As a missionary for five years in Ethiopia, then minister at a large church in Southern California for 11, I’ve been keenly aware of people’s need for certainty — spiritual, personal, political, professional. The doubt of living through unfolding history can be acute, all the more so when news cycles spin faster than ever before and we feel less common ground with those around us. Uncertainty, however, is the permanent human condition, and it can be a gift.
This was eloquently explored in a speech in the middle of the recent film “Conclave,” which tells the story of smoke-filled-room machinations electing a new pope. The dean of the College of Cardinals, played by Ralph Fiennes, delivers a homily to the cardinals before they begin their deliberations.
“There is one sin I have come to fear above all others: certainty. Certainty is the great enemy of unity. Certainty is the deadly enemy of tolerance,” he says. “Our faith is a living thing precisely because it walks hand in hand with doubt. If there was only certainty and no doubt, there would be no mystery, and therefore no need for faith.”
I hadn’t seen “Conclave” until a friend, born into a Jewish family that managed to survive living in Hungary under Hitler’s Nazis, then under Stalin’s Communists, called to say I had to see the movie so we could talk about it.
My friend, a software programmer, isn’t a believer in God in the traditional sense. He seeks to live an ethical life but sees God as a catastrophic failure, given the Holocaust and the insanities of injustice in societies we call “developed.” I understand why he would question and doubt the goodness of God and God’s existence.
The Fiennes speech surprised my friend. When he and I met, he said: “I always thought people with faith meant they were certain in their belief. They sure acted that way, and I didn’t want to be like them. But in ‘Conclave’ I was led to think. According to how I interpret the cardinal, faith could be defined as living in a certain way, as if there is something giving us a purpose and a measure of good, even when we are not certain about that something. This is a radical redefinition of the word ‘faith’ for me.”
I told my friend that I believed he was a person of faith. I’ve watched him be kind to a person living in a van in front of his home, defending him when most neighbors were having meetings about how to get homeless people out of their neighborhood. That’s an act of faith in the face of uncertainty.
I shared with my friend the biblical story about the reaction of Jesus’ disciples when they encounter him — alive — after he was killed on the cross. The text says they worshiped Jesus, yet it also says, “And some doubted.” They were looking at the resurrected Jesus. They doubted, and yet they worshiped.
Four thousand years of scripture extol the person who has faith. In the New Testament’s Epistle to the Hebrews (11:7-8): “By faith Noah, when warned about things not yet seen, in holy fear built an ark to save his family. By his faith he condemned the world and became heir of the righteousness that is in keeping with faith. By faith Abraham, when called to go to a place he would later receive as his inheritance, obeyed and went, even though he did not know where he was going.”
While faith is extolled and essential, the exercise of faith does not mean the absence of doubt. The apostle Thomas was one of those who doubted. Jesus came to him to show him the scars on his hands and his feet. Jesus did not chastise Thomas or condemn him. Jesus encouraged his ability to trust, believe and act by his faith.
We exercise faith when, lacking certainty, we do what we think God would want us to do — or when we do what we think is right, to put it another way for my nonbeliever friends. If we had certainty, no faith would be needed.
Could it be that certainty — especially, these days, political — is the thing that divides us, rather than faith? I think “Conclave” got it right: “Certainty is the deadly enemy of tolerance.”
James Milley is the executive director of BridgesUS, a nonprofit that trains lay missionaries to work in communities in the U.S.
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