The Price of Certainty

All paths have their challenges. All strengths can, under certain conditions, become weaknesses. And all values come with some cost, even if that cost is hidden at first. The same is true of certainty and uncertainty. Both carry a penalty of some kind.

Generally speaking, the cost of uncertainty is anxiety. When we cannot reliably predict the future, we feel vulnerable to it. But anxiety is really just another form of fear. More specifically, it is fear projected into the future — fear of what might happen, what could go wrong, or what we may not be able to control. In this sense, uncertainty gives rise to fear itself, which may be the most uncomfortable and fundamental of all human emotions.

Certainty, however, also comes at a cost. One of its greatest dangers is that it can lead us away from what may be the highest intellectual virtue of all: the pursuit of truth.

The reason certainty can pull us away from truth is because history repeatedly demonstrates how little human beings can know with absolute certainty. Philosophers like René Descartes famously reduced certainty down to the bare fact of conscious experience itself. Beyond that, things become surprisingly difficult to prove.

Take something as seemingly obvious as the certainty that the sun will rise tomorrow. Or even the certainty that the person sitting beside you truly exists in the way you perceive them to. At the deepest level of reality, we cannot know these things with complete certainty. Perhaps reality is a simulation. Perhaps consciousness itself constructs the world we experience. Perhaps there are dimensions of existence we cannot presently grasp.

Of course, nobody can live day to day in a state of radical philosophical doubt. It would be impractical, even paralysing. So despite these uncertainties, we move through life as though certain things are unquestionably true. We are certain that water will quench our thirst. Certain that we love our children. Certain that when we throw a ball, it will not suddenly drift upward into space.

Yet technically speaking, most of these certainties are better described as extremely high probabilities. Most people would admit this if pressed hard enough. The sun rising tomorrow is not something we can prove absolutely. It is simply something that has happened consistently enough for us to trust it almost completely.

The human mind, however, has a tendency to convert very high probabilities into certainties, just as it converts very low probabilities into impossibilities. Somewhere along the spectrum, probability hardens into conviction. Where exactly that threshold lies depends on the person, the context, and perhaps most importantly, the consequences of being wrong.

This becomes especially important when we enter the realm of religion.

Religious Certainty

I have a good friend who considers himself a devout Christian. A few months ago, he invited me to attend his Bible study group. I accepted in the spirit of the only thing I staunchly advocate for: open-mindedness.

I had studied the Bible several times in the past and had always walked away unconvinced that it held a monopoly on truth. Yet many Christians speak about it with an extraordinary degree of certainty. Not merely as a source of wisdom or spiritual insight, but as the final and absolute truth about reality itself.

As I sat with the group and listened, I noticed something that has become increasingly difficult for me to ignore. Once a person becomes completely certain that a particular religious text is infallible, many doors quietly begin to close.

Questions become threatening instead of exciting.

Ambiguity becomes uncomfortable rather than intriguing.

Alternative perspectives cease to be opportunities for learning and instead become dangers to defend against.

And perhaps most importantly, the sense of wonder begins to narrow.

To be clear, certainty can offer genuine psychological comfort. There is something deeply stabilizing about believing you possess final answers to life’s biggest questions. In a world filled with chaos, suffering, and unpredictability, certainty can function almost like an emotional shelter. I understand why people are drawn to it.

But for me, the cost is too high.

The moment I become absolutely certain that one tradition possesses the complete and final truth, I simultaneously close myself off from countless other possibilities. I become less capable of genuinely listening. Less capable of curiosity. Less capable of being surprised by reality.

And reality, at least from my experience, is endlessly surprising.

The older I get, the more suspicious I become of absolute certainty, especially when it concerns subjects as vast and mysterious as consciousness, God, existence, and the nature of reality itself. Human beings have revised their deepest convictions countless times throughout history. Entire civilizations once held beliefs with complete confidence that now appear obviously mistaken in hindsight.

What if some of our present certainties will one day look the same?

This does not mean all ideas are equally valid, nor does it mean we should abandon discernment or critical thinking. Some beliefs are clearly better supported than others. Some paths lead to greater compassion, wisdom, and psychological health. But there is a difference between confidence and certainty. Confidence leaves room for revision. Certainty often does not.

For me, spirituality is less about arriving at final answers and more about remaining radically open to reality, even when reality refuses to fit neatly into the frameworks we prefer.

That openness comes with uncertainty.

And uncertainty comes with discomfort.

But increasingly, I suspect that discomfort is a price worth paying.

One of the things that few people explicitly consider about religion is that nearly all of it ultimately rests upon somebody else’s spiritual experience.

The Bible itself is largely a collection of personal revelations, mystical encounters, visions, intuitions, prayers, dreams, and interpretations of events that certain individuals believed carried divine significance. Moses and the burning bush. Ezekiel’s visions. Paul’s revelation on the road to Damascus. John’s visions in Revelation. These were not laboratory experiments. They were subjective human experiences interpreted through culture, psychology, symbolism, language, and personal understanding.

This is not necessarily a criticism. In fact, I think it is unavoidable. Spirituality almost has to emerge through human experience because it concerns dimensions of existence that are deeply personal and difficult to measure objectively. But once we admit this, an important question emerges:

Why should another person’s mystical experience automatically override our own?

Why should ancient intuitions be treated as unquestionably authoritative while modern intuitions are treated with suspicion?

If a person today claimed to hear the voice of God through a burning bush, many religious people would likely encourage psychiatric evaluation before theological reflection. Yet when the same claim is safely wrapped in ancient history, written in scripture, and repeated for thousands of years, it becomes sacred.

Again, I say this not mockingly, but sincerely. There is something deeply strange about this dynamic.

It seems to me that if spirituality means anything at all, it must involve cultivating our own relationship with truth, reality, consciousness, and perhaps the divine itself. Not merely inheriting somebody else’s conclusions about those things.

A person can memorize scripture without ever genuinely searching.

A person can defend doctrine without ever truly listening inwardly.

A person can become fluent in theology while remaining spiritually asleep.

In fact, one could argue that overreliance on inherited certainty may actively interfere with authentic spiritual exploration. If someone already believes they possess the final answers, what incentive remains to seek deeper understanding? Curiosity begins to fade. The search ends prematurely.

And this leads me to a strange thought that I cannot quite shake.

What if parts of the Bible are themselves a test?

Not a test of obedience in the simplistic sense, but a test of spiritual maturity. A test of whether a person chooses fear or love. Whether they choose rigid certainty or living truth.

There are passages in the Bible that inspire extraordinary compassion, wisdom, forgiveness, courage, and transcendence. There are also passages that many modern people instinctively recoil from morally or spiritually. Passages involving cruelty, tribalism, violence, eternal punishment, or exclusion.

What are we supposed to do with this tension?

One option is to suppress our conscience and force ourselves to defend every line unquestioningly. Another is to wrestle honestly with the text, allowing our deepest moral and spiritual intuitions to remain active participants in the conversation.

I sometimes wonder whether the latter response may actually be the more spiritually honest one.

Because what if the real test is whether we blindly submit to authority out of fear, or whether we continue seeking truth even when doing so is uncomfortable?

Fear says:
“Do not question. Do not doubt. Obey or be punished.”

Love says:
“Seek honestly. Remain open. Listen deeply. Grow.”

Perhaps the Bible contains both voices intentionally. Or perhaps human beings, in attempting to grasp the divine, inevitably mixed transcendent insight with their own limitations, fears, politics, and cultural conditioning. Either possibility seems more plausible to me than the idea that every sentence descended flawlessly from heaven untouched by human hands or minds.

And perhaps this is precisely why discernment matters so much.

The irony is that many of the central spiritual figures throughout history were themselves questioners. They challenged religious rigidity, disrupted certainty, and criticized those who mistook dogma for truth. Jesus himself repeatedly challenged religious legalism and prioritized love, compassion, forgiveness, and inner transformation over rigid rule-following.

That, to me, feels spiritually significant.

If God exists, and if consciousness truly has some divine dimension, then I struggle to believe we were created merely to become passive containers for inherited beliefs. It seems far more likely that we were meant to participate in the search itself. To struggle. To discern. To refine our understanding. To develop wisdom.

And perhaps most importantly, to remain humble enough to admit that no human being, no institution, and no text can fully contain the infinite.