The Sin of Certainty Quotes

“Church is too often the most risky place to be spiritually honest.”
― Peter Enns, The Sin of Certainty: Why God Desires Our Trust More Than Our "Correct" Beliefs

“When we reach the point where things simply make no sense, when our thinking about God and life no longer line up, when any sense of certainty is gone, and when we can find no reason to trust God but we still do, well that is what trust looks like at its brightest – when all else is dark.”
― Peter Enns, The Sin of Certainty: Why God Desires Our Trust More Than Our "Correct" Beliefs

“Correct thinking provides a sense of certainty. Without it, we fear that faith is on life support at best, dead and buried at worst. And who wants a dead or dying faith? So this fear of losing a handle on certainty leads to a preoccupation with correct thinking, making sure familiar beliefs are defended and supported at all costs. How strongly do we hold on to the old ways of thinking? Just recall those history courses where we read about Christians killing other Christians over all sorts of disagreements about doctrines few can even articulate today. Or perhaps just think of a skirmish you’ve had at church over a sermon, Sunday-school lesson, or which candidate to vote into public office. Preoccupation with correct thinking. That’s the deeper problem. It reduces the life of faith to sentry duty, a 24/7 task of pacing the ramparts and scanning the horizon to fend off incorrect thinking, in ourselves and others, too engrossed to come inside the halls and enjoy the banquet. A faith like that is stressful and tedious to maintain. Moving toward different ways of thinking, even just trying it on for a while to see how it fits, is perceived as a compromise to faith, or as giving up on faith altogether. But nothing could be further from the truth. Aligning faith in God and certainty about what we believe and needing to be right in order to maintain a healthy faith—these do not make for a healthy faith in God. In a nutshell, that is the problem. And that is what I mean by the “sin of certainty.”
― Peter Enns, The Sin of Certainty: Why God Desires Our Trust More Than Our "Correct" Beliefs

“Doubt is God’s instrument, will arrive in God’s time, and will come from unexpected places—places out of your control. And when it does, resist the fight-or-flight impulse. Pass through it—patiently, honestly, and courageously for however long it takes. True transformation takes time.”
― Peter Enns, The Sin of Certainty: Why God Desires Our Trust More Than Our "Correct" Beliefs

“Trust your experiences, your God moments. They don’t work as intellectual arguments for God, but that’s exactly the point: intellectual arguments aren’t enough, and wanting them to be so sooner or later leads to disappointment. God speaks to us through our whole humanity, not just through part of it. God moments can’t be proven to anyone else, but that doesn’t make them second best. They are proof—of another kind.”
― Peter Enns, The Sin of Certainty: Why God Desires Our Trust More Than Our "Correct" Beliefs

“I’ve learned to accept this paradox: a holy book that more often than not doesn’t act very much like you’d expect it, but more like a book written two thousand to three thousand years ago would act. I expect the Bible to reflect fully the ancient settings in which it was written, and therefore not act as a script that can simply be dropped into our lives without a lot of thought and wisdom. The Bible must be thought through, pondered, tried out, assessed, and (if need be) argued with—all of which is an expression of faith, not evidence to the contrary.”
― Peter Enns, The Sin of Certainty: Why God Desires Our Trust More Than Our "Correct" Beliefs

“When the dust clears and in the quiet of your own heart, what kind of God do you believe in, really? And why?”
― Peter Enns, The Sin of Certainty: Why God Desires Our Trust More Than Our "Correct" Beliefs

“The life of Christian faith is more than agreeing with a set of beliefs about Christ, morality, or how to read the Bible. It means being so intimately connected to Christ that his crucifixion is ours, his death is our death, and his life is our life—which is hardly something we can grasp with our minds. It has to be experienced. It is an experience.”
― Peter Enns, The Sin of Certainty: Why God Desires Our Trust More Than Our "Correct" Beliefs

“To love as God loves means loving not just others like us, but those who are not.”
― Peter Enns, The Sin of Certainty: Why God Desires Our Trust More Than Our "Correct" Beliefs

“Struggling with faith is normal. Journey and pilgrimage have become powerful words for me for describing the life of faith. I have come to expect periods of unsettledness, uncertainty, and fear to remind me that who I am, where I am, and what I think do not define reality. Facing and then truly being present with my experiences along the way help me remember that my experiences at any moment are not the entire journey—including those periods where God is distant. I have come to believe that periods of struggling and doubt are such common experiences of faith, including in the Bible, that something is meant to be learned from such periods, however long in duration they might be.”
― Peter Enns, The Sin of Certainty: Why God Desires Our Trust More Than Our "Correct" Beliefs

“When knowing what you believe is the nonnegotiable center of true faith, questions and critical self-examination pose a threat.”
― Peter Enns, The Sin of Certainty: Why God Desires Our Trust More Than Our "Correct" Beliefs

“the challenges of our day-to-day existence are sustained reminders that our life of faith simply must have its center somewhere other than in our ability to hold it together in our minds. Life is a pounding surf that wears away our rock-solid certainty. The surf always wins. Slowly but surely. Eventually. It may be best to ride the waves rather than resist them. What are your one or two biggest obstacles to staying Christian? What are those roadblocks you keep running into? What are those issues that won’t go away and make you wonder why you keep on believing at all? These are questions I asked on a survey I gave on my blog in the summer of 2013. Nothing fancy. I just asked some questions and waited to see what would happen. In the days to come, I was overwhelmed with comments and e-mails from readers, many anonymous, with bracingly honest answers often expressed through the tears of relentless and unnerving personal suffering. I didn’t do a statistical analysis (who has the time, plus I don’t know how), but the responses fell into five categories.         1.        The Bible portrays God as violent, reactive, vengeful, bloodthirsty, immoral, mean, and petty.         2.        The Bible and science collide on too many things to think that the Bible has anything to say to us today about the big questions of life.         3.        In the face of injustice and heinous suffering in the world, God seems disinterested or perhaps unable to do anything about it.         4.        In our ever-shrinking world, it is very difficult to hold on to any notion that Christianity is the only path to God.         5.        Christians treat each other so badly and in such harmful ways that it calls into question the validity of Christianity—or even whether God exists. These five categories struck me as exactly right—at least, they match up with my experience. And I’d bet good money they resonate with a lot of us. All five categories have one big thing in common: “Faith in God no longer makes sense to me.” Understanding, correct thinking, knowing what you believe—these were once true of their faith, but no longer are. Because life happened. A faith that promises to provide firm answers and relieve our doubt is a faith that will not hold up to the challenges and tragedies of life. Only deep trust can hold up.”
― Peter Enns, The Sin of Certainty: Why God Desires Our Trust More Than Our "Correct" Beliefs

“I believe that the Bible does not model a faith that depends on certainty for the simple fact that the Bible does not provide that kind of certainty. Rather, in all its messy diversity, the Bible models trust in God that does not rest on whether we are able to be clear and certain about what to believe.”
― Peter Enns, The Sin of Certainty: Why God Desires Our Trust More Than Our "Correct" Beliefs

“In the New Testament, God's steadfast love and faithfulness are seen, not in an act of deliverance from foreign enemies, but in sending the Son and raising Him from the dead to enact a global rescue mission (Romans 8:3.) Jesus is God's supreme, grand, climactic act of faithfulness. Not only that, but "faithful" also describes Jesus. Paul writes, "We know that a person is justified not by the works of the law but in faith in Jesus Christ" (Galations 2:16...). A better reading is "faithfulness of Jesus Christ" -- which is found in footnotes of many Bibles -- and the two readings couldn't be more different... Paul isn't saying, "You are not justified by your efforts but by your faith." The contrast he's making isn't between two options we have; the contrast is between your efforts and Jesus' faithfulness to you, shown in His obedient death on a Roman cross. Paul is interested in telling readers what Jesus did, Jesus' faithfulness, not what we do. God's grand act of faithfulness is giving His son for our sake. God is all in. Jesus' grand act of faithfulness is going through with it for our sake. Jesus is all in. Now it's our move, which really is the point of all this. Like God the Father and God the Son, we are also called to be faithful. On one level, we are faithful to God when we trust God, but faith (pistis) doesn't stop there. It extends, as we've seen, in faithfulness toward each other, in humility and self-sacrificial love. And here is the real kick in the pants: When we are faithful to each other like this, we are more than simply being nice and kind -- though there's that. Far more important, when we are faithful to each other, we are, at that moment, acting like the faithful God and the faithful Son. Being like God. That's the goal. And we are most like God, not when we are certain we are right about God, or when we tell others how right we are, but when we are acting toward one another like the faithful Father and Son. Humility, love, and kindness are our grand acts of faithfulness and how we show that we are all in.”
― Peter Enns, The Sin of Certainty: Why God Desires Our Trust More Than Our "Correct" Beliefs

“I believe that God is more interested in the who. And that means walking the walk, not just talking the talk. Better: it means walking the walk when no words are left. That is trust.”
― Peter Enns, The Sin of Certainty: Why God Desires Our Trust More Than Our "Correct" Beliefs

“Belief and faith always have content—a what. But a faith that looks like what the Bible describes is rooted deeply in trust in God (rather than ourselves) and in faithfulness to God by being humbly faithful to others (as the Father and Son have been faithful to us). That’s basically it—though it’s anything but easy.”
― Peter Enns, The Sin of Certainty: Why God Desires Our Trust More Than Our "Correct" Beliefs

“Our level of insight does not determine our level of trust. In fact, seeking insight rather than trust can get in the way of our walk with God.”
― Peter Enns, The Sin of Certainty: Why God Desires Our Trust More Than Our "Correct" Beliefs

“Rather than being quick to settle on final answers to puzzling questions, a trust-centered faith will find time to formulate wise questions that respect the mystery of God and call upon God for the courage to sit in those questions for as long as necessary before seeking a way forward.”
― Peter Enns, The Sin of Certainty: Why God Desires Our Trust More Than Our "Correct" Beliefs

“Paul doesn’t call followers of Jesus “Christians.” He calls them “in Christ.” That isn’t the easiest thing to understand, let alone explain, but it suggests an intimacy with Jesus that defies words. That intimacy also includes—somehow—suffering.”
― Peter Enns, The Sin of Certainty: Why God Desires Our Trust More Than Our "Correct" Beliefs

“It is so easy to slip into “right thinking” mode—that we have arrived at full faith. We know what church God goes to, what Bible translation God prefers, how God votes, what movies God watches, and what books God reads. We know the kinds of people God approves of. God has winners and loser, and we are the winners, the true insiders. God likes all the things we like. We speak for God and think nothing of it. All Christians I’ve ever met who take their faith seriously sooner or later get caught up in thinking that God really is what we think God is, that there is little more worth learning about the Creator of the cosmos. God becomes the face in the mirror. By his mercy, God doesn’t leave us there.”
― Peter Enns, The Sin of Certainty: Why God Desires Our Trust More Than Our "Correct" Beliefs

“I feel it is part of the mystery of faith that things normally do not line up entirely, and so when they don’t, it is not a signal to me that the journey is at an end but that I am still on it. As I reflect on my own experience and that of many others far wiser than I, God seems willing to help that process along.”
― Peter Enns, The Sin of Certainty: Why God Desires Our Trust More Than Our "Correct" Beliefs

“A relationship based on trust means not walking on eggshells, but talking openly, honestly, with no hint of passive-aggressiveness or any of the other dysfunctional manipulative tactics we tend to impose on family and friends.”
― Peter Enns, The Sin of Certainty: Why God Desires Our Trust More Than Our "Correct" Beliefs

“When we think of “strong” faith as something that should be free of uncertainty or crises, I believe we have gotten wrong an important part of who God is and how the Christian life really works.”
― Peter Enns, The Sin of Certainty: Why God Desires Our Trust More Than Our "Correct" Beliefs

“Walking the path of faith means trusting God enough to let our uh-oh moments expose how we create God to fit in our thinking.”
― Peter Enns, The Sin of Certainty: Why God Desires Our Trust More Than Our "Correct" Beliefs

“Aligning faith in God and certainty about what we believe and needing to be right in order to maintain a healthy faith—these do not make for a healthy faith in God. In a nutshell, that is the problem. And that is what I mean by the “sin of certainty.” It is sin because this pattern of thinking sells God short by keeping the Creator captive to what we are able to comprehend—which is the very same problem the Israelites had when they were tempted to make images of God (aka idols) out of stone, metal, or wood. For ancient people, images made the gods present for the worshippers, something tangible to look at to let them connect with the divine realm. But Israel’s God said no. Any images shaped by human hands limit God by bringing God too far into alignment with ancient conceptions of the divine.”
― Peter Enns, The Sin of Certainty: Why God Desires Our Trust More Than Our "Correct" Beliefs

“Lord, help me let go of control. Help me die. Help me trust.”
― Peter Enns, The Sin of Certainty: Why God Desires Our Trust More Than Our "Correct" Beliefs

“The long Protestant quest to get the Bible right has not led to greater and greater certainty about what the Bible means. Quite the contrary. It has led to a staggering number of different denominations and subdenominations that disagree sharply about how significant portions of the Bible should be understood. I mean, if the Bible is our source of sure knowledge about God, how do we explain all this diversity? Isn’t the Bible supposed to unify us rather than divide us?”
― Peter Enns, The Sin of Certainty: Why God Desires Our Trust More Than Our "Correct" Beliefs

“Ecclesiastes never says “You gotta know what you believe,” but rather “Trust God even when you don’t know what you believe, even when all before you is absurd.”
― Peter Enns, The Sin of Certainty: Why God Desires Our Trust More Than Our "Correct" Beliefs

“All it took to rock my certainty was a conversation over lunch. I don’t claim to have the answers for many of the things that challenge my faith, but this I do believe: I see these moments are invitations to leave my comfort zone and trust God from a place of childlike vulnerability, rather than from a position of power and authority. And yes, that can be unsettling, unnerving, and even frightening. Leaving home usually is, but I don’t think that trust in God is cultivated unless we do.”
― Peter Enns, The Sin of Certainty: Why God Desires Our Trust More Than Our "Correct" Beliefs

“We should not be surprised when we find ourselves in a similar spot, experiencing a God who is not beholden to our thinking, a God who doesn’t act according to our sense of certainty, even if we can find a Bible verse or two to back it up. God can’t be proof-texted. God will not be backed into a corner.”
― Peter Enns, The Sin of Certainty: Why God Desires Our Trust More Than Our "Correct" Beliefs