The Unanswerable Question (Proverbs 26:12)

How do you know when you don’t know?

This is not a play on words. It is a question I faced throughout my career in medicine, and it is a question that applies just as much to life.

As physicians, we are trained to look for answers. A patient presents with a problem, and it is our responsibility to determine the diagnosis and provide direction for treatment. Most of the time, the answer eventually becomes clear. But occasionally, despite all of the clinical information, special studies, experience and judgment available to us, the diagnosis remains uncertain.

Those were always difficult cases for me. If I could not arrive at a definitive diagnosis, I might render a descriptive diagnosis explaining what I could see and what I thought was most likely. But sometimes, despite my best efforts, it was still only an educated opinion.

At that point, I might send the case to another expert, hoping that someone with more experience in that particular area would recognize something I had missed. Usually, that helped. But not always. Occasionally, even the consultant would study the case and admit that there was no definitive answer.

How do you know when you don’t know?

This is the unanswerable question.

Part of the answer is experience. The more cases you see, the more patterns you recognize. You learn what belongs together and what does not. You become more comfortable with unusual cases and more suspicious when something almost fits but not quite. But experience should also teach humility. One of the most dangerous situations in medicine occurs when someone is certain about something that is wrong.

An inexperienced physician may see a patient whose findings resemble a familiar disease. Most of the pieces seem to fit. Perhaps he has seen several similar cases before and becomes confident that this is simply another one.

But it is not. The patient actually has a more serious disease that mimics the benign condition the physician thought he recognized. Because the physician was so confident in the original diagnosis, other possibilities were never seriously considered.

The harm does not come simply from not knowing. The harm comes from not knowing that you don’t know.

The Bible speaks directly to this:

Do you see a man who is wise in his own eyes? There is more hope for a fool than for him.
Proverbs 26:12 (ESV)

That is a sobering warning. Knowledge is valuable. Experience is valuable. Good judgment is valuable. God has given us minds to think, learn, study and make decisions. But there is always a danger when confidence in our knowledge quietly becomes confidence in ourselves.

This is not merely a problem for physicians. We do it in everyday life. We make decisions based upon what has worked before. We rely upon our experience. We assume that because we have faced something similar in the past, we already understand what is happening now. Sometimes we do. Sometimes we do not. The difficulty is that we may not immediately recognize the difference.

That is why humility is so important in our walk with God. We must never become so confident in our own knowledge and experience that we stop seeking His direction.

Proverbs also tells us:

Trust in the LORD with all your heart, and do not lean on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make straight your paths.
Proverbs 3:5–6 (ESV)

God does not tell us that we will always understand everything. He tells us not to depend entirely upon our own understanding. There will be times when we simply do not know what to do. There will be circumstances that do not make sense. There will be decisions in which our experience points in one direction while the outcome later proves that we were mistaken. Sometimes the wisest thing we can say is, “I don’t know.” That is not weakness. It is humility.

The older I became and the more medicine I practiced, the more I realized how much there was that I did not know. The same is true in life. Our knowledge will always be limited. God’s is not.

So how do you know when you don’t know? Perhaps we can never answer that question perfectly. But we can guard against the greater danger of becoming so certain of ourselves that we no longer recognize the possibility that we may be wrong.

Once again, God gives us the answer.

Do not be wise in your own eyes.

Love and trust the Lord; seek His will in your life.

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