He Keeps Giving Reading Lists Instead Of Answers

Four times, and every time he has handed over something excellent.

The first was a book, which the younger man read, and came back with good questions about, which is how he knows he read it.

The second was two chapters of something with the pages marked, because he is the sort of man who marks pages.

The third was a longer list, five items, ordered by difficulty, with a note about which one to start with.

The fourth was three weeks ago and it was two more.

And in between each of those, the younger man has read what he was given. Every time. He is not somebody who takes a list to be polite.

And he keeps coming back.

That is the part that has finally got through. If the reading were the answer, the questions would be resolving, and they are not resolving. They are arriving in slightly different clothes about every four months, from a man who is genuinely doing the work.

He looked at his own record last week and noticed something that he did not enjoy.

In four exchanges, across about fifteen months, he has never once said anything about himself.

Not a single sentence about what he has thought, or found difficult, or come to over thirty years. He has recommended other people's thinking on all four occasions, excellently, and he has kept his own entirely out of it.

And he can tell you exactly why, which is that his own is not a settled body of work. There are things he cannot resolve. There is a whole area he avoids. His own faith is not tidy and he does not consider it a suitable thing to hand a younger man in place of a proper book.

But the younger man has read the proper books. That is the whole difficulty. He has read them and come back, four times.

He is not short of material.

And you do this. Somebody brings you a real question and you hand them something to read, and they read it, and they come back, and you hand them something else.

Not only the gospel, but our own selves

There is a sentence Paul writes to the Thessalonians that names two separate things being handed over, and almost nobody preaches the second half.

So, being affectionately desirous of you, we were ready to share with you not only the gospel of God but also our own selves, because you had become very dear to us.1 Thessalonians 2:8

Not only the gospel of God, but also our own selves.

He is careful to distinguish them. The gospel is one gift and it is the greater one. And then there is a second thing, which is the person delivering it, and he says explicitly that they were ready to hand that over too.

Which means he knew perfectly well that you can give somebody the first without the second, and that it is possible to do that and consider the job complete.

You have been giving one of the two things for fifteen months and it is the one he already had. It is written that we were ready to share with you not only the gospel of God but also our own selves (1 Thessalonians 2:8), and it is the Holy Spirit who makes the second half possible in a careful man, which is not a matter of nerve so much as permission.

Now your reason, which is the honest one.

Your own is not a settled body of work. There are things you cannot resolve. There is a whole area you avoid.

That is true of every believer who has ever lived and it is particularly true of everyone worth listening to. The people whose faith is entirely tidy are either very young in it or are not telling you the truth, and a thirty year old faith with an unresolved area in it is what an actual life looks like.

You are not being asked to hand over a finished system, only a real one. Scripture says now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face; now I know in part (1 Corinthians 13:12), and that is Paul describing his own condition, and it is the Holy Spirit who has kept a man walking for thirty years inside something he sees dimly.

And what the younger man is actually short of.

He is not short of material. That has now been demonstrated four times, thoroughly, by a man who reads what he is given.

What he has never had is a single sentence from somebody thirty years ahead of him about what it is actually like. Whether the unresolved area stays unresolved. Whether it gets easier. Whether a man can hold a whole life together with a piece missing, because that is what he is really asking and he has asked it four ways.

You are the only person who can answer the question he is actually asking. It is written that as iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another (Proverbs 27:17), and it is His Spirit who arranges for a younger man to keep returning to a specific older one, which is not a failure of the reading list.

And the thing you did not enjoy noticing.

Fifteen months and not one sentence about yourself. That is worth sitting with rather than being ashamed of, because it was not cowardice, it was a standard: you did not think your own thinking was of a high enough grade to be offered.

That standard has cost a younger man four exchanges.

You have been applying a quality threshold to yourself that Scripture nowhere applies to anybody. Scripture says we have this treasure in jars of clay, to show that the surpassing power belongs to God and not to us (2 Corinthians 4:7), and it is the Holy Spirit who is the power in it, which is precisely why the jar was never required to be of publishable quality.