Becoming an Agnostic About Some Things

How uncertainty is helping me find my way forward.

Photo by Justin Kauffman on Unsplash

At 70 years of age, I am more curious than I am certain. My curiosity is something I am paying deep attention to these days. Substack is my place of wondering. Substack is my place to dig out what I can now hold. Substack is my little one year old community that tells me, nearly ever time I post, that I am not alone. That my path is filled with people just like me. Perhaps, my words might shed some light. I’m sure we do not all agree on what I say. That’s not the point. My point is to share some insights and to shed a bit of light out there.

Let’s see if there’s any light when I tell you this:  I am more an more an agnostic. Not so much about God but about whether I can say, for sure I believe in:  Red States or Blue States; in slick church or organized church. There are many things I am less and less convinced of these days.

 Curiosity is taking me out into the world to learn what I can know. It is taking me into a different river of faith—now an Episcopal practice of faith and I lose my footing on the rocks, liturgies and robes. I’m still new in this river and am beginning to see some white water. I am not use to all the words, prayers and books we have to hold to maneuver our way through a worship service. In one recent service, I attended, I told Gwen on the way home, “I’m just not sure about THAT.” By “that” I meant, all the words, and there are a lot of them in the liturgies. But yesterday, I went to the service, and I did not struggle. I actually liked it. I’m watching myself as I wade out and in. Trust me.

I’m not sure about some things these days. I am uncertain. I am more uncertain than I have ever been.

It was in 1996 that Dallas Willard, philosopher and author of Divine Conspiracy, told me in a spiritual direction session that Jesus only said the word, “church” a couple of times in his entire life.  Willard went further, when Jesus used the word “church” he implied a micro-organism made up of two to three people. He told me, “the only church ever described was the church of two or three.”

I have never recovered from hearing Willard’s epiphany. Willard’s words undid me and I am still undone. Once I heard someone like Willard, so intelligent, so widely regarded, so humble say something like this, I began pulling a thread which is still unraveling it seems.

What has evolved—the popes, rings and robes; the mega movement and church planting movement; the programs, business and imperialism; the corporate vibe and hierarchy of denominationalism may be more influenced by humans than Spirit; more fashioned by power than humility; more driven by ego than Jesus; more intoxicated with the allurement of success than downward mobility.

I have sat with the above sentence for a week now, and it still fits, so I’m not going to delete it for you here.

Let it be known that I was a part of much of that and it has been a tangled mess to untangle my soul to discover and experience what Jesus might have intended. I admit it. I confess it. I am moving in a different direction now—which is the literal meaning of the word, “repent.”  To repent of something, like alcohol or a position you once held or an act you did from time to time—perhaps many times, is to go in a different direction.

I am an ecclestiastical agnostic.

What is clear to me is that I am unclear about the church. I think I am actually an agnostic when it comes to the church.  I am now calling myself and “ecclesiastical agnostic.” I just don’t know any more about the church. 

An agnostic is according to Merriam-Webster Dictionary:

1: a person who holds the view that any ultimate reality (such as God) is unknown and probably unknowable

broadly : one who is not committed to believing in either the existence or the nonexistence of God or a god

2: a person who is unwilling to commit to an opinion about something

political agnostics

What has contributed to this unwillingness to “commit to an opinion” lately has been the marriage of politics and the church. When the evangelical Christian church endorses one political candidate over another one; when nationalism invades the sacred spaces of worship and sanctuaries for our souls, then I know that I am not only an ecclesiastical agnostic, but I am one of the “dones” one of the largest defined categories of people in today’s world who are saying, “I’m done. I can’t take this any longer.”

It’s not just that, I now call myself an “ecclesiastical agnostic,” but I am also a political agnostic. I don’t know about politics. More and more, I feel distant from caring. I might be numb. I might be traumatized. I might be sick of it….but what ever I “might be”, it has all made me not know—unwilling now to commit to an opinion.

I am at 70 years of age and am more uncertain than at any time in my entire life. I could make a list of many of the things I am uncertain about.  The Jewish Rabbi, Yehudan Bedersi, writes, “The ultimate purpose of knowledge is to know that we do not know.” 

It seems that with each decade of my life, has come another widening circle that keeps on reaching out and reaching in as well.

What is strange is this, as I release my efforts to know; to stand on strong opinions and convictions, the more at peace I am.  My letting go of the need to know; the need to have an opinion and the need to even express my opinion is bringing about a deeper peace and sense of shalom than I ever thought possible. 

Perhaps this release is actually my invitation now to move into poetry—into an art form with my words that captures my intent through less words, symbols and metaphors. Some say, this is actually wisdom. I’m to new at it right now to say for sure.

The theologian, Martin Buber writes, “All journeys have secret destinations of which the traveler is unaware.” Perhaps, I am on a journey that is actually leading me to a secret destination. Again, I'm not sure. It’s too early to tell. I feel at 70, I’ve just really begun now and can shed my backpack filled with unessential items that I now longer need. As strange as it is to tell you, I am still greening; still renewing my heart and my soul is more alive than I have ever experirenced. And I don’t know what to make of it.  Rumi tells us  “As you start to walk out on the way, the way appears.”  I think this is true.

As we learn on a pilgrimage, “the way is made my walking.” The Spanish poet, Antonio Machado writes so beautifully:

Wanderer, your footsteps are

the path, and nothing else;

Wanderer, there is no path.

The path is made my walking.

There is no You Tube Video we can watch to give us clear instructions about what is going to happen. Wouldn’t we like that in a way?  There is no manual. There is no map or itinerary.   The journey really does become the destination to the life we seek.

Some of us can’t find our next step until we launch out in this unknowing and questioning part of our faith and life. Perhaps, all our robes; all our candles; all our praise songs domesticate the wildness of a faith that is worth embracing.  For me, I have needed to strip down what I actually believe in order to move forward with an life and faith that is freeing and soul satisfying.

Author Sue Monk Kidd writes so eloquently: “What has happened to our ability to dwell in unknowing, to live inside a question and coexist with the tensions of uncertainty? Where is our willingness to incubate pain and let it birth something new? What has happened to patient unfolding, to endurance? These things are what form the ground of waiting. And if you look carefully, you’ll see that they’re also the seedbed of creativity and growth—what allows us to do the daring and to break through to newness. . . .

Creativity flourishes not in certainty but in questions. Growth germinates not in tent dwelling but in upheaval. Yet the seduction is always security rather than venturing, instant knowing rather than deliberate waiting (When the Heart Waits).

I am not alone in my new domain of uncertainty. There are many companions in this space. Among them is priest and author, Barbara Brown Taylor. Taylor says, “I have learned to prize holy ignorance more highly than religious certainty and to seek companions who have arrived at the same place. We are a motley crew, distinguished not only by our inability to explain ourselves to those who are more certain of their beliefs than we are but in many cases by our distance from the centers of our faith communities as well. Like campers who have bonded over cook fires far from home, we remain grateful for the provisions that we have brought with us from those cupboards, but we also find them more delicious when we share them with one another under the stars.”

It is this sharing and deliciousness that I experience with two or three others under the stars, by a river, under a few trees or in a coffee shop. It is for me, “the church of two or three.” I am not an agnostic about this reality—about this simplification—and this empirical phenomenon.  Something holy happens when two or three are gathered. Call it church; call it community; call it small group or call it micro-church. It is not the label that gives meaning.  In a space of two or three we can all, indeed “taste and see that the Lord is good.”

At the root of the word “question” is the root that can give us light. Within the word “question” is this word: quest. It is our quest to seek; to knock; to ask. This is all apart of our necessary faith journey—necessary life journey.  It is our “quest” to search; find, let go and become agnostics about many things we never, ever dreamed we could have or would have been able to do. But what is clear, is this: we must be on the quest and I believe we must be on the quest together. I am no agnostic on this. I am sure of it. Two is better than one.

Faith and doubt are not the opposites.  Contemporary writer and best selling author, Anne Lamott shed light on this when she told us: “The opposite of faith is not doubt, but certainty. Certainty is missing the point entirely. Faith includes noticing the mess, the emptiness and discomfort, and letting it be there until some light returns.”

—Ann Lamott in Plan B: Further Thoughts on Faith

So, there. I’ve said it. I’ve not said all of “it.” But I’ve said, what I can tell you today. I’ll be interested in how this stirs you. Tell me. Tell us. Let us all share the crumbs of bread we have collected thus far on this journey of life.

This past week, I’ve worked on my new poem that I  want to now share with you. It’s about these business of telling myself, “Steve, it’s ok to say you are an agnostic about a few things.” The poem is about what I know for sure. You can read it below if you are a Paid Subscriber. The poem explains. The poem excavates out what has been in me for a long time now. The poem offered me, and perhaps you, a way to confess my own not knowing about a few things and then to move on—to move forward.

It feels vulnerable to share with you about this. I’m wondering why do I feel so vulnerable in telling you this, when I have before, told you so much? Perhaps, it’s a fear that you, knowing the word, “agnostic” will now say, “There he goes. He’s now saying he’s an agnostic.” I am not an agnostic about God—about so many things but more and more, that word, “agnostic” seems to be the fitting word for me to best explain where I am on certain things. And perhaps, you too, on this day when the news is filled with Democrats being up in the whirlwind…what do they know? And what really, does the other party know. It’s in this context that I”m writing to you today.