From “The Soulwork of Justice: Four Movements for Contemplative Action” by Wesley Granberg-Michaelson
The most enduring foundations of your spiritual journey will emerge after your rational certainty of beliefs gets annihilated. Clinging to rational certainty, in fact, keeps your soul frozen and imprisoned. Estelle Frankel, in The Wisdom of Not Knowing, puts it this way: “One of the first lessons we all must learn in order to be free is how to ‘bear’ uncertainty and trust in the unknown.” But this brings you first to experiences of bewilderment. You have biblical company in that journey. Think of the story of Jonah, for instance. Swallowed by a whale and then sent reluctantly on a preaching mission he desperately resisted, he retreated up a mountain, certain of what God would do to Nineveh. When nothing happens based on his firmly held “rational” expectations, he’s distraught, in utter perplexity.
Or consider Mary, the mother of Jesus. Everything she understood about her life, her religion, and her forthcoming marriage is radically deconstructed by a vision and visitation from an angel. When Luke writes in his Gospel that she was “pondering these things in her heart,” that is not some pious attribute but rather a frank description of how she was struggling to make sense out of all this in the face of her pervasive uncertainty.
Biblical examples like this are numerous. They illustrate the difference between belief and faith. Belief provides consent to rational propositions. Faith connects us to transcendence. Rabbi Joshua Heschel explains in his book Who Is Man? that knowledge is fostered by curiosity; wisdom is fostered by awe. Awe precedes faith.
The award-winning movie Conclave provides a powerful sermon about certainty, doubt, and faith. The storyline follows a pope who has died and the cardinals who father in their secluded conclave to select a successor. Rivalries, ecclesiastical politics, and questions about the church’s future direction ensue. At the onset and into the heart of the drama, Cardinal Lawrence, dean of the College of Cardinals, delivers a homily to his fellow cardinals: “There is one sin I have come to fear above all else” certainty. If there was only certainty and no doubt, there would be no mystery, and therefore no need for faith.”