The Problem with Certainty

I am suspicious when I meet religious people who are sure they know the will of God.  And I wonder how these people seem to know, and are so quick to tell you, you do not know. 

After all, Religion is chocked full of mysteries, tentative assertions about the truth, paradoxical theological statements which cannot be proven, calls to faith despite experience, labored Biblical stories which tantalizingly reveal and conceal the truth about God.

Let’s face it, certainty is seductive.  It makes us feel we are in the know.  We get it and all the rest are clueless.  We understand; all the rest are lost.  We know what it means to be religious or theologically correct and everyone else is selling out the true faith. We know what God wants and all the rest are ignorant fools.  This kind of seduction can happen to the religious and the non-religious.  Atheists and agnostics are no exception.  No one is exempt from the intoxicating elixir of certainty.  Certainty, after all, is control. Certainty is arrogance disguised as piety and love of truth. Certainty can produce fanaticism, verbal or violent. Certainty can make you feel drunk with power.

Whitehead was right: “Seek simplicity but distrust it.”  Beware of anyone who is convinced he or she knows the will of God. 

Faith is trusting without knowing for sure.  Certainty is knowing and not needing to trust.  The philosopher, Leo Strauss teaches us: “The mysterious God is the last theme and highest theme of the Bible . . .The Bible reflects in its literary form the inscrutable mystery of the ways of God which would be impious even to attempt to comprehend.”

Great quote from Rabbi Rami Shapiro: “When you know you don’t know; when you know you can’t know, you can’t be manipulated by those who pretend to know.”