The modern, scientific age (which is perhaps now giving way to post-modernity) is all about precision and rationality and logic. It is about empirical truth. Not that we know nothing of things that don't fit easily into such categories; beauty or love for example. Still, much of modern religious thinking has sought to work out its religious theologies and doctrines in great detail. Much of these doctrines and theologies are very robust, logical arguments explaining with great precision what it means that God is sovereign or that Jesus suffered and died. And this drive to work things out just so hasn't very much room for ambiguity and uncertainty. It seeks clarity and certainty.
To which Jesus says, "as if, compare, is like."
I have long found the rigid, religious certitude of some fundamentalists very off-putting. However I have found some liberal reactions to this so vague as to be equally off-putting as well. At times they seem to say, "Well since we can't say with absolute precision exactly how all this works, we can't say very much at all." And Mainline faith has sometimes been reduced to a vague belief in God and trying to be moral.
I wonder if we don't all need to get a bit more comfortable with ambiguity and uncertainty. For some that means letting go of the notion that they know the formula to the smallest detail like a pastor who once confided in me that he hated doing funerals when he knew the person was going to hell because he had not made a public profession of Jesus as Lord and Savior. For others it means being willing to point with conviction to something and say, "I don't know all the details, but I am certain that the kingdom is very much like this."
Which direction to you need to step in order to embrace a little ambiguity?
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