United or Divided? | When Being Right Just Might Be Wrong
It’s undeniable that we live in a time of division and fear. But how do we identify opportunities to unite?
How might we embrace our unique differences and lean into love?
Join the blog team as we explore acceptance, openness, and the potential for connection.
I came across a quote recently that stopped me in my tracks: “The opposite of faith is not doubt. The opposite of faith is certainty.” Think about that one for a few moments. I didn’t come across this quote on Instagram or on a cool t-shirt. Instead, I read it in a daily meditation by Richard Rohr, one of my most respected spiritual teachers. I also saw it as a quote from Anne Lamott’s book Traveling Mercies, another solid source for truth about authentic human spiritual experience, in my opinion. Looking into the origin of this quote, I couldn’t find the first to write about it, but I did notice that it has been a topic very much discussed in seminaries, churches, and other Christian circles.
Why do I bring this idea up in our first blog entry on the topic of “United or Divided”? I think it can help us see at least one way division happens in the Church and in the world at large. There are several hundred major denominations in the Christian faith, and over 45,000 smaller groups splintering off from the major ones! Some are large groups, some are small, but any denomination comes into being because a group of people has decided that one or more beliefs in their faith differ from the beliefs in other groups. They want to separate from one group and gather with other people who share their particular beliefs and opinions. This isn’t necessarily wrong, because we are all seeking the truth and just come up with different conclusions about how we are to believe in God and how we are to live our lives. Denominations can exhibit the wonderful freedom and diversity in our Faith.
But there is a dynamic in human relationships that we are all vulnerable to and that is to believe that if we are right, then others are wrong. This can cause a divide so strong that the other is seen as wrong and therefore bad. In other words, we judge them and develop an attitude of distrust, dislike, fear or even hatred. And THIS is where being so certain of our rightness veers off from Jesus’ Way of loving our neighbor…and even our enemy!
What is our faith about, really? I think it’s about following Jesus, who God sent to show us The Way. Honest faith requires us to be humble, to realize we see some things and we don’t see other things. Paul says it well in 1 Corinthians 13:12:
“For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.
If we are 100% certain of our rightness and another’s wrongness, we basically are saying, “It’s my way or the highway!”
The Reverend Jason Myers of Toronto’s Metropolitan United Church puts it this way:
Some people believe that the opposite of faith is doubt. I don't believe that. I believe the opposite of faith, authentic faith, is certainty, because when you are absolutely certain, without a doubt, without question, without curiosity about what you might be missing..then the conversation is at an end. There’s nothing further to explore or discover; there’s no space left for the things that change us, transform us, those moments of in-breaking awareness, that break us open and strip us naked in the glare.
I’ve said it before, but I believe faith is a pilgrimage, a pilgrimage that we must walk humbly, with cap in hand, knowing that sometimes we’ll need to change course when we make a wrong turn.
With certainty, there is no journey. The Way is reduced to “my way or the highway”. And this way, history has shown, is the way to zealotry, and there is nothing more dangerous than a zealot, the one who thinks he’s the only one who's got it figured out and everyone else has it wrong and needs to be corrected, purified.
The zealot is on a mission to blot out those with contrary opinions. This can simply lead to the exclusion of others, the silencing of others, and on and on to even warfare against them.
I’ve often heard from people that religion is the cause of all wars. I’ve hated to hear that because I’ve been exposed to good religion. But there is a bad religion which certainly has been the source of many conflicts. That is hyper-fundamentalism, occurring when Christian, Muslim, Jewish, Hindu, or other religious groups that zealously believe it is their duty to wipe out the “infidel”, so to speak. This is the end result of too much “my way or the highway”!
Certainly there is a time, a place and a way to oppose that which is truly evil. How do you do that while still following The Way of Jesus? I look to those who have come before us, like Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr, whose book Strength to Love highlights ways to expose and come against forces of evil through non-violent protest. Mahatma Gandhi and Nelson Mandela are other examples of strong protest without violence.
Most of us aren’t inclined or positioned to start a non-violent revolution against evil, so what does this mean for us? How do we live through the strength of Jesus’ Way to love our neighbors and even our enemies? Maybe it’s simply by listening to others, trying to understand why they believe what they believe, respecting their right to their opinion, dialoging with them where we can, and possibly just agreeing to disagree. The important thing is it’s always about relationships.
Israel Galindo, Associate Dean for Lifelong Learning at the Columbia Theological Seminary, puts it this way:
Faith is about our relationship with God. The more we mature, the more we tend to realize that we know less than we thought we did, and the fewer things we become absolutely certain about even in the Christian life (but those FEW things we are certain about tend to be the ones most worthy of it).
The interesting thing is that lack of certitude does not lead to despair, because a mature faith has the capacity to live with the ambiguities, paradoxes, and mystery of the spiritual life and of the human experience. In fact, we know that a mature faith is a critical faith. It can reflect on its own experience of faith, and it can examine, challenge, and question its own beliefs, assumptions, and prejudices.
For me, boiling things down to the prophet Micah’s exhortation (Micah 6:8) helps me stay on The Way… and out of my own way!
He has shown you, O mortal, what is good.
And what does the LORD require of you?
To act justly and to love mercy
and to walk humbly with your God.
