"Many people fear to apply themselves to a reconsideration of their own beliefs because 'You never know where it will lead you'. Even a minor reassessment of one topic is feared - '...how far would it go?' Still others think that there is no intermediate position between faithful adherence to a traditional stand and complete chaos where everyone has his own views and all differ from each other. All these attitudes I feel... to be faithless and wrong."
From Christadelphia Redivivus
by G. McHaffie
One of the more difficult things for me when investigating my beliefs was accepting uncertainty.
ReplyDeleteI had been raised to see the world in quite rigid terms and concepts, and felt a need for certainty in what I believed. Letting go of that certainty felt scary, and I did so quite reluctantly. But accepting that there are many things we cannot know for certain, and thinking instead in terms of probabilities or what is likely vs unlikely (or simply unknown/unknowable) is actually very liberating.
It's ok to not know things. It's ok to say, "I don't know". If there are answers to be found, then I can take my time to search for them. But in cases where no one knows, I'm ok with that too. I am no longer afraid of not having answers for things.
There will probably be certain things that can't explain for the rest of human existence. But the list is growing shorter almost daily, as we develop more and more understanding of the world around us, without having to resort to the feeble "goddidit".
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