I get a lot of funny looks when people find out that I went to seminary and used to be a pastor. Funny looks and, oddly, the same three or four questions – where’d you go to school? What denomination? And my favorite – who’s your favorite theologian?

This one always gives me a chuckle, because I know the answer has a pretty high probability of making their heads explode. They assume, based on my first two answers, that I’m a Christian, and that I’ll answer with a Christian theologian. So it’s kind of fun to watch their faces when I tell them that I actually have two favorites – Neil DeGrasse Tyson and Mr. Rogers.

An atheist and a cardigan wearing puppeteer from public television.

Pretty appropriate, I think, for an ex-fundamentalist Christian turned agnostic, secular humanist Unitarian, right?

When I went to seminary, I went in thinking that it would somehow solidify all my doubts and questions. That if I could learn all the facts, I’d have all the answers, and that would be that.

It didn’t exactly work out that way.

Sure, I had textbooks with titles like What does the bible say about___: The ultimate bible answer book and Practical Theology, but I still had so many questions.

I was taught my whole life that the answers to life, the universe, and everything were right there in the Bible, in black and white, and that, as a minister, the words “I don’t know” should never cross my lips. If I didn’t have an immediate answer, I should say “I’ll look up some scripture and let you know” so that the person asking me the question would be reassured that there was an answer to be found.

It’s natural to want to have the answers, or find the answers, I think.  We are a species that LOVES answers. One of the best parts of living in the information age is being able to google anything we’d like and BOOM the answer’s literally in the palm of our hand. This is great when you’re arguing about whether the largest dinosaur is the T-Rex or the Argentinosaurous [it’s the argentinosaurous by the way. You can check it on your phone….later.]

It’s a little different, though, when we’re talking about bigger issues like life, the universe, and everything.

I’ve come to realize, the further I moved from my old beliefs, that sometimes, NOT knowing can be just as important, just as valid as knowing. That the aim of our spiritual journey might not need to be to construct a faith that’s dependent on certainty, but to inhabit a faith that’s more of an acceptance and appreciation for the sacred ambiguity of life.

A theology of the “I Dunno” if you will.

Once I finally decided that I’d truly left my Christian upbringing behind, I was sort of embarrassed to say that I didn’t know what I believed. I’d used the bible my entire life to make sense of the world, to provide the answers that helped decrease the intensity and ambiguity of all the things that lay just beyond my grasp.

It was beyond scary to think that I was starting from scratch.

Enter good old Mr. Rogers and Neil DeGrasse Tyson.

I was listening to a podcast one evening in the car, when I heard Mr. Tyson himself say something that blew my mind.

You want to hear this profound statement?

“The universe is under no obligation to make sense to you”

And that made me think of Mr. Rogers, when he said, in his calm, public television way, “No one has all the answers.”

And I thought to myself – maybe “I don’t know” is the theological foundation I’ve been looking for!

What if I stopped trying to define everything? What if I tried to reconcile the known and the unknown and started living into the paradox that sometimes, we have to let go of needing to know everything so that everything can be known?

I thought that, and totally freaked myself out.

Am I being willfully ignorant? Am I copping out?

Or am I freaked out because I’ve been so conditioned that questions and feelings and doubts are wrong?

Can “I don’t know” really be a viable basis for a theology?

That’s the paradox, isn’t it?

Sacred Ambiguity.

I’ve spent a lot of time over the past few years thinking about that phrase. Sacred Ambiguity.

I think we actually CAN contemplate the mystery of life without needing to know all the answers. When we get to a place where we can embrace the mystery of life without freaking out that it isn’t supplying us with all the answers…I think that’s when we can experience and embrace sacred ambiguity.

There are so many unknowns in this world, so much change, so much upheaval and situations and events. These are moments that rocket us forward and others that seem to drag us backwards by decades. Sometimes it seems like life sends us in hundreds of different directions, and it’s nearly impossible to know where we’re headed or where we’ll end up.

As frustrating as it sounds like it could be, not knowing is part of the beautiful journey of life.

I’m learning that I don’t have to have all the answers because we can’t possibly know all the answers, and that might actually be a good thing.

I’m learning that maybe we’re not supposed to know everything.

If we knew everything, we’d never feel the butterflies that come from a first kiss, or be surprised by the relief of a medical issue that turns out to be nothing, or the joy of learning a new skill.

Life would be so BORING. It wouldn’t have the ups and downs, the excitement at the little things, the wonder and pride of getting through hard times.

It wouldn’t make us laugh or cry, wouldn’t mold and shape us into powerful and confident human beings.

I don’t know about you, but I want a life that I’ve carved for myself, that I claim as my own, with pride, through both the good and the bad.

When we get to the point of no longer wanting all the answers, that’s when “I don’t know” can emerge, not as a frustrating admission of ignorance to be denied or figured out, but as the ultimate realism – an expression of spiritual humility and maturity.

I don’t know can be a hard-won theological bedrock, birthed by the experience and realization that life does not follow a neat, tidy, predictable path, that it is filled with paradox and contradictions, of sacred ambiguity.

We can find our theology in the questions. We find ourselves in inquiry, in the search, in struggle and failure and triumph and u-turns and dead ends and unending trails of thought that take us through a universe that owes us no explanation.

In the I don’t know, we can find so much.

We find love.

We find worth.

We find integrity [or where we lack it]

We find ourselves.

We find that the ‘big’ questions don’t have to have big answers. Our conclusions to the most important questions we will ever wonder about can always be qualified by this sacred ambiguity, as it reminds us that uncertainty, and even doubt, can keep us open and receptive to new truths and insights that we have yet to encounter.

In the theology of the I don’t know, it’s okay to be wrong and in doubt. When our theology pulses with the recognition and allowance of sacred ambiguity, we allow both the questions and the answers to live together as vital and evolving guides that help us understand how to live.

If we embrace this sacred ambiguity, the “I don’t Know”, we will, in time, come to see that our spiritual journey is less of a fact finding mission and more of a path of unfolding discovery. An adventure. An exciting, harrowing, wonder-filled, heartbreaking, inspiring, frustrating, salvific quest into the depths of our own being.

At least I hope so.

I don’t really know. And that’s okay.