Evangelicalism tried to baptize certainty, tried to make it sacred, tried to force us into a binary where doubt meant faithlessness and certainty mean faith. “Now faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see” (Hebrews 11:1), exhorts the author of Hebrews in a verse I have memorized from seeing it on a poster in a high school classroom. The NIV translation uses the word certain, and boy did we ever run with that. Meanwhile, the CEB version is phrased: “Faith is the reality of what we hope for, the proof of what we don’t see.” And the NRSV translation reads: “Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.”
Here in just three translations, a key word that for much of my life was given as the benchmark for faith – certainty – is but one understanding of the original Greek text. The others, proof and conviction carry similar meanings, but I wonder at what we’ve lost in holding so tightly to just one version. Certainty, by definition, means known for sure, established beyond doubt. Meanwhile, proof means evidence or argument establishing or helping to establish a fact or the truth of statement. And conviction is a firmly held belief or opinion. Each of these meanings require some form of evidence predicating what is being described. Justifying, perhaps. By no means am I a Greek scholar, but I feel that I can intuit that there is more to this verse than simply admonishing people thousands of years after it was written to be absolutely and completely certain in their faith, or else they have none at all.
In each of the examples that Hebrews lists after describing faith, there is an unexpected ending, one that by human standards was anything but certain.
Abel offered to Gd a more acceptable sacrifice than Cain. The younger son was favored over the older, a theme we see repeat throughout the biblical narrative but would have been unheard of by the cultures surrounding these stories.
Enoch was taken so that he would not experience death. Another unexpected outcome; who thinks with any certainty that a human won’t one day, by one means or another, die?
Noah was warned by Gd about events yet unseen, respected the warning, and built an ark to save his household. Surely the idea of a flood wiping out the earth was anything but a certainty to anyone, then or now.
And so on, we are given example after example of a humans interacting with Gd, and the expected is turned upside down and it is the unexpected that is raised up in the end.
There is a beautiful mystery at work here in this alchemy of contrary things.
Much like the idea of death being transformed into life.
Yet we see it, over and over again, and are promised it, over and over again still.
“Look, I am making all things new!” (Revelation 21:5)
Evangelicalism told me my questions meant doubt, that I should just “Be still” and believe (a shitty reference to Psalm 46:10). In that system, uncertainty threatened faith. It glorified certainty and vilified questions.
Why do I care about all this now? Nearly sixteen years since the beginning of my deconstruction, why do I still revert back to the things I was taught in my childhood and youth?
For one, because frankly I’m mad about it. I’m mad that I and so many like me were sold a counterfeit faith. We were told to follow the rules, stay in line, do what you’re told, and everything will turn out fine. So we did. We played by the rules. So much so that when life inevitably happened, we believed with such certainty that we were the problem. We simply weren’t enough.
The other is because of the ones who didn’t make it this far. The ones who were crushed, in body or in spirit; the ones who were crucified by a Church system that worshipped a crucified Gd.
Because the idea that to have faith you have to bury or apologetic-away your questions, that you have to be doubt-free, you have to be, above all things, certain of what we do not see – this idea is bad theology.
And bad theology kills.
I believe in a crucified and resurrected Gd, who sought out his understandably terrified friends and showed them his wounds. Who, when his friend Thomas wasn’t there to witness this and was understandably skeptical, our Gd sought him out too.
Certainty, at least in the way I was once taught, is a practice of individualism. If we are absolutely certain of everything, we don’t need anyone.
But our Gd is a Gd of relationship. Of community. Our Gd wrapped Gd’s starry self in human flesh, and came to us in the most vulnerable of forms. Our Gd lived amongst us, laughed and cried and taught and fed and ate and saw and forgave. Over and over and over again.
Maybe the point isn’t in being certain, but in letting go of certainty. Letting go of the constructs that our human minds can conceive of, of being open to mystery.
Lent is about Wilderness. Each Lent we read the story of Jesus being driven out into the wilderness, where he was utterly alone but for the cold night, the burning day, and the accuser – Satan – to tempt him. It was from that transformational experience that Jesus moved towards his ministry. Yet another unexpected outcome.
This Lent has me wondering about other sorts of Wilderness. There is all sorts of terrible things out there, sure, but what if transformation is part of it all?
We are transformed in the most unexpected places and in the most unexpected ways. None of that sounds like any sort of certainty to me.
Yesterday I took my 5 year old niece to the Botanical Gardens. I had been there a week ago on my own and was excited to see what a week’s worth of late February sunshine and rain could mean for the gardens; and I knew my niece would love the chance to run around and explore. We both delighted in seeing the green tips of the first buds peeking out of their brown beds. We imagined what it will look like a week or a month from now. At the water lily pond, brown squares floated in leaf-littered water, and we imagined the seeds sleeping under the surface of the dirt. Sleeping and dreaming and waiting.
Who can know the things the seeds do in the dark?
Science, of course, tells us of stratification and the beginnings of the plant life cycle and the dividing and growing that starts in the secret depths of the velvet darkness.
But to the naked eye, we pass by plots of dirt littered with leaves and the stalks of last season’s dead plants; we can’t see the genesis happening so close to us, yet worlds away. In tiny, unseen ways.
This is what I believe faith to be. It isn’t a faith I can define exactly. Like different seeds require different nutrients, different types of soils, different depths, different processes of cold and heat, so too, every human being is different. Our connection to the Divine around and within us is different. Our faiths are different. Uncertain, even. But still good.
I’m reminded of a quote from C.S. Lewis’ The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe:
“Is he quite safe? I shall feel rather nervous about meeting a lion.”
“… Safe?” said Mr Beaver … “Who said anything about safe? Course he isn’t safe. But he’s good.”
With respect to the author, to suggest that Hebrews 1:11 engenders a harsh delineation of what is an isn’t faith gives no thought to context or the nuances of an ancient text translated from its original language. I believe the story in the margins and between the meanings of words, the spirit of these ancient words of hope and prophecy and life written and recorded by and to people moving through different times and places towards wholeness and safety and community – these are the places where seemingly contrary things are alchemized by the Living Gd, where dry bones are breathed over and into, where life springs from death.
Certainty is too small for this sort of thing.
evergreen vox 
