The Danger of Certainty

As the Peninsula Baptist Association has been redesigning its website and rethinking its mission, I’ve been on hiatus for much longer than expected. So I’m glad to announce that Preaching the Word is back!  It’s exciting to write about the Bible and Christian Thought for the benefit of my friends and co-laborers in Hampton Roads.   
I will devote the next few columns to exploring some foundational issues and sharing some personal convictions that guide my faith and ministry.   
A passage that has been on my mind for a while is 1 Corinthians 2:1–5:

“1 And so it was with me, brothers and sisters. When I came to you, I did not come with eloquence or human wisdom as I proclaimed to you the testimony about God. 2 For I resolved to know nothing while I was with you except Jesus Christ and him crucified. 3 I came to you in weakness with great fear and trembling. 4 My message and my preaching were not with wise and persuasive words, but with a demonstration of the Spirit's power, 5 so that your faith might not rest on human wisdom, but on God's power.” (NIV)

Considering Paul’s biography and mission, these verses seem counterintuitive. Paul first visited Corinth to teach people faith in Christ Jesus and how to live in Christian community.  Paul was smart and educated – possibly more educated than anyone else in the entire Bible. It would therefore seem natural for Paul to draw on his gifts and training to fulfill the work that God had given him. If Paul’s “human wisdom” could lead people to faith in Christ and to righteous behavior, why not use it?
Here’s my answer.  At this point in his life, Paul had grasped an important truth about temporal knowledge. While his learning, intelligence, and logic undoubtedly gave him a sense of assuredness about many things of God and faith in Christ, Paul knew from experience that his convictions could be very wrong, and even harmful. The Paul (aka Saul) of Acts 8:3 was nothing if not convinced in his heart that it was God’s will to drag Christians off to prison!  But a feeling of certainty was not enough for him to know God’s will.
Therefore, Paul had come to the Corinthians “in weakness and in fear and trembling,” knowing that no matter how convinced he was that God wants people to do such-and-such, he could still unintentionally lead God’s people in the wrong direction. He had determined to insist on only the most core theology, that we are reconciled to God through the death of Jesus Christ.  All other knowledge about God was to come to the Corinthians through the Holy Spirit, informed by Scripture and by interaction with Paul and others.
Personal conviction about the will of God is a serious danger to American Christians in 2025, especially pastors and church leaders. And it becomes more dangerous as we become more educated.  We like to think that our education and smarts, combined with our spirituality, give us a superior understanding of God’s desire for us, but in fact many of our beliefs and views originate with our human “gut. Rather than allowing evidence and logic to inform our thinking, we use evidence and logic to develop reasons to support our feelings.
We see this in our (painful) American history. In his second inaugural address, Abraham Lincoln noted that the Civil War came about even though Christians from all over the USA “read the same Bible and pray to the same God.”  At that time, both North and South were filled with Bible-believing Christians, including northern abolitionists and southern slaveholders like Jefferson Davis, Robert E. Lee, and Stonewall Jackson. All may have felt led by the Holy Spirit and informed by God’s Word, but we cannot now deny that in the end, many confused sinful human desires for the Spirit’s prompting. I can be hard to tell the difference, even for “mature” Christians!
Acting on feelings of certitude is a sure path to disunity and conflict. When we “know” that we’re right, there is little room to hear perspectives and views of those who are wrong. Why pay attention to someone who does not believe what I “know” to be true? When we reach the point of assuredness, we inoculate ourselves against being convinced otherwise.  And when contrary evidence comes our way, we find reasons to discount or ignore it.
I write this post as a Baptist, posting on a website for an organization that is primarily Baptist. The label “Baptist” has always allowed a wide range of practices and beliefs, and anyone who has been a Baptist for any length of time knows that we disagree with each other about all sorts of things. Yet God has managed to work effectively through Baptist organizations for centuries. Why?  Not because we share the same convictions about doctrine, but rather because we push aside our disagreements so that we can do mission. Sure, we talk and argue about our convictions, but we agree with Paul that the work of the Great Commission always takes precedence.
Yes, there are a few foundational beliefs on which we must insist: reconciliation to God through Christ’s work on the cross, Christ’s divinity and humanity, God’s revelation to us through the Bible, and some others. However, this list must remain concise and specific, and everything we identify as “non-negotiables” must always be subject to careful review and examination: “we’ve always believed/done it this way” is a famously weak rationale. In recent decades our reputation as Baptists and Evangelicals has suffered from the dogmatism of some of our forebears about race, the place and role of women in society, the reliance on the King James Version, and other issues, largely because we do not want to deal with the possibility that some of us have been wrong about some things.  It can be very hard to seriously, honestly re-examine our firm convictions.  But at the same time, it’s sinful for Christians to refuse to do this work.
In 2025 God has assigned to the Christians of Hampton Roads a critically important task.  It is our mission to be agents of peace in a community deeply divided over issues of race, politics, and fundamental moral principles.  While our job may be difficult, it should be up our alley: Article XVI of the Baptist Faith and Message reads the same in 1925, 1963, and 2000: “It is the duty of Christians to seek peace with all men on principles of righteousness. In accordance with the spirit and teachings of Christ they should do all in their power to put an end to war.” Today God calls us to be agents of peace according to the spirit and teachings of the One who taught and preached the way of peace to humankind. Self-righteousness may feel good, but it is not the way of Christ and will tend to exacerbate division instead of healing it.
“Not many of you should become teachers, my fellow believers, because you know that we who teach will be judged more strictly” (James 3:1). This warning comes late to us who are already teaching! The danger is real: we risk God’s anger when we lead people in the wrong direction.  So let’s be like Paul and heed the danger. If Paul avoided certainty about more than a very few things, we should do the same. Let’s tamp down our assuredness so as not to injure the cause of Christ.