“Less certainty, more doubt…” — Sermon for Sunday April 24, 2022

What’s the opposite of faith? Many people might say doubt. I disagree.

Christian theologian Paul Tillich wrote, “Doubt isn’t the opposite of faith; it is an element of faith.

The first sin in the bible is the sin of certainty. Humanity wanted to know for certain and so we ate from the tree of knowledge of good and evil. We wanted to know. We wanted to be like God. In knowing we could feel like we are in control. Because certainty gives us a sense of control.

Just look at how the world has changed recently. And the response to the changes that are going on in different places. We want to know, be certain, and be in control, and we’re willing to do just about anything to make that happen. And willing to scapegoat or make an enemy of anyone who gets in the way of that control and certainty. We’ll pass laws, we’ll go to war, we’ll come up with all sorts of arguments why our being in control is so very important and why others are in the way of that goal.

Societies, organizational cultures, communities, organizations, and churches are all built on trust, not certainty. Because they are relational. And since people are involved, there will always be an element of uncertainty, not knowing, not understanding, seeing things differently that make no sense to us. When we try to make certainty the foundation instead of trust, we are actually dehumanizing things because we can’t ever be certain when it comes to people, we can only be…