Faithful Unbelief

In Mark 9:24 a distraught father, at the end of his rope, cried out his final plea to a God who had failed him: “I believe, help me overcome my unbelief.”

That father was in the midst of a crisis of faith. He had tried everything he could think of to heal his son, but nothing worked. He’d even come to Jesus’ disciples who were supposed to be able to do things that no one else could do. When they failed too it seemed like the end for this ever hoping, yet hopeless father.

Then Jesus walked up. He started to dig into what was going on and learned of the disciples’ failure. He made it clear that anything is possible for one who believes.

That statement is life and death.

When faith is easy, it’s a joy to know that God is on your side. It adds to strength to consider that God makes anything possible. When the blessings are flowing, faith flows with them.

But when faith is hard, the idea that anything being possible for those who believe feels like another boot to the back keeping you down. It’s just another indication of how hopeless you really are. If you could simply have enough faith, God would provide. So the failure is yours, not God’s. It’s your lack of faith. Your disbelief. Your failure. Your death.

But that desperate father wouldn’t give up. Even though faith was hard for him and he was filled with unbelief, he didn’t see just two options.

We live in an either/or world that likes to divide things into neat piles. It is either this or that. It’s either here or there. It’s either conservative or liberal. It’s either science or faith. It’s either logical or emotional. It’s either faith or unbelief.

The father refused to be bounded by either/or. He claimed both faith and unbelief. He scattered the neat piles and destroyed the divisions. So Jesus smote him. Smote him good.

No, Jesus loved him.

It’s almost like a Kobayashi Maru, the fictional test for Starfleet officers in the Star Trek universe. It’s a no-win situation. No matter what option you choose in the test it turns out badly. It’s designed as a test of character to determine how potential officers react to real-life no-win situations.

Captain Kirk didn’t accept the rules. He denied that there could be a no-win situation so he found another way. He reprogrammed the test.

The desperate father didn’t accept that there could be an either/or situation. He wanted both/and. And Jesus gave it to him. Happily.

Jesus healed the boy. The father’s son was well. The faithful unbelief of the father was rewarded.

The idea of faithful unbelief isn’t often explored. We usually read the bible from an either/or perspective. Either people are faithful or they are unbelievers. We don’t usually have categories for the both/and, for the faithful unbelievers.

Yet that happens all the time. Faithful unbelief is something that everyone deals with, if they’re honest. Death, loss, divorce, sickness, bankruptcy, unemployment: doubt-causers. For the desperate father it was the incurable sickness of his son. For others it might be years of unemployment. Or mental illness that won’t flee from medicine and therapy. Or a relationship that is so broken mending it seems impossible. Or a death that comes suddenly and leaves broken hearts in its wake.

Doubt-causers will strike every life. Guaranteed.

So what do you do? How do you cope? How do you process through a doubt-causer in a faithful way?

What does Faithful Unbelief look like?

Join us for thirteen conversations exploring faith, doubt, questions, answers, and how to have faithful unbelief.

1. Being Uncertainly Certain
1. Why what we think we know isn’t always what we know.
2. Cognitive Dissonance
1. The power and danger of thinking two different things at the same time.
3. The Cycle of Learning
1. How our reason, experience and emotions combine to create knowledge
4. Asking Questions
1. Exploring the different motivations for asking questions.
5. Asking Logical Questions
1. A brief overview of logic, its questions and potential answers.
6. Asking Emotional Questions
1. How feelings spur questions that logic may not be able to answer and what to do about it.  
7. Searching for Answers
1. Ways to begin processing questions: study, conversation, experience, journaling, meditation, counseling, etc.
8. Searching for Meaning
1. Touching on the difference between answers and meaning and what each one can offer.
9. Discovering Truth
1. How will you know when you know what you know?
10. Big T Truth versus Little T Truth.
1. How finding your truth may or may not have anything to do with Truth.
11. Change
1. How to use both feelings and actions to create change, and why you should do it.
12. Cognitive Consonance
1. Re-aligning your brain to a new reality is painful and rewarding.
13. Re-Engage the Questions
1. The cycle of faithful unbelief continues. Learn how to keep the process going in a healthy way.

Why the Conversation Matters or What Heisenberg has to Teach Us about Life

Albert Einstein famously responded to Heisenberg's uncertainty principle with the quip, "God does not play dice with the universe."

Einstein hated the rise of quantum physics even though it was a direct result of his work.

So, what does that have to do with conversation? I'm glad you asked. Heisenberg's uncertainty principle is the quantum application of the observer effect which states that when measuring a system, the observer changes the system. This effect is so pronounced when taking measurements at the quantum level that the observer must be considered as a part of the system being measured.

Make sense?

Okay, let me try again. If you check the pressure of the air in your tire, you have to let some of the air out in order to gauge what's going on inside the tire. You change the system to measure the system. If you wanted to do a quantum measurement of the electrons of the molecules inside the tire, your act of measuring would make you a part of the system.

The same thing happens in conversations. I had a conversation on Facebook recently about gay marriage. It got up to 265 comments over the course of 5 days. Toward the end several people were questioning the point of such a lengthy discussion since no one appeared to be changing opinions on the matter. I don't think anyone did end up changing views, but they all changed. Every person who contributed to the conversation was changed for it.

By measuring your thoughts, you change your thoughts. You cannot state what you think without affecting what you think. So by being forced to type out words, everyone in the conversation was also forced to subtly change their minds. Then, in addition, they were forced to specifically address their thoughts toward opposing views, and since I won't brook abusive, dismissive comments, they had to do it in relationship with others.

That changes people. That changed me.

Even though my opinion on gay marriage isn't substantially different now than it was before, I better understand why those who disagree with me hold their views. They better understand why I hold my views. And, I think, we're all better for it.

How have you benefited from having a conversation in which no one changes their opinion?

Opinions on Gay Marriage are Shifting for Everyone

Yesterday NPR pointed to new research from Pew that says people's opinions about gay marriage are changing.

Currently more people support gay marriage than oppose it (49% to 44%), which is a change from previous views. But the astounding statistic that comes out of this research is that 28% of people who currently support gay marriage used to opposed it.

It's a rarity in modern social and political spheres for people to so radically change their minds. What could cause such a shift in opinions on such a divisive topic?

Relationship.

People changed their mind on gay marriage because of a relationship with someone homosexual. It's much harder to oppose something when you put a face on it. It's much easier to change your mind when you do it out of care for someone.

Relationships change minds far more than statistics, logic, rhetoric, or pleading. Knowing someone and being known by someone is, perhaps, the most powerful way to convince someone. It creates a cognitive dissonance to see someone who seems good and to ascribe to them the label of evil. It's difficult to believe that gay people are bad when you know a good one.

Do you know any homosexual people? How has your relationship changed your mind?

Embrace Fear

"The only thing we have to fear is fear itself," quoth Franklin Roosevelt.

In some sense that's absolutely true, our fears are based on our imagination far more than on reality. But what if we didn't perceive fear as a negative emotion? What if we decided that fear was simply a barometer pointing to the reality of our lives?

What if fear stopped being something we avoid and started being something we embrace?

Not that we should become fear junkies who seek the next fright-fix, nor that we should hope to encounter terrifying situations, those aren't helpful.

But fear is. Helpful, that is. It tells us when there's something that we want to avoid, and often that thing is something we really ought to do.

Think about it. Top fears - once you get past spiders, snakes, and rats - are public speaking, dealing with conflict, and pursuing dreams.

We fear what we need to do. We know what's good. We're easily able to determine what is good, but we have a hard time moving to do the good that we know we ought to do. We're afraid. We run from the fear and so we don't do the good that we ought to do.

Instead of running from fear, we should embrace it. As Brene Brown says, "Lean into the discomfort."

Growth is uncomfortable; it's scary. But that doesn't mean we should avoid it.

Fear, Guilt, and Life

Fear and guilt aren't bad things. They help us to identify what's going on in our lives. They are powerful, useful markers that should increase our awareness of what we're doing.

But we've shifted so that we are driven by our feelings rather than being driven by purpose. It would be like planning your life around which gas station you can get to with your car rather than just finding a station when the tank is low.

Fear and guilt signals that something's happening, not unlike the low-gas light on your vehicle. But what you do with the signal matters far more than the signal itself. We've become signal averse rather than signal aware.

We think it's the light that should be avoided rather than the low gas level. So we might do things like put tape over the light, remove the fuse, or constantly and obsessively fill the tank ever few miles.

It's no different with fear and guilt when we seek to numb them, avoid them, or constantly assuage them through some sort of penance or ritual.

We're missing the point of the emotional signals we have.

How do you work to integrate fear and guilt into your life rather than avoiding them?

We were Made for This

In the origin story, we read about two trees being place in the garden. One tree was life, the other knowledge. The tree of knowledge was forbidden. Yet it was grasped anyway.

In some ways it seems that the church has interpreted this to mean that knowledge is evil. If it was a sin to take and eat of the tree of knowledge, then it must be wrong to pursue knowledge now. The conclusion became that knowledge itself was wrong.

What if that's not the case? What if we were made for knowledge and he problem wasn't in gaining it, but in gaining it too soon?

In the biblical stories, the life-tree never leaves. It's in the beginning and at the end. We were always meant to eat from it. We were made to eat from it.

What if we were made to eat from the knowledge-tree too? Just not yet.

Look at a child who is confronted with the knowledge of good and evil before they're ready. Children who suffer through abuse and tragedy don't have the mental power to cope with what they've learned. They gain the knowledge of good and evil but lack the ability to comprehend them. So, most often, they shut down in various ways.

What if that's what happened to humanity?

What if we became aware of good, and it was too much for us, so we feared it? We covered our nakedness and put up barriers to vulnerable relationships because the sheer goodness of them is terrifying.

What if we became aware of evil and it was too much for us, so we felt guilty? We let guilt overwhelm us and blind us so that something minor exploded into a major problem; greed gave birth to murder.

These twin demons of fear and guilt are coping mechanisms that our immature minds threw up against the onslaught of overwhelming knowledge. And since that moment in the garden we've been grasping forward trying to deal with the knowledge that was thrust on us long before we were ready for it.

Knowledge isn't bad; we were made to eat from the knowledge-tree. We just got there too soon.

Questions of the Heart

Today's blog lives on another site. You should go there and read it.

My friend Peter asked me to write a guest post for his blog. The title I chose was: "Questions of the Heart."

Here's a teaser for you:

"Growing up in church, I was taught that certainty, not cleanliness, is what’s next to godliness. From the pulpit to the Sunday school classroom, we were told that we could be sure of our faith. It came as a surprise to me, then, when I discovered the many of the heroes of faith in the Bible have struggled with questions."

 You should go and read the rest. And leave a comment over there.

Then it All Went Wrong

It seemed like a good idea at the time. It really did. The Industrial Revolution transformed our world. It shaped government, economics, education, religion, and nearly everything else about our world. We found ways to make things faster, cheaper, more long-lasting, more interchangeable, and more profitable.

We went from a world where everything was hand-crafted as a unique item. Every bowl, gun, book, ship, house, and saddle were unique. They cost a lot of money, time, and effort to produce which helped to keep the poor poor and concentrated power in the hands of the few rich. But with the Industrial Revolution we learned how to replicate identical copies of a prototype.

So we tried to replicate identical copies of the United States government around the world.

We tried to replicate copies of intelligent people through our educational system.

We tried to replicate copies of our religious leaders through our churches.

While you can easily copy a tire, mass-produce it, and end up with better, cheaper results, it's actually detrimental to try to do the same thing with government, intelligence, and religion. We took the good of the Industrial Revolution and made it a bad thing by over-applying it.

Sir Ken Robinson points out that schools are killing rather than nurturing creativity. One of his main complaints is: “If you’re not prepared to be wrong, you’ll never come up with anything original.”

Yet we've designed an educational system that systematically punishes students for doing exactly what they need to do in order to learn and grow.

How messed up is that?

People, and the systems made up of people, cannot be replicated. Human beings are not interchangeable parts to be swapped out on a whim. With each person, with each generation, we need to provide opportunities for growth and change. We need to provide opportunities to doubt, question, and grow.

The current generation needs to take up the ideas of racism and civil rights and examine them anew. They can't rely on the conclusions of the past. The current generation needs to work through the deepest questions of religion and philosophy for themselves.

We should, absolutely, interact with the great thinkers who have gone before. But they aren't molds into which we inject our own minds to be conformed to their way of thinking. Rather they are guides who've blazed a trail for us. It's on us, however, to walk the path--or to choose to blaze our own trail.

You Can Never be Right without being Wrong

We're born with the innate capacity to be drastically wrong and still be okay with it. Babies eat dirt and, most of them, learn that dirt doesn't taste very good. Toddlers touch something hot and learn that it's a bad idea. Children crash their bikes and learn that the jump was too high.

But somewhere on into the teenage and early adult years we start making the switch. We have, somewhere, gotten the idea that to be an adult is to be right. I wonder where children could have ever gotten the impression that adulthood is the equivalent of always being right...

But it's the very people who eschew the idea that we're right who are our greatest innovators and heroes. The dirt-eating baby who grows up continuing to try new and daring combinations of flavors might be a famous chef or a prize-winning chemist. The toddler who burned her hand might grow up to develop new technology to keep us safe in our cars. The child who crashed his bike might grow up to be a test pilot and get to crash even bigger things.

We have this dual-personality issue in our society where we laud those who embrace being wrong only once they've been wrong enough times to be right. We focus on the end rather than the means that got them to that end. We don't praise Edison for his failed bulbs, but for his success. We don't praise Asimov for his terrible writing, but for his breakout works. We don't praise Steve Jobs for NeXT, but for OS X and iOS.

What if we started praising people for failing? What if we started encouraging people to be wrong?

How would that change our schools? Our jobs? Our government? Our churches?

Most of the major breakthroughs in history would have been impossible without people being wrong. Why then, are we so averse to it?

Lessons in being Wrong

Happy Sequestration Day!

Today is the feared, dreaded, awful day on which the sequestration of federal government funds takes effect and mandates spending cuts across the board.

We're here for one reason: no one is willing to be wrong.

The Democrats won't admit do being wrong. The Republicans won't admit to being wrong. The president won't admit to being wrong. The senate won't admit to being wrong. The house won't admit to being wrong.

But in some ways they're all wrong. They've all made mistakes. It's not a surprise (or it shouldn't be) that human beings thought one thing was right and, after time, discovered that it wasn't. That's the story of how we've progressed from stone-age cave-dwellers to masters of our world (which we're admitting that we've been wrong about).

"Hey, maybe it wasn't a good idea to eat that chicken raw."
"Hey, maybe you're right. That was a mistake. I'll try to fix that in the future." 

"Hey, maybe it wasn't a good idea to racially enslave people."
"Hey, maybe you're right. That was a mistake. I'll try to fix that in the future." 

"Hey, maybe it wasn't a good idea to make that asbestos so easy to inhale."
"Hey, maybe you're right. That was a mistake. I'll try to fix that in the future."

But, for whatever reason, the current government seems incapable of having a similar conversation. And, for whatever reason, the current church seems incapable of having a similar conversation.

There's no danger in being wrong, or even in the possibility of being wrong. The greatest danger is in convincing ourselves that we can never be wrong.

Am I right?

Why Infallibility, Omnipotence, and Omniscience should be Banned from Faith

The pope, Benedict XVI is retiring and, in so doing, is losing his claim to papal infallibility. Up until February 28, 2013 anything that he says as the leader of the Catholic Church is considered to be infallible and a part of the church's doctrine. However when he ceases to be the leader, he won't be infallible anymore.

But was he ever? Really?

There are arguments for and against papal infallibility and there are similar arguments for and against biblical infallibility, but how do they really help the Christian cause?

I don't think they do. Really.

When we start off with the supposition that something is infallible that puts it beyond questioning, but that's exactly what we need to do with the bible and the doctrines of the church. The book of scripture that we have today didn't come about because it was deemed infallible, it came about because it was deemed useful by the people of God putting it into practice.

Put another way: they tried it and they liked it. The put the bible to the test of life and it passed. Not every book did, those ones were left out. The ones that remain contain a united story of God seeking out his people from the beginning of time to the end. It's a beautiful story. But we only have it because our faithful forbears had the audacity to question scripture.

Which brings us to the doctrines of omnipotence and omniscience - that God can do anything and knows everything. It sounds good, but it's actually a problematic position that doesn't come from the bible.

Go back to Genesis - what does God do immediately after creating the world? He rests. Now that might be because he was tired (we don't really know), but we do know that he rests. Later in Genesis God and Abraham are bargaining over the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah, Abraham questions God's plan and God is willing to change his mind in response to Abraham's plea (we get this again from Moses, Job, David, and the city of Nineveh). If God knows everything then the appearance of free will and the necessity of prayer become mere playthings rather than relational necessities.

Rather than saying the bible is infallible, we should affirm that it is useful.
Rather than saying God is omnipotent, we should affirm that he is powerful.
Rather than saying God is omniscient, we should affirm that is is supremely wise.

When we step back from the precipice of the infinite we allow God and the bible to be in relationship with us and us with them. Relationship must allow for mystery, questions, conversation, and revelation. If one side of the relationship is unquestionable, unknowable, and unreachable then it's not a true relationship.

So, how big of a heretic am I?

Why I Don't Need to Prove God Exists

I've been challenged to prove that God exists. I won't try. It's not because I believe God doesn't exist. I very much believe that God exists, that the Bible reveals him, that Jesus is his son, and that God, through the Spirit, dwells with me.

But I can't prove it. I have experience, but no evidence.

There are many, many arguments for the existence of God. I've studied most of them. I like some of them. But I don't really want to use any of them.

Here's why:

• Incontrovertible truth is based on observation. 
• God cannot be observed, therefore God cannot be proved incontrovertibly. 
• Therefore any attempt to prove God's existence will be rejected by those who are predisposed to reject the existence of the unobserved. 
• So, proofs for the existence of God are mental exercise that reinforces beliefs already held by those already predisposed to believe in God. 

To put it another way, I don't need to prove God exists to people who already believe he exists; I can't prove God exists to those who refuse to believe that God exists. 

Working on proofs for the existence of God may help to strengthen the faith of believers, but it doesn't do anything to affect the non-believer. 

Those who flatly deny the existence of God do so (most often) from the perspective of observation. God cannot be observed, therefore God must not exist (or God's existence is meaningless to the observer).

This, however, presupposes the reliability of the observer and the ability of that observer to reason from his or her observation to the reality of the observed world. The existence of synesthetes shows that our observation isn't tied to the reality of the world we observe. 

Synesthesia is the condition where senses are crossed in some way. Synesthetes may see color when they hear a sound or they might perceive numbers as always having the same shape or connect smells with a touch-like feeling. The synesthete's brain crosses signals from the different senses and conflates the information. The letter 'A' isn't actually red, but a synesthete will perceive it that way. 

The existence of synesthesia goes to prove that the human brain doesn't deal with reality, but the filtered version of reality interpreted by the senses. Your observation may or may not relate to reality. 

Because of this, a strictly empirical worldview (one that rejects any a priori assumptions) is functionally impossible since the most basic assumption of Empiricism is that observation provides a reliable window into the world.

So, me proving that God exists is akin to proving that the world exists. I can't do it, but I can live like it's true. 

How Faith and Reason can Coexist

It's not possible to develop a purely rational philosophy (nor is it possible to have a functional worldview based solely on faith).

I've blogged about Faith and Reason in the past. Recently I've been having a conversation with someone regarding those blogs and the viability of faith in the light of reason. His assertion is that faith is useless and reason is the only true basis for life.

This view is problematic for several reasons, not the least of which is the underlying presupposition that individual observation is a stable foundation. Descartes famously said, "Cogito ergo sum." From this (I think therefore I am) he sought to base an entire worldview. The problem is that thoughts are fickle, mutable things.

Take for example, the experiment in which subjects were fitted with glasses that flipped their vision. The special visors used mirrors to present the wearers with a world that was upside-down. After a few days their brains rotated the image. While wearing the visors the light entered their eyes flipped, but their brains changed the perceived image to make sense of it. When the visors were removed, they would look at the world in the same way we do, but see it flipped (their brains hadn't caught up with the change yet). After a few more days, things were back to normal.

Our brains decide whether what we're seeing works within its various schema. If a schema is violated, the brain may just decide to adjust the observation rather than the schema. Your brain thinks that things should be right-side-up so it will change what you observe to make it so.

Not even our senses can provide us a firm foundation for observation from which to reason. We must accept (on faith) that what we're observing bears some approximation to reality. Even if we make no other assumptions about the world or what we observe, we are forced to make the first assumption that our senses are trustworthy and our minds are giving us a valid representation of the world.

Luckily we weren't made to live solely from reason (or solely from faith). They compliment and amplify each other (even as they tear each other apart).

Faith versus Reason

Just as music must be performed, faith must be lived. Reason and faith vie for your focus and it's nearly impossible to engage them both simultaneously. Multitasking is a neurological impossibility, and so faith and reason are individual activities. They can reinforce and compliment each other, but our limited minds can't hold both of them together at the same time.

When two separate activities occur together, the pace is almost never the same. Rehearsing music improves the technical aspects, but the feeling and pathos of the piece lags behind. When the emotional power of the music is engaged, the notes and rhythm might suffer. We work on one and then the other. Musicians balance the work so that the technical skills and the emotional connection are both in sync. If either one is missing, the music is lost.

A ship is made to sail. Limiting it to a safe harbor is denying its purpose. But it's in the safe harbor where as ship is built, where it's repaired after the storm, where it goes when the journey is over. The harbor isn't the antithesis of what a ship is made for, it's the impetus. It's in the harbor where the journey is made possible, but only by leaving the harbor does the journey begin.

Reason challenges, critiques and dissects. It leaves no corner unexamined. Reason doubts the existence of God, because there is no physical evidence. Reason analyzes the bible to see if it's reliable. Reason looks at the historical failings of the church to predict the future suffering that Christianity will cause. Reason constructs doctrine out of the pieces that survive the culling process.

Faith supports, encourages and motivates. It moves forward boldly. Faith trusts God without requiring proof. Faith judges the bible on its message, not its reliability. Faith looks at the historical failings of the church, weeps, and hopes for a future where the suffering Christianity has caused will be forgiven. Faith constructs a picture of God by stitching together the disparate pieces of religion and spirituality.

Neither faith nor reason are paramount. Both support each other, even as they undermine each other.

The answer isn't to choose one over the other. It's not an either/or proposition. Both/and is an option. Dwell with reason, suss out the meaning of a text, wrestle with doctrine and dogma. Then live in faith, act on the message of a text, wrestle with the closeness and power of God.

Reason calcifies, faith liquefies, together they produce a firm, yet flexible foundation for life.

Reason versus Faith

There seems to be a contradiction between faith and reason. Recently  “University of British Columbia study finds that analytic thinking can decrease religious belief, even in devout believers” The research looked into the way in which problem-solving thought processes affected the self-reporting of religious belief. When participants used analytic thought, belief went down, but intuitive thought did not adversely affect belief.

So, what does this all mean?

From personal experience I have to say this is true. When we analyze something, we apply critical thinking skills and look for flaws. The closest analogy is the difference between rehearsing a song and finally performing it. In the rehearsal, every note is analyzed, the rhythm, pitch, tone and tempo are all dissected. Once the elements of the song are mastered, then they can be put back together to form a coherent whole. But in working on a difficult piece, I will often just speak the words in rhythm to get the pronunciation down. Or I’ll sing the notes without the words to cement the melody. I’m applying so much focus to the act of learning the music that it ceases to be come musical. It’s mechanical. Rote.

The process can stop there. With music, art, writing and religion. There are many people who study these disciplines, dissecting them to the most rudimentary components. Art is about the styles and periods, writing is grammar and syntax, and religion is a series of propositions that must be accepted or denied. It’s mechanical. Rote.

When I rehearse the music enough I can get past the mechanics. What was once dissected is whole again. I don’t have to think laboriously about the words, notes and rhythms. Instead I can focus on the meaning, feeling and musicality of the song. That’s the moment that makes all the effort worthwhile, when I can sing the song as it was meant to be: whole, complete and full. Technical proficience will never produce music. The notes, words and rhythms may be correct, but music is more than that. Music engages the soul as well as the mind.

Analytic thinking has, for me, reduced my religious feelings. It’s hard to believe strongly in God when I’m studying the arguments for the existence of God. My brain is looking for the logical fallacies, not engaging on an emotional level. Prolonged religious study can damage or even cripple religious feeling. I’ve seen it in the people I went to school with. Working through the rationale of faith is a natural and necessary part of discovery. It’s a good thing. But it must happen in context with belief. The head and the heart need to be engaged and communicating.

But what do you do when the head and the heart disagree? 

Doubt and Faith

Seth Godin is chock full of good words:

Living with doubt

... is almost always more profitable than living with certainty.

People don't like doubt, so they pay money and give up opportunities to avoid it. Entrepreneurship is largely about living with doubt, as is creating just about any sort of art.

If you need reassurance, you're giving up quite a bit to get it.

On the other hand, if you can get in the habit of seeking out uncertainty, you'll have developed a great instinct.

In order to apply this to a Christian context I would say that living with doubt is better for us and for our neighbors. Doubt really is no fun. Constantly questioning and wondering gets tiring after a while, but when we live with doubt we are expressing our faith. See, it's not faith if we are certain - if we have proof we don't need to believe. But if we can learn to live in the awkward, tense space of doubt we can invite others to believe.