This post is surely not for everyone. But if anyone out there is yearning for more religious surety in today’s world, this short reflection might be for you.

I believe that our society is living in an era of epistemic crisis: normalized exposure to conflicting information from seemingly equally credentialed, enthusiastic sources on just about every topic has stripped us of the psychological peace and naivete that comes with having untarnished trust. Now the spotlight is on us, as if we had to adjudicate between the experts. As if we could. I have heard it said that the effect of this unique condition is that it leaves us weary, skeptical pragmatists.

We hesitate to commit to ideologies; having seen so many rejected by leading experts, and have second thoughts once we do. Something can sound good on paper, as it should, but we tend to keep our reservations.

And yet, we want to believe. We want there to be more to life than…this. But how can we know?

This last question gives away the real consequences of our times: we react to losing faith by taking the control back into our hands. This leads to a state where one’s beliefs do not arise naturally or organically, but only upon meeting one’s approval.

When applied to religion, this frame of mind leaves no more room for the divine than can be fit into the third-person perspective. Gods are objectified, studied, and treated as a separable postulates.

But this entire way of trying to ‘solve’ Gods is a guaranteed disappointment for at least two related reasons. First, because Gods are not problems to be solved, but mysteries to be grasped at. Second, because they are not under our control; we are at their mercy.

The philosopher Gabriel Marcel distinguished between problems and mysteries. Problems are inquiries into things wholly separable from the inquirer. Who the inquirer happens to be is incidental, and anyone else can be substituted without changing the nature of the problem, or the solution that it calls for. The solution, as a matter of fact, is out there. We can put a period at the end of it when completed. It has an air of publicity, or personal indifference. Think of the problem of how to change a flat tire. It simply doesn’t matter who you are, there just is a range of right answers to this question, outside of which nothing works. Google it, YouTube it, call your dad: you will never get the lug nuts off without something in the right range of sizes.

Mysteries are different. They are inquiries from which the inquirer is inseparable. Here, there is no totally detachable ‘object’ that one can remove themselves from so as to look at from different angles. There is no final solution; no period we can put at the end, no closure. The inquiry either approaches infinity as it continues, or it ceases.

Mixing these two up is a recipe for existential disaster and undiagnosed cognitive dissonance. We are not separable from Gods. We cannot pry ourselves from them so as to create distance between us, nor do they have enclosed shapes that can be observed if such a distance were attainable. For us to separate from them is for us to lose our metaphysical integrity and stop ‘holding together’ as unified, individuated things.

Problematizing Gods, and turning our assent to them into resolutions is thus doomed to fail from the start, and that brings us to the second issue here. What it is we long for can never be commanded into experience, nor captured as an object because what we long for is raw second-person encounter, and that leaves us at the mercy of another.

So here we are, in the generations being deafened by the cacophony of incompatible, certified authorities. In reaction, we grasp harder for control, and objectify all things — even Gods. This results in failure, and turns us into weary, skeptical pragmatists.

Why did the Gods not protect us from this?

I believe the answer is rather simple. We are not supposed to be reacting to our situation with despair, because it is not an invitation to try the third-person methodologies harder. It is an invitation to do the only thing that actually works: grasp for second-person encounter.

Flustered at the difficulty of wading between all the conflicting experts out there? Pray.

Why don’t we do that? Because it puts the control outside of ourselves. It leaves the results up to something else.

And so we might move from trying to hold all the cards with reason, to profuse prayers and addresses, pleading to fill what nature starves us for. But be wary of even this, lest it come to light as an expression of a desire for control: strong-arming, or manipulating another into showing up.

What we need, in my opinion, and what I advise, for whatever that is worth, is sitting with the discomfort in silence. Do not run from it, drown it out, or fill the space. This is the beautiful agony of loving unconditionally. Here we internalize the freedom and dignity of the one we long for, and do little more than adore.

The Holy Powers are making foolish the pride of man, and in so doing, tearing open a door for us to reunite with them.

If you want to know, pray.