Unqualified
The excuse that isn't.
Every group I have ever taught contains one, usually several: the believer who has decided, quietly and permanently, that witness is for people who know more. Placeholder essay text — a draft for layout purposes. More theology, more apologetics, more Bible, more certainty. Someday, after sufficient study, they will be ready. Someday is doing a lot of work in that sentence, and it knows it.
What you are actually asked to carry
Not a systematic theology. Not the problem of evil, gift-wrapped. A witness carries an account: here is what I was, here is what happened, here is what I have seen since. The man born blind in John 9 is the canonical case — interrogated twice by professionals, he retreats to the one sentence they cannot touch: one thing I do know, that though I was blind, now I see. John 9:25. Note that his theology is actively in error at points during the interrogation, and the narrative does not care.
“I don’t know” is a complete sentence, and an honest witness says it without flinching.
Three reframes for the terrified
- You are not the lawyer. Arguments are a specialist’s craft, and a later stage besides. You are being asked for testimony, not a closing statement.
- Your gaps are load-bearing. A friend who says I still wrestle with that is more credible, not less, than one with laminated answers. People trust witnesses who sound like humans.
- The next step is not yours alone. This is the whole architecture of the thing: hard questions are what the body — teachers, elders, the long patience of the church — exists to receive. You were never meant to carry the case alone; you were meant to carry your part of it.
Somewhere along the way we let unqualified become a synonym for unauthorized. The commission that opened this book did not include a syllabus. The follow-on essay deals with the other great silencer — embarrassment — which is a different animal and needs different medicine. You are under-informed, like every witness in history. You are not unauthorized. There is no such thing as an unauthorized Christian.