Faith in the Fog: Why Certainty is the Enemy of Growth and Why I’m Embracing Doubt

We live in a world that craves certainty. We want guarantees, money-back promises, and definitive answers. This desire is deeply human; certainty feels safe. It feels like standing on solid rock in the middle of a churning ocean. But over the last few years, I’ve come to a difficult realization: that solid rock can easily become an imprisoned island.

There is a profound danger in being 100% sure of what we believe. When we achieve absolute certainty, we declare that we have arrived at the final destination of truth. And when you have arrived, you stop moving. You stop searching. Most importantly, you stop growing.

A belief system that has no room for doubt is a closed ecosystem. It cannot adapt to new information, new experiences, or the deeper understandings that come with age and maturity. If our beliefs cannot shift, they become brittle. Instead of bending in the winds of life, they break.

The Toxicity of Certainty in Religious Spaces

Nowhere is this dynamic more damaging than in religious communities. Ideally, faith communities should be sanctuaries for the soul—places where we can bring our messiest questions and our deepest struggles without fear. Yet, too often, they morph into arenas of performance, where the "strength" of your faith is measured by how loudly you proclaim your certainty and how effectively you suppress your doubts.

In these environments, certainty becomes an idol. This breeds a specific kind of toxicity rooted in fear. If admission of doubt is seen as a spiritual failing—or worse, a one-way ticket to hell—people will instinctively silence themselves.

I have seen incredible damage done when people feel they cannot speak honestly about what they are struggling with. They fear being met not with empathy, but with theology disguised as judgment. They fear the hushed tones of gossip disguised as "prayer requests." So, they suffer in silence, performing a certainty they do not feel, slowly dying inside while smiling in the pew.

This isn't just my observation. Theologians and scholars have long warned against the idol of certainty. Paul Tillich, one of the most influential theologians of the 20th century, argued that doubt isn't the opposite of faith; it is an essential element of faith. He wrote that a serious faith "is not the one which has no doubt, but the one which has the courage to take the doubt into itself."

Similarly, biblical scholar Peter Enns, in his book The Sin of Certainty, argues that a desperate need for intellectual certainty about God can actually become an obstacle to trusting God. When defending our "correct" doctrines becomes more important than loving our neighbor or embodying compassion, we have lost the plot.

The Personal Cost of Shifting Sands

I don’t write this from an academic distance. I write this from the messy trenches of my own evolving life.

As my own beliefs have shifted—expanding in some areas, softening in others, and completely dissolving in a few—I have experienced the sharp sting of conditional community.

I have watched as people I once considered close friends quietly distanced themselves from me in real life. I have seen the digital door slammed in my face as people "unfriended" me on social media, signaling that my evolving worldview was too threatening, too "other," to remain in their curated feeds.

It hurts. It is deeply painful to realize that some relationships were predicated not on mutual affection, but on mutual agreement on a specific set of doctrines. When I stepped outside the approved lines, the relationship evaporated.

Reclaiming My Voice and My Choice

Yet, strangely, this rejection hasn't made me want to retreat into silence. It has done the exact opposite. It makes me want to be even more outspoken about the reality that faith and belief are journeys, not destinations.

If my story can help one other person feel less alone in their "wilderness season," then the discomfort of being rejected by the "certain" crowd is worth it. I am trying to be more open to what is actually going on around me, rather than forcing reality to fit into a pre-approved theological box.

This leads to a crucial point about agency. Don't get me wrong: we are relational creatures. We need community. It is vitally important to have wise people in our lives who can provide different perspectives, challenge our blind spots, and offer balance when we are tipping too far in one direction. We should seek counsel. We should listen to mentors.

But there is a massive difference between seeking counsel and outsourcing our conscience.

At the end of the day, the voices around us—no matter how loud, authoritative, or well-meaning—cannot live our lives for us. They do not have to live with the consequences of our choices in the same way we do.

When religious structures or social groups demand we prioritize what they say is best for us over what our own souls, intellects, and experiences tell us is best, that is a recipe for spiritual and emotional disaster. Our choices, and the beliefs that inform them, must ultimately be ours alone.

Embracing the Fog

If you are currently deconstructing, reconstructing, or just sitting in the confusing fog of doubt, please know this: You are not broken. You are growing.

Doubt is not a sign of weakness; it is often a sign that your soul is expanding beyond the container it was given. It is uncomfortable, yes. It can be lonely. But it is also the only path to a mature, authentic, and resilient worldview.

Let us be wary of those who claim to have zero doubts. Let us instead seek out spaces where "I don't know" is considered a complete and faithful sentence.

References & Recommended Reading

If this post resonated with you and you are looking to explore the relationship between faith, doubt, and certainty further, here are a few resources that have been instrumental in this conversation:

• "The Sin of Certainty: Why God Desires Our Trust More Than Our 'Correct' Beliefs" by Peter Enns (This book explores how the demand for certainty can actually distract us from the trust that faith requires).

• "Dynamics of Faith" by Paul Tillich (A classic theological text where Tillich famously argues that doubt is not the opposite of faith, but an element of it).

• "Faith After Doubt: Why Your Beliefs Stopped Working and What to Do About It" by Brian D. McLaren (A wonderful guide for those who feel their faith is falling apart, proposing that doubt is actually a necessary step toward a deeper, more universal faith).

• "Falling Upward: A Spirituality for the Two Halves of Life" by Richard Rohr )Rohr discusses how the "first half of life" is about building the container (identity, certainty, structure), and the "second half" is about finding the contents, which often requires embracing mystery and letting go of rigid certainties).

©Lisa King, LPC