Our religious beliefs have not provided us what they seemed to promise.
~Peter Rollins
"Why are you certain that your worldview is correct and mine is wrong?" In many different ways, each one of us has heard this type of question. Personally, I grew up in a Romanian Baptist church and more-or-less believed the typical Christian dogma. For those of you unsure of what I mean, the Nicene Creed is a great summation. I spent four years at Trinity International University getting a bachelor's degree in Biology/Pre-Medical and a master's degree in bioethics. During these crucial years, I was challenged on the fundamental things that I believed. This reformation of my beliefs has continued until the present, and I don't see anything changing in the remainder of my life. I've come to realize I'm certain that I'm uncertain about most things.
One major change occurred my last year at college when a friend of mine questioned my basic beliefs in Calvinism. It is a doctrine with many tenets, but the one I want to address is election. The doctrine of election asserts that only the people that God chooses/elects will go to Heaven. My friend questioned how I could believe God chose some for Heaven but not others. The assumption is: if the ones He chose go to Heaven, then the rest will necessarily go to Hell. I found it easy to point to specific Scriptures that showed a form of determinism, but couldn't reconcile it with a philosophical position. It made no logical sense with everything else I knew about God. The following scenario destroyed my belief in Calvinism. "At the (supposed) Judgement, if a non-elect person explained to God that he had no way of choosing Him because he wasn't chosen by God, he would be right." That's inexcusable. Some may argue that it's a poor caricature of Calvinism, but I believe it paints God into a monster. Now from being certain that God either chose or didn't choose me to a freeing uncertainty. Salvation shouldn't be an escape, but freedom.
Throughout my Christian life, many of my friends would ponder what God's plan is for their lives. What if God doesn't give a damn? What if He just wants you to live faithfully to Him and the other? Maybe He couldn't care less where you live and what job you take. Without the certainty that God is leading and controlling their lives in every minute detail, they feel dazed and confused. What if you feel compelled to move to Iowa and life falls apart. Whose fault is it? (Psssst, it's your fault!) Uncertainty is freeing.
At this junction in my life, I meet with my brother-in-law every other week, and we scrutinize our own beliefs about fundamental and peripheral issues. We read authors like Peter Rollins and Peter Enns. In Enns' book "The Bible Tells Me So," he makes some fantastic points:
"Sweating bullets to line up the Bible with our exhausting expectations, to make the Bible something it’s not meant to be, isn’t a pious act of faith, even if it looks that way on the surface. It’s actually thinly masked fear of losing control and certainty, a mirror of an inner disquiet, a warning signal that deep down we do not really trust God at all."
These days I enjoy William Lane Craig for Christian apologetics and doctrine, Sam Harris for a naturalist point of view, "Skeptics Guide to the Universe" for scientific inquiry, and the "Partially Examined Life" to learn about different philosophies. I contend that certainty in any idea, religious or natural, will only stifle intellectual progress. But who knows... one can't be certain.
