Through a Glass Darkly

For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face; now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known.

— I Corinthians 13:12

Si Deus comprehendis non est Deus (If you understand, it is not God you understand)

—St. Augustine

It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you into trouble. It’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so.

—Mark Twain

In a recent podcast, Freakonomics authors Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner reveal what they discovered to be the three hardest words for people to say. No, it’s not “I love you.” The three words we find hardest to say are:

“I don’t know.”

Levitt and Dubner describe research in which adults and even children almost always prefer to give an answer—however ill-founded or unsubstantiated—rather than simply say, “I don’t know.”

A similar phenomenon is observed in “eyewitness” accounts of crimes where details provided in sworn testimony ultimately prove to be inaccurate or even non-existent. Likewise, multiple eyewitness accounts disagree substantially when describing the same event.

Thus, a question: If our cognitive reliability is so faulty in earthly things, should we consider a willingness to question assumptions about heavenly things? Is spiritual wisdom defined by absolute certainty, or by a willingness to acknowledge that we know, as Paul would say, only in part?

Perhaps such an admission of limited knowledge simply means acknowledging that the things about which one is certain is but a small fraction of a larger, total reality, just as our knowledge of the physical universe is infinitesimally smaller that the actual reality. Some have described our knowledge deficit with this metaphor:

We inhabit an island of knowledge surrounded by a sea of ignorance. As we learn something new, the island grows. But as the island of knowledge grows, so does the boundary between knowledge and ignorance. The more we know, the more we become aware of what we don’t know.

If Paul, of all people, acknowledged the limits to his understanding, perhaps we would do well to follow his example. More than just an act of token humility, acknowledging that we know only “in part” affects everything we do—how we view and judge others; how we perceive ourselves; and most importantly, how we view God.

The Importance of Certainty

To live without certainty is, of course, impossible. We wake up each day and engage the world convinced of any number of truths, from the sublime (God loves me…My spouse will be faithful to me) to the mundane (My brakes will work at the next stoplight…Starbucks will have hot coffee this morning.) We simply could not get through a day—let alone a lifetime—without a high degree of certainty about many things.

On the other hand, to live with absolute certainty about everything is not a viable option either. Consider for a moment, how many of the truths and realities you hold most dear today are actually correctives of misconceptions held earlier in life or inherited from your family of origin. This is true of both individuals and institutions. Benjamin Franklin put this eloquently in his last speech before the Constitutional Convention:

For having lived long, I have experienced many Instances of being oblig’d, by better Information or fuller Consideration, to change Opinions even on important Subjects, which I once thought right, but found to be otherwise.

In academic, political and business contexts as well as artistic endeavors, the ability to suspend assumptions is the foundation of creativity and the path to innovation. Chuck Klosterman puts it this way:

The reason so many well-considered ideas appear laughable in retrospect is that people involuntarily assume that whatever we believe and prioritize now will continue to be believed and prioritized later, even though that almost never happens. It’s a mistake that never stops being made.

Wharton School research psychologist Phil Tetlock, when asked by Stephen Dubner in another Feakonomics podcast, what prevents business and government leaders from accurately predicting the future, his one word answer was “dogmatism.” He expanded upon his definition of dogmatism as “an unwillingness to change one’s mind in a reasonably timely way in response to new evidence. A tendency, when asked to explain one’s predictions, to generate only reasons that favor your preferred prediction and not to generate reasons opposed to it.”

It thus seems reasonable to be critical of secular institutions that dogmatize. Religious organizations, however, are a somewhat unique case. Certainty about a set of truths is, in many ways, the foundation of a religious organization’s existence. Its raison d’être. We often refer to this as doctrine,or more pejoratively as dogma.

It becomes problematic, of course, when one religious group’s certainties are in conflict with the absolute assertions of other group’s. Often, a religious organization’s demand for certainty appear to other organizations to involve things quite peripheral to the key tenets of the faith. One man’s core truth is another man’s peripheral option.

Forget for a moment the differences in doctrinal certainty among the world’s major religions. The chronic divergence among segments of Christendom alone should give one reason to consider the fact that we know only in part. (There are currently 30,000+ Christian denominations, up from just 1,600 in 1900.) It’s like the story of the six blind men who are asked to describe an elephant, based on what they are able to feel with their hands. Each describes the animal quite differently based only on the one feature of the elephant he was able to touch. But each was fully convinced that what he discovered described the totality of elephant-ness.

Claiming certainty—and demanding it of others—can be a powerful vehicle for social control within religious groups. A select set of certainties becomes a litmus test for inclusion or exclusion from the group. Religious leaders often demand a level of certainty (orthodoxy) among their adherents to those doctrines as a condition of membership. Failure results in excommunication. Certainty—and sometimes a specific verbal formulation of that certainty—is used to distinguish the in-group from the out-group—orthodox from heretic—usually with little or no room in the middle.

A number of social rewards and punishments then flow from this judgment, further complicating an adherent’s motivations in searching for truth, or more precisely, not continuing to search for truth. Whether the term “excommunicate” or “disfellowship” is used, most religious organizations have an effective means of identifying individuals who lack sufficient certainty about the organization’s doctrine, and marking them as at-risk insiders or even outsiders who endanger the rest of the flock.

The Limits and Dangers of Certainty

So we have to ask ourselves: Can we have faith in God without being absolutely certain about everything? The very definition of God as omniscient and omnipresent should preclude certainty of all the details. This seems to be Paul’s point in Corinthians. His is not the untethered agnosticism of the modern philosopher nor the cynicism of the critic sitting on the sidelines. His acknowledgement of knowing in part suggests that partial certainty is possible and good. Absolute certainty is not.

This ability to recognize the limits of knowledge, to suspend assumptions and to treat current knowledge as provisional, leads to important implications for religious life.

1. Greater Reliance on God’s Grace

Our need to have the right answers, to be accepted by the right group, to find identity with a body of doctrines can be a formidable impediment to the one and only basis for salvation: grace. Grace teaches us that we are works in progress, lacking infinitely more knowledge than we possess. It comes as no surprise that the religious groups that most strenuously emphasize doctrine, are often the least disposed toward grace. They often keep their adherents in a child-like state of dependence on their leaders’ interpretations of Scripture. The leaders’ dictates become divine law. They will do all the thinking for the organization. Best if the members just follow along.

2. Avoiding Majoring in the Majors

Students of religion observe the persistent phenomenon of religious organizations’ preoccupation with small details, often based on obscure texts of Scripture, that to those outside the group appear to be quite peripheral. Schisms and even violence—verbal or physical—can erupt over these differences. But acknowledging that we see through a glass darkly frees us to focus on the larger, more crucial issues. It can even be the beginning of re-uniting divided faith communities based on the core truths of the faith.

3. Reluctance to Judge Others

Perhaps the greatest interpersonal sin against which Jesus inveighed was judging others. His words in Matthew 23 and elsewhere ring with indignation at the ability of religious people to judge others for their inability to comply with cherished, boundary-defining doctrines and practices that have nothing to do with spiritual truth. Interestingly, nearly every reform movement within Christianity has been quick to condemn the pharisaical behavior of its predecessors, only to demand a new, equally binding set of doctrines, practices and certainties of its adherents.

Scripture would suggest that despite periodic moments of self-awareness, we are incapable of accurately judging our own actions and motives. This reality is expressed by the parable in Matthew 25 in which those who helped or neglected others don’t even realize their good deeds or bad deeds are registering with God.

So if we are that unaware of our own selves, how much less are we capable of judging the motives and behaviors of others? I can’t help but think that eternity and final judgment will expose many of the things done by those we judged as good people as having been tainted with pride and ulterior motives. Similarly, the faults we found in others will be revealed to be a veneer that hid many noble deeds that went unheralded in this life. Perhaps in one great cosmic “Oh…now I see…” we will all grasp the reality that had been perceived though a glass darkly.

4. Patience in the Face of Life’s Contradictions

Another implication of acknowledging that we see through a glass darkly is the restraint we might want to show in making assertions about life’s most difficult and painful realities—the problem of evil, natural disasters, the existence of hell or the fate of those who have never heard the gospel.

I have yet to hear an explanation of any of these things that doesn’t rely on tortured, self-contradictory logic. These explanations are terribly dissatisfying and devoid of the very comfort they are intended to provide. They might provide a sort of temporary holding pattern, which if not examined too critically, offers short-term relief from the pain of pondering difficult questions. But if examined in detail, these explanations begin to crumble under their own weight. Sometimes these bizarre explanations even become cherished doctrines in their own right as the “official explanation” of difficult issues.

But how much better to say, along with Paul:

Oh, the depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable his judgments, and his paths beyond tracing out!  —Romans 11:33

How much better to lament along with the Psalmists about the contradiction between what is and what should be. Isn’t that more honest? More God-honoring? A greater recognition of His sovereignty?

5. Spiritual Maturity

A recurrent theme among the great spiritual men and women throughout history is their increasing awareness of their shortcomings and sinfulness. One often sees this in encounters with older, mature Christians, who rather than suggesting that they have long since “arrived,” seem instead to demonstrate a humility that comes from increased self-awareness. There is something refreshing and hope-giving about that. (There is something equally disappointing about an older religious person whose views seemed permanently calcified.)

Conclusion

To claim to live only with absolute certainty is to be in denial at best, and to fail to be fully human at worst. It is the end of progress and creativity. It is the end of grace.

Put another way, the question could be asked: What requires more faith? Ambiguity or certainty? Or rather than framing the question quantitatively, maybe this is an issue of quality of faith. Is there a different type of faith required for embracing uncertainty that is still just as crucial as faith in things about which we are most certain?

Perhaps these dual dimensions of faith are simply two sides of the same coin. And if we emphasize one to the exclusion of the other, if we fail to consciously embrace the full reality that we know only in part, then we rob ourselves of the richest experiences of God’s grace and authentic relationships with others.