When Certainty Is No Longer a Criterion

The freedom that comes when the soul no longer asks where it will be safest, but where it can belong wholly to God

“Commit your way to the Lord; trust in him, and he will act.”

— Psalm 37:5

There comes a point in the spiritual life when certainty is no longer a criterion.

Not because certainty is undesirable, nor because prudence has ceased to matter. Rather, the soul discovers that there are moments when every road disappears into mist. No choice guarantees security. No decision removes suffering. No obedience to conscience comes with a map of what will follow.

One path may preserve what is known and still lead into uncertainty.

Another may require leaving much that is known and lead into uncertainty as well.

Then the question changes.

It is no longer: Where will I be safest?

Nor even: Where will things finally be resolved?

It becomes something more terrible and more beautiful:

Where can I stand before God without division?

The Fathers understood that the desire for certainty can become one of the last and most subtle forms of self-preservation. We want to know what obedience will cost before giving it. We want to see where the road ends before taking the first step. We want God to reveal not only His will but its consequences.

But Abraham was told to go without being shown where.

Peter was told simply, “Follow me.”

The desert was entered precisely because there were no guarantees there.

And the Mother of God gave herself to a mystery whose consequences she could not possibly have comprehended: Be it unto me according to thy word.

Faith begins to become pure when we cease demanding that God explain what He intends to do with our surrender.

There are times, therefore, when the absence of certainty is not an obstacle to discernment. It is the place where discernment becomes purified.

For beneath all our questions another question waits:

What does the heart desire when everything else is taken away?

Not what does it fear losing.

Not what does it hope to preserve.

Not what identity does it wish to maintain.

Not what future can it construct.

But what does it desire?

The saints of the desert speak relentlessly of this purification of desire. The heart must become simple. Its many loves must gradually be gathered into one love. Its many voices must become one prayer. Everything superfluous falls away until there remains only the ancient cry:

My soul thirsts for God, for the living God.

Perhaps this is why certain saints begin to feel less like teachers and more like companions.

We read them for years. At first we learn their words. Then, almost imperceptibly, their words begin to teach us how to see. Their prayers enter our prayer. Their understanding of repentance, mercy, suffering, silence, watchfulness, and divine love becomes the grammar of the heart.

Eventually something strange happens.

We are no longer merely reading them.

We are breathing their air.

Isaac speaks of the merciful heart and something within us recognizes its homeland. Climacus speaks of exile, detachment, remembrance of death, and prayer, and we recognize the landscape. The elders speak of standing before God with the mind descended into the heart, and we discover that they are giving words to something for which we had long been searching.

The heart has learned a language.

And once the heart has learned a language deeply enough, continually translating it becomes exhausting.

There may come a moment when the soul desires simply to live there—to pray without translation, to worship without inward qualification, to breathe the same air as those who have taught it how to seek God.

This is not necessarily a rejection of everything that came before.

Gratitude and departure are not opposites.

One may reverence those who formed us, love those with whom we have walked, acknowledge every grace received, and still recognize that God sometimes calls the heart onward. The Israelites carried the bones of Joseph out of Egypt. Nothing holy had to be despised in order for the journey to continue.

Nor does such a movement promise ease.

Home is not the place where the Cross disappears.

Indeed, the place where the heart becomes most free may also be the place where it must surrender most completely. Names, roles, recognition, expectations, accomplishments—even cherished understandings of oneself—may have to be placed quietly into the hands of God.

One may discover that freedom means becoming very small.

Unknown.

Unimportant.

A beginner again.

There is something deeply evangelical about this.

For Christ did not say, “Preserve yourself and follow me.”

He said:

Lose your life.

The astonishing discovery is that when certainty is surrendered, something better than certainty can appear.

Peace.

Not the peace of knowing what will happen.

The peace of knowing before Whom we stand.

This is the peace the desert sought. Not control over circumstances, but freedom from their tyranny. Not knowledge of tomorrow, but attention to God today. Not an answer to every question, but the purification of the heart until one thing alone becomes necessary.

God is.

I am before Him.

He knows me.

That is enough.

Then even uncertainty changes its character.

It is no longer an abyss into which we fear falling. It becomes an open place in which God may lead us.

We do not need to know what will become of us.

We do not need to negotiate beforehand the conditions under which we will surrender.

We do not even need to know whether what awaits us will resemble what we imagined.

We need only enough light for fidelity now.

Perhaps this is what it means finally to become a pilgrim.

The pilgrim does not possess the road. He receives it.

He does not demand that the horizon explain itself.

He walks.

And sometimes, after years of struggling to reconcile, preserve, understand, and resolve, the deepest freedom comes when the soul realizes that it is no longer searching for the path that offers certainty.

It is searching for the place where it can give itself to God without reserve.

Where desire can move freely toward Him.

Where prayer can become breath.

Where the saints are no longer voices heard from afar but companions in a shared life.

Where the heart need no longer divide itself in order to belong.

The future may remain hidden.

Perhaps it must.

For if everything were known, there would be little room left for faith.

So the soul places its hand upon the door without knowing everything that lies beyond it.

Not because it is certain.

But because love has become greater than the need to be certain.

And perhaps that is enough.

Perhaps it has always been enough.