The Sin of Certainty: Why God Desires our Trust more than our "correct" beliefs - by Peter Enns

    "Watching certainty slide into uncertainty is frightening. Our beliefs provide a familiar structure to our messy lives. They give answers to our big questions of existence . . . Answering these questions provides our lives with meaning and coherence by reining in the chaos.
    When familiar answers to those questions are suddenly carried away. . . we understandably want to chase after them to get them back. When once settled questions suddenly become unsettled, our life narratives are upset--and no one likes that. . .
    Another dynamic at work here is how friends, family, and church members would handle it if they knew what you were thinking. Feeling judged and banished is a common story among those who take a risk to let people in on their well-guarded secret." p. 8-9

    "I won't say my faith is 'stronger'--that implies that the uh-ohs have been fixed or conquered, which is the opposite of what I am saying. I mean my faith is more real, more textured, three dimensional, and without the constant fear of being wrong playing in my head or that God is disappointed in me for not acing a multiple-choice theology exam." p. 11

    "Religious structure provides a sense of self . . . without it, I felt utterly alone, with no idea where all this was heading:
      What do you really believe. . . when no one is telling you what to believe Who is God to you? Is there a God? How far are you willing to go to accept the challenge of this new journey where you can barely see your own hand in front of your face? What familiar road map are you willing to leave behind? What will you do now that Go is no longer a turned back page in a familiar story you can flip to whenever? What will you do now that God is far off, out of sight? And how will you handle the likelihood that things will never be as they were? . . . Seeking answers to those questions meant accepting the challenge of an unsettled faith. That takes courage. . ." p. 14

    "Walking the path of faith means trusting God enough to let our uh-oh moments expose how we create God to fit in our thinking. But that is hard work. We like our ideas about God. We need them. And that is really the deeper problem here. . . When we are held captive to our thinking, moving to what is not known and uncertain is automatically seen as a fearful development. We think true faith is dependent on maintaining a particular 'knowledge set' and keeping a firm grasp on a tightly woven network of nonnegotiable beliefs, guarding each one vigilantly, making sure they all stay above the water line no matter how hard the struggle--because if what we 'know' sinks, faith sinks right down with it."  p. 17-18

    ". . . at the end of the day, we are all responsible for what we do. No one blackmailed me or held me hostage. And playing the blame game only keeps us looking in the rearview mirror, which is a sure recipe for misery." p. 33

    ". . . trust in God grows best when things are falling apart." p. 71

    "Humility, love, and kindness are our grand acts of faithfulness and how we show that we are all in. 'no one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God lives in us, and his love is perfected in us' (1 John4:12). Loving each other is the closest we get to seeing God. . . Being 'in' with God is about much more than the thoughts we keep in our heads, the belief systems we hold on to, the doctrines we recite, or the statements of faith we adhere to, no matter how fervently and genuinely we do so, and how important they may be. Being obsessed with making sure we have all our thoughts about God properly arranged and defended isn't faith. How trusting we are of God day to day and how Godlike we live among those around us day to day is." p 102

    "Preoccupation with correct thinking and holding on with zeal makes us horrible people and those around us miserable. But even here, these can be God moments if we have ears to hear.
Perhaps even here God is present, opening up pathways to other communities of faith for us, to a new way of being Christian, where holding on for dear life to what we 'know' isn't front and center. I've found that we can be tied hard and fast even to abusive religious homes, and we don't leave until things get so bad we simply can't stay. . .
    There's nothing like being subject to Christians of ill will to expose the dark underbelly of where the preoccupation with correct thinking can get you--and to begin seeing the value of a different kind of faith. Rather than being the end of faith, these moments can introduce us to a faith rooted in trust rather than certainty." p. 142-143

"We're not always too happy about letting go of our egos and telling our overactive thought world to take a seat over there and be quiet. 'knowing' has been in charge for so long, we forget all the other stuff we read in the Bible about how we are to act toward each other. . .
    And here is the risk of love. When we love as Jesus describes, we are changed because we are letting go a little bit of what we were holding to so dearly--in my case, being right and saying so. We relax our grip, step out of ourselves, and truly see things from the perspective of someone else, which is a genuinely selfless act." p. 149

"Doubting God is painful and frightening because we think we are leaving God behind, when in fact we are only leaving behind ideas about God that we are used to surrounding ourselves with--the small God, the God within our control, the God who moves in our circles, the God who agrees with us. . .
   Doubt strips away distraction so we can see more clearly the inadequacies of whom we think God is and move us from the foolishness of thinking that our god is the God." p. 158

"Doubt is sacred. Doubt is God's instrument, will arrive in God's time, and will come from unexpected places--places out of your control. And when it does, resist the fight-or-flight impulse. Pass through it--patiently, honestly. and courageously for however long it takes. True transformation takes time." p 164

"Wanting clarity is seeking some sort of control. . . Darkness does us a favor by exposing control as an illusion." p. 170

    "When we are out of control, that is when God can speak to us--without all of the layers of God talk we have piled up inside of us. God puts us out of our control so that we can learn to trust rather than cling to knowing what we believe--a deeper state of being than the familiar meanings of belief and faith don't quite get to. . .
    Trust is letting go and learning to lean on God, and not our own insight . . .
    When faith has no room for the benefit of doubt, then we are just left with religion, something that takes its place in our lives along with other things--like a job and a hobby.
    Doubt is God's way of helping us not go there, though the road may be very hard and long." p 172

    "Part of my own journey of faith is letting go of knowing first, of sorting it all out first before I commit. For me, a big part of learning to let go of knowing is to not care how or whether my experiences can fit together in some overarching intellectual structure where my rational mind remains enthroned as the true and final arbiter of what is and isn't real." p. 180

    "I was being led to a much bigger God--and a much more interesting and caring one. . .
    these experiences have drawn me out of my safe haven of certainty and onto a path of trusting God--not trusting God that my thinking is correct or soon would be, but trusting god regardless of how certain I might feel.
    My way of thinking was being tamed . . . I was experiencing for myself what is really the point of this entire book: that trust means letting go of the need to know, of the need to be certain. And a long and honored Christian practice . . .already existed that understood that process.
    I also understood that the responsibility for where I had been and where I could go was all mine--a freeing and also unnerving thought. I was entering . . . the 'second half of life' as some call it , and was presented with the choice to remain where I had been or to press forward." p. 192

"Letting go of the need for certainty is more than just a decision about how we think; it's a decision about how we want to live.
    When the quest for finding and holding on to certainty is central to our faith, our lives are marked by traits we wouldn't normally value in others;
- unflappable dogmatic certainty
-vigilant monitoring of who's in and who's out
-preoccupation with winning debates and defending the faith
-privileging the finality of logical arguments
-conforming unquestionably to intellectual authorities and celebrities
    That kind of faith . . . is stressful and anxiety laden, and it doesn't make for healthy relationships with others."p. 204

"Rather than being quick to settle on final answers to puzzling questions, a trust-centered faith will find time to formulate wise questions that respect the mystery of God and call upon God for the courage to sit in those questions for as long as necessary before seeking a way forward. . .
    Rather than defining faithfulness as absolute conformity to authority and tribal identity, a trust-centered faith will value in others the search for true human authenticity that may take them away from the familiar borders of their faith, while trusting God to be part of that process in ourselves and others, even those closest to us.
    The choice of how we want to live is entirely ours." p. 205-206

"Rather than simply protecting the past, our faith communities have a sacred responsibility to protect the future by actively and intentionally crating a culture of trust in God, in order to deliver to our children and children's children a viable faith --
- a faith that remains open to the ever-moving Spirit and new possibilities, rather than chaining the Spirit to our past
- a faith that welcomes opportunities to think critically and reflectively on how we think about God, the World, and our place in it, rather than resting at all costs on maintaining familiar certainties."  p. 208

". . .a faith in a living God that is preoccupied with certainty is sin, for it compromises the gospel--personally, locally, and globally. But it need not remain so. As Jesus said . . 'Go your way and from now on do not sin again.' (John 8:11).
    Developing that culture of trust rather than preoccupation with certainty means discerning, articulating, and embodying the heart and soul of the Christian tradition, wile also-and just as passionaltely-remaining open to the movement of God's Spirit. . ." p.210

a culture of grit

"The drive to fit in--to conform to the group--is powerful indeed. Some of the most important psychology experiments in history have demonstrated how quickly, and usually without conscious awareness, the individual falls in line with a group that is acting or thinking a different way." (p.247 "Grit")
-angela duckworth

from "strangers in paradox" by toscano

"... the institutional church. Although the church has demonstrated considerable resistance to intellectual trends of all kinds, its has fallen prey to progressive Mormonism's salvation-by-works position at least in part because this doctrine tends to lend power and importance to the ecclesiastical structure. It reinforces the church's role as definer of good and bad attitude and behavior in every department of life from sex to parenting, diet, doctrine, economics, politics, and social attitudes. In short salvation by works feeds the church machine, empowering it to reward the "faithful" and disenfranchise the "rebellious." And this results in the syndrome of arrogance and despair we have mentioned before. This is one for the reasons why the grace/works controversy persists. When people despair of their futile efforts to perfect themselves through works, they become disenchanted with legalistic Mormonism and its institutional rigidity. They hunger for inner spiritual life, which cannot be satisfied by an ecclesiastical structure dedicated to making its members conform rather than allowing them to experience contact with God. In such a pressure cooker, some turn away somewhat from the institution and begin to privatize their religion, seeking comfort in scripture, family, and networks for like-minded friends. Ironically, the emphasis of the institution of the institution inevitably leads some individuals to reject the institution, just as the emphasis on works inevitably leads either to arrogance or to the despair that sometimes brings people finally to believe in the grace of God." (125)

Rachel Held Evans ("A Year of Biblical Womanhood")

Modesty

"Tzniut is more than just a list of rules about how to dress. It's a state of mind. The idea is to avoid dressing in a way that draws attention to your outer self, but instead to dress so that your inner self is allowed to shine through... (it) is also about how you act . . . you don't want to try to make people notice you or force yourself into the forefront for attention."

...it seems that most of the Bible's instructions regarding modesty find their context in warnings about materialism, not sexuality . . . a pattern that has gone largely unnoticed by the red-faced preacher population. I've heard dozens of sermons about keeping my legs and my cleavage out of sight, but not one about ensuring that my jewelry was not acquired through unjust or exploitive trade practices...

...true modesty has little to do with clothing or jewelry or makeup. The virtue that is celebrated in Scripture is so elusive we struggle to find words to capture its spirit -- humility, self-control, plainness, tznuit, Gelassenheit.

And so we codify. We legislate. We pull little girls to the front of the class and slap rulers against their bate legs and try to measure modesty in inches. Then we grow so attached to our rules that they long outlive their purpose, and the next thing we  know, we're adding leaves to ur tables and cutting ends of our roasts. We cling to the letter because the spirit is so much harder to master.

More often than not, this backfires, and our attempts to be different result in uniformity, our attempts to be plain draw attention to ourselves, our attempts to temper sexuality inadvertently exploit it, and our attempts to avoid offense accidentally create it. . .

It's not what we wear but how we wear it"

Martha Hughes Cannon (1857-1932)

"I know that women who stay home all the time have the most unpleasant homes there are. You give me a woman who thinks about something besides cook stoves and wash tubs and baby flannels, and I'll show you, nine times out of ten, a successful mother." -- Martha Hughes Cannon (1857-1932) First woman elected as Utah state senator in 1896

C.S. Lewis "The Great Divorce"

'Those that hate goodness are sometimes nearer than those that know nothing at all about it and think they have it already.' (Ch 9)

'There are two only two kinds of people in the end: those who say to God, "Thy will be done," and those to whom God says, in the end, "Thy will be done." All that are in Hell, choose it. Without that self-choice there could be no Hell. No soul that seriously and constantly desires joy will ever miss it. Those who seek find. To those who knock it is opened.' (Ch 9)

'Milton was right,' said my Teacher. 'The choice of every lost soul can be expressed in the words "Better to reign in Hell than serve in Heaven." There is always something they insist on keeping even at the price of misery. There is always something they prefer to joy--that is, to reality. . .' (Ch 9)

'Son', he said, 'ye cannot in your present state understand eternity. . . But ye can get some likeness of it if ye say that both good and evil, when they are full grown, become retrospective. Not only this valley but all their earthly past will have been Heaven to those who are saved. Not only the twilight in that town, but all their life on Earth too, will then be seen by the damned to have been Hell. That is what mortals misunderstand. They say of some temporal suffering, "No future bliss can make up for it," not knowing that Heaven, once attained, will work backwards and turn even that agony into a glory. And of some sinful pleasure they say "Let me have but this and I'll take the consequences": little dreaming how damnation will spread back and back into their past and contaminate the pleasure of the sin. Both processes begin even before death. The good man's past begins to change so that his forgiven sins and remembered sorrows take on the quality of Heaven: the bad man's past already conforms to his badness and is filled only with dreariness. And that is why, at the end of all things, when the sun rises here and the twilight turns to blackness down there, the Blessed wills say "we have never lived anywhere except in Heaven," and the Lost, "We were always in Hell." And both will speak truly.'  (Ch 9)

'. . . the Saved . . . what happens to them is best describe as the opposite of a mirage. What seemed, when they entered it, to be the vale of misery turns out, when they look back, to have been a well; and where present experience saw only salt deserts, memory truthfully records that the pools were full of water . . . Hell is a state of mind--ye never said a truer word. And every state of mind, left to itself , every shutting up of the creature within the dungeon of its own mind--is, in the end, Hell. But Heaven is not a state of mind. Heaven is reality itself. All that is fully real is Heavenly.' (Ch 9)

''Pity was meant to be a spur that drives joy to help misery. But it can be used the wrong way round. It can be used for a kind of blackmailing. Those who choose misery can hold joy up to ransom, by pity. . . Did you think joy was created to live always under that threat? Always defenseless against those who would rather be miserable than have their self-will crossed? . . . Either the day must come when joy prevails and all the makers fo misery are no longer able to infect it: or else for ever and ever the makers of misery can destroy in others the happiness they reject for themselves. . .The action of Pity will live for ever: but the passion of Pity will not. The passion of Pity, the Pity we merely suffer . . . that will die. It was used as a weapon by bad men against good ones: their weapon will be broken.' (Ch 13)

'Friend, I am not suggesting at all. You see, I know now. Let us be frank. Our opinions were not honestly come by. We simply found ourselves in contact with a certain current of ideas and plunged into it because it seemed modern and successful. At College, you know, we just started automatically writing the kind of essays that got good marks and saying the kind of things that won applause. When, in our whole lives, did we honestly face, in solitude, the one question on which all turned: whether after all the Supernatural might not in fact occur? When did we put of one moment's real resistance to the loss of our faith?' (Ch 5)

'I'm asking for nothing but my rights. You may think you can put me down . . . But I got to have my rights same as you, see?'
'Oh no. It's not so bad as that. I haven't got my rights, or I should not be here. You will not get yours either. You'll get something far better. Never fear.' (Ch 4)

study of 'endow'

endow: 'to invest with qualities or characteristics' from
endue: 'to provide with some quality or trait' b. 'to clothe'
induce: 'to lead'
eu-1: 'to dress'