be forgiven.” Notice also how salvation refers to sin and sickness each time. That happens a lot in the Bible. I think it’s safe to say that salvation and healing are not two separate things.

Beyond healing miracles, what about simply hearing the voice of the Holy Spirit? Isaiah 30:21 says, “With your ears you will hear a word from behind you: ‘This is the way; stay on it, whether you go to the right or the left.’” John 16:13, “However, when the Spirit of Truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth; for he will not speak on his own initiative but will say only what he hears. He will also announce to you the events of the future.” That last part refers to prophecy. Paul talks at length about this and other gifts of the spirit in 1 Corinthians 12-14. And for you dispensationalists out there, was Paul writing about this for the benefit of the exclusively gifted apostles, or to a church of former pagans that needed to understand a reality that God had shown of himself?

Healing the sick, casting out demons, raising the dead, prophesying, speaking in languages unknown to the speaker, a personal and verbal (even if unspoken) relationship with the Holy Spirit. I mean, even going out preaching the gospel, baptizing people, and discipling them. The Bible instructs people to do that stuff. If you say that you believe the whole Bible, are you willing to read it and trust that God will enable you to do it? Remember that only God makes us able to live by faith. But when we resist Him, what does that say about our belief in the Bible? I won’t demand that you answer for this, but I can tell you that one day you will have to give an answer, just like I will have to give an answer.

I’ll leave you with this, though, in hopes that you won’t be all bummed out at the end. There’s a reason I quoted Romans 10:11. If you do put your trust in God and live it, you won’t be humiliated. Well, that doesn’t guarantee you won’t be embarrassed sometimes. But God has stated the truth of the Bible and called us to live accordingly so that He will be glorified. Believers are a part of His plan to reveal Himself to the world because we demonstrate the reality of who He is in our lives. That’s the way He set it up. So when we live based on our trust in the Bible, we get to be a part of what He’s already going to do.

Remember the Sabbath and Keep It Holy, or some Gentile thoughts on the nature of rest.

Sometimes while reading the Bible, I’ll start laughing because I put myself into the story. Like here in John 5:2-17, I’ll insert my commentary throughout the passage.

Now there is in Jerusalem by the sheep gate a pool, which is called in Hebrew Bethesda, having five porticoes.
What’s a portico?
In these lay a multitude of those who were sick, blind, lame, and withered, [waiting for the moving of the waters; for an angel of the Lord went down at certain seasons into the pool and stirred up the water; whoever then first, after the stirring up of the water, stepped in was made well from whatever disease with which he was afflicted.] A man was there who had been ill for thirty-eight years.
Drag.
When Jesus saw him lying there, and knew that he had already been a long time in that condition, He said to him, “Do you wish to get well?” The sick man answered Him, “Sir, I have no man to put me into the pool when the water is stirred up, but while I am coming, another steps down before me.”
No, He asked if you wanted to be healed, man.
Jesus said to him, “Get up, pick up your pallet and walk.” Immediately the man became well, and picked up his pallet and began to walk.
A drag no more.
Now it was the Sabbath on that day. So the Jews were saying to the man who was cured, “It is the Sabbath, and it is not permissible for you to carry your pallet.”
If Jesus knew that this guy had been lame for years, didn’t the locals notice the miracle? What a bunch of kill-joys.
But he answered them, “He who made me well was the one who said to me, ‘Pick up your pallet and walk.’” They asked him, “Who is the man who said to you, ‘Pick up your pallet and walk’?”
They still aren’t picking up on the part where the man was healed. Why are these guys so caught up in a dude holding his mat?
But the man who was healed (at least the writer insists on mentioning the healing) did not know who it was, for Jesus had slipped away while there was a crowd in that place. Afterward Jesus found him in the temple and said to him, “Behold, you have become well; do not sin anymore, so that nothing worse happens to you.”
Wait, did anyone else catch that last part?
The man went away, and told the Jews that it was Jesus who had made him well.
“Alright, if you’re going to harass anyone for healing me of a life-long handicap, blame this guy.”
For this reason the Jews were persecuting Jesus, because He was doing these things on the Sabbath.
“Are you the guy who told that cripple to carry his rug?”
But He answered them, “My Father is working until now, and I Myself am working.”
“Yeah, I’m the guy. What are you going to do about it?”

Jesus flat-out admits to their accusation by saying, “I Myself and working.” What a bad-ass! And when the scripture says the Jews were persecuting Jesus, that’s a nice way of saying they wanted to kill Him. He had to know that. And then, for the rest of the chapter, Jesus talks about His authority as the Son of God and chastises the Jews for rejecting Him. Ouch. There is a lot I could talk about here, but I’m going to stick with the Sabbath for now.

The subject of the Sabbath, or God’s appointed day of rest, can irritate a lot of Christians. Let’s be honest, how many believers really observe the Sabbath? What is the Sabbath, anyway? And for that matter, when is the Sabbath? We talk about it so little that it becomes easy to ignore. I’ve thought about it more recently because of an argument I had with a guy. He observes the Sabbath, and on Saturday. “The real Sabbath,” he said. He got mad at me because I didn’t think it was necessary to observe all the Jewish laws so strictly.

“But it’s one of the Ten Commandments. How can you ignore that? And don’t tell me that you pick your own Sabbath. God appointed Saturday, that’s when we’re supposed to rest. You can’t change God’s rules,” he said.

I responded, “You know how much I like Jewish people, but we’re not Jews. As far as I know, we’re Gentiles. When the early church wanted to know if the Greek believers should convert to Judaism before Christianity, James told the church leaders, ‘But concerning the Gentiles who have believed, we wrote, having decided that they should abstain from meat sacrificed to idols and from blood and from what is strangled and from fornication.’” That’s Acts 21:25, in case you’re wondering. “Of all the commands they could have given the gentiles, they pretty much said, ‘don’t serve other gods or do things that glorify death, and stay sexually pure.’ They didn’t mention the Sabbath.”

We never really came to an agreement. This argument gets sticky because the two sides are both technically Biblical. God did command His people to observe the Sabbath. And God was serious about it. In other portions of the law, He tells His people to execute other Jews who don’t observe the Sabbath. Hence the Jews "persecuting" Jesus.

At the same time, Paul talks about the different applications of the law for Jewish and Gentile believers in Romans 2. It’s a pretty complicated passage, so I won’t get too deep into it. But notice verses 27 through 29, “And he who is physically uncircumcised (which was technically against the law for Jews), if he keeps the Law, will he not judge you who though having the letter of the Law and circumcision are a transgressor of the Law? For he is not a Jew who is one outwardly, nor is circumcision that which is outward in the flesh. But he is a Jew who is one inwardly; and circumcision is that which is of the heart, by the Spirit, not by the letter; and his praise is not from men, but from God.”

The point I want to make is this: Jesus didn’t break the law by healing a man on the Sabbath, and the man healed didn’t break the law by carrying his mat. The Sabbath was put in place to remind men that God created them for more than their work. It was meant to allow time for us to focus on our relationship with God. Jesus did as the Spirit of God led him to act, and the crippled man obeyed the Messiah. So if both of them acted in obedience, and their actions glorified God, how is that sin?

Galatians 5:3 says if you take one part of the law, you take on the whole of the law. And the message of Romans 2 is that Jews shouldn’t judge the Gentiles because they themselves fail at keeping the whole law. People who claim to observe the whole law and do so without having “circumcised their hearts”, or dedicated themselves to their relationship with God, they bring judgment on themselves. Jesus says this to the kill-joys in John 5. Those men were caught up in their image of perfection. If they had been concerned with glorifying God, they would have recognized the miracle and praised Him. Their trust in Him would have grown. Their relationship with Him would have deepened. And it’s in this deepening relationship that we find a true Sabbath of the heart.

Safe Answers, or God as a Magic 8 Ball.

For all of the grief I give my old Sunday school lessons, I really did enjoy them. It's hard to hate flannel graphs and construction paper and cookies and swing sets. The wordless book? Does it come with M&M's? Those were good days. I liked Sunday school up until about the third or fourth grade. Thanks to the sophisticated education I received in the public school system, I learned that information needed to become increasingly complex. Mathematics went from addition and subtraction to multiplication and division. American history eventually mixed in with world history. Music lessons went from singing Raffi tunes and patriotic classics to reading simple sheet music and playing recorders. But in Sunday school, the teachers offered the same simple answers to nearly every question I asked. "It's either Jesus, the Bible, prayer, or church."

My friend Erik told an old joke last weekend at a Christian youth conference. "A Sunday school teacher asked his students, 'what's brown, with a fuzzy tail, and stores acorns for the winter?' One of the students raised his hand and said, 'Well it sounds like a squirrel, but I know the answer has to be Jesus.'" We laughed. The kids laughed. Everybody felt a little righteous in knowing that they weren't like those people. But then the guest speaker stood for his half hour lecture. He talked about the common belief that God answers prayer in one of three ways, "yes, no, or in a little while." I'd heard that all through my early years in the church. I graduated high school hearing this from teachers. When the guest speaker brought this up, I leaned forward in my seat, hoping he'd go into the direction of the Holy Spirit in prayer. He was so close. Man was he close. But he left it at another safe answer. "God always wants the answer to be 'yes'. The closer you get to God, the more you'll ask for the things He already wants to give you."

My first thought was this, "You just simplified an already over-simplified answer." Why do we treat a complex, personal, and infinite God like one of those coin-operated fortune-tellers? I’m not saying that every simple explanation of faith bothers me. For example, what’s the basis of my salvation? Jesus came, died an innocent man for the guilt of humanity, and then got up. Sure, there’s more to it than that, but the simplicity of the answer is a true summary of the gospel.

It’s when people read something they don't understand in the Bible that they feel compelled to have a simple explanation. For example, the Bible says that it’s God’s will to heal people. Jesus told his disciples to pray for the sick and heal them. But when some people didn’t see this happening in their daily lives (how do you spell that one guy’s name? Warfield?), they start adding interpretations to life that don’t seem to have any basis in scripture. Suddenly, the gifts of the Spirit were “for those times, but not for now.” It’s like they gave God an easy way out of proving Himself. As if He needed one.

In terms of hearing God’s voice, allowing Him the answers “yes, no, or in a little while” presents another easy out. A person doesn’t need to hear His voice if they only ask God for something and then assume His answer based on whether or not it was given to them. But what about those times when a person is desperate and needs guidance, a solution to a problem? What if they exchange looked like this:

Man: God, what should I do?

God: Yes.

Man: Yes what? How will I ever reconcile with my dad?

God: In a little while.

Man: Okay, I guess that sort of makes sense. But what should I do when the opportunity presents itself?

God: No.

I remember having a conversation like this when I was, like, ten. But it was with one of those Magic 8 Balls. My friends were trying to tell me, “This thing can answer any question. It’s kind of spooky.” I asked questions I knew it couldn’t answer, like “who was President of the United States last year?” and, “Who is a better band, Soul Asylum or Green Jelly?” My friends protested that it couldn’t answer those types of questions. I said, “Yeah, but you can. So I guess that makes you smarter than the Magic 8 Ball."

People ask a Magic 8 Ball for an answer they know it can give. But it’s impersonal and limited. The Christian church says that God is personal (at the very least, a personality) and limitless. Still, if we don’t understand something about His personality, we come up with an answer that sounds more like an excuse on His behalf. In our brilliance, we have to bail God out of a situation He can’t handle with answers that people can’t refute.

If we never have to take the risk of trusting a God who we don’t fully understand, then we never have to risk obeying a command we don’t understand. We never have to humbly take our place as created and finite beings, giving authority to the infinite creator. We’ll never have to look stupid in front of our friends or co-workers. We can keep God at an explainable distance. And it also means that we’ll never have a real relationship with Him.

God pisses me off sometimes. Seriously, He does. I wrestle with Him all the time over things that I don’t understand. But in that struggle and in the conversations, we form a relationship. We develop intimacy and trust that couldn’t exist if I limited Him to answering Yes-or-No questions. A few years ago, I finally realized that it’s okay not to know everything about God. When someone asks me a question about my beliefs, it’s perfectly acceptable to say, “I don’t know yet.” It may not be a very savvy answer, but it’s better than making something up to save face.