The sin of certainty

It isn’t the rookie sailor that falls from the mast. This old sailing expression points to the problem of overconfidence. On the other side there is the Dunning-Kruger Effect: those who know the least about an activity are overconfident about their abilities. In teaching I have seen both sides: experienced students who make foolish mistakes and new students who are unteachable, because they think they already know it all. Society, politics and the church are suffering from the sin of certainty.

Certainly wrong

Peter Enns wrote a book entitled The Sin of Certainty in which he reflects on how the Western emphasis on truth and knowledge damages our relationship with God. We have replaced faith, trusting the God we do not fully know or understand, with an inflexible doctrinal certainty. This leads to crisis when things happen that we do not understand, or when we react with a Pharisaical rigidity to anything new or different.

Enns highlights the dangers of certainty in our faith relationship with God, and I see the same problem in our relationships with each other. In certainty we stop listening. In certainty we stop learning. We are certain others are wrong, and we judge them.

Job’s friends were certain in their moral retribution theology and tormented their suffering friend. The Pharisees and Sadducees were certain in their Scriptures and temple and crucified Jesus.

The quotation attributed to Mark Twain (without any certainty) is, “It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you into trouble. It’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so.”

Rhetorical Turn

The Jewish people were certain of their superior sexual morality and condemned the surrounding Gentile world (cf. Wisdom of Solomon 13-15). The Israelites cheered Amos’ excoriation of their sinful neighbors, but then Amos turned against them: do not be so certain of your innocence and freedom from God’s judgment.

Paul uses this same rhetorical ploy in Romans 1 and 2. The self-righteous and arrogant Jewish Christians cheered Paul’s words condemning those idolatrous, sexuality perverse Gentiles, but then Romans 2:1 turns from “they” to “you.” “You, therefore, have no excuse, you who pass judgment on someone else . . . because you who pass judgment do the same things” (Rom. 2:1 NIV).

Humble Turn

Before God, we need to turn from certainty to humility, from the Pharisee who stood by himself and prayed, “God, I thank you that I am not like other people” to the tax collector who beat his breast and prayed, “God, have mercy on me, a sinner.” (Luke 18)

Before others, “in humility value others above yourselves, not looking to your own interests but each of you to the interests of the others” (Phil. 2:2–4).

Certainly

Certainly remember “Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known. And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love” (1 Cor. 13:12–13).

This certainly is the best hack, the most certain method for life.