The God of the Gray Spaces

Why so many of us discovered God more clearly in ambiguity than in certainty.

For most of my life, I was taught that God lived in the certainties.

In the black-and-white.
In the chapter-and-verse.
In the absolutes wrapped in laminated Bible study guides.
In the “thus saith the Lord” spoken through the mouths of people who sounded so sure of themselves that to question them felt like questioning God.

Certainty, I was told, was the highest spiritual virtue. Doubt was a threat. Questions were slippery slopes. Nuance was the doorway to rebellion. And the safest place to stand was wherever the most authoritative voice told you to plant your feet.

But the older I became - the more life cracked, splintered, ruptured, and reshaped itself around me - the more I realized something quietly unsettling:

Certainty never held me when the bottom fell out.
Ambiguity did.