The Part of Religion I Could Never Accept
Faith never troubled me. Certainty did.
Why Didn’t Religion Stick?
My grandmother was deeply religious. As a child, I attended catechism and was exposed to many of the traditions and beliefs that shaped her life. Religion was present in my upbringing, but it was never imposed upon me. My mother generally accepted religion, but she never insisted that I do the same. Looking back, I realize how significant that was. I was given something that many never receive: the freedom to decide for myself.
That freedom raises an interesting question. If religion was available to me, why didn’t it take root?
For much of my adult life, I thought I knew the answer. I assumed I rejected religion because I found its claims unconvincing. I enjoyed debating religious ideas, exposing contradictions, and questioning assumptions. Like many skeptics, I viewed religion primarily as a collection of propositions that either stood up to scrutiny or did not.
Over time, however, my perspective changed. I became less interested in proving religion wrong and more interested in understanding why it appealed so strongly to so many people. At the same time, I became less certain about my own conclusions. Today, I do not consider myself religious, but I do not consider myself an atheist either. The older I get, the less comfortable I become with certainty about questions that may ultimately be beyond human understanding.
The truth is that I don’t know whether God exists.
Perhaps God exists exactly as described by one of the world’s religions. Perhaps there is a higher reality that none of our religions have fully captured. Perhaps there is something beyond our comprehension altogether. Or perhaps there is nothing. I simply do not know. What I have discovered is that admitting uncertainty feels more honest than pretending otherwise.
The Accident of Birth
It's hard for me to look at my own beliefs and not wonder how different they might have been under different circumstances.
Had I been born in rural Alabama, there is a good chance I would be a Christian. Had I been born in Saudi Arabia, I might be a Muslim. Had I been born in India, perhaps I would be Hindu. Had I been born in a secular European country, I might never have developed religious beliefs at all. These possibilities do not strike me as controversial. They strike me as obvious.
Most people do not arrive at their worldview after objectively evaluating every religion, philosophy, and competing claim available to humanity. We inherit beliefs from family, culture, geography, and community. Long before we are capable of critical thought, we begin absorbing assumptions about how the world works and what is true. That process is not unique to religion. It is how nearly all human knowledge is transmitted.
Recognizing this has not made me more dismissive of religious belief. Quite the opposite. It has made me more aware of how much circumstance shapes all of us.
It reminds me that intelligent, thoughtful, and morally serious people can arrive at very different conclusions about life’s biggest questions.
It also reminds me that, under different circumstances, I might have arrived at different conclusions myself. That realization doesn’t eliminate conviction. It simply encourages humility.
What Always Bothered Me
As I reflected on why religion never resonated with me, I eventually realized that my objections were never primarily about God.
They were about certainty.
More specifically, they were about systems that demand certainty.
There has always been something in me that reacts strongly when I encounter institutions, movements, or leaders that discourage questioning and reward unquestioning loyalty. I see it in religion sometimes, but I also see it in politics, corporations, ideological movements, social media tribes, and cults of personality. The pattern is remarkably consistent. Trust the group. Follow the leader. Stop asking questions. Accept the doctrine. Loyalty becomes virtue, while doubt becomes weakness.
Something about that dynamic has always made me uneasy.
As a younger man, I often directed that frustration toward religion because religion was the most visible example. I struggled with the idea that billions of people were expected to accept extraordinary claims based largely on faith. I struggled with doctrines suggesting that those who believed correctly would be rewarded while those who reached different conclusions would be punished. Most of all, I struggled with the confidence that often accompanied those claims.
There is a meaningful difference between someone saying, “I believe this is true,” and someone saying, “I know this is true.” The first statement leaves room for discussion. The second often closes the door. When certainty enters the room, curiosity usually leaves.
Over time, I realized that what bothered me was not belief itself. It was the assumption that belief had become knowledge.
An Unexpected Discovery
One of the surprises that emerged while writing this essay was the realization that my discomfort with certainty may actually bring me closer to some religious thinkers than I once imagined.
For years, I assumed the divide was between believers and skeptics. Increasingly, I am not sure that is the most important distinction.
Some of the most thoughtful religious figures throughout history spoke not of certainty but of mystery. They recognized that if God exists, an infinite reality may be far larger than the human mind’s ability to fully comprehend. They viewed faith not as knowledge, but as trust. Not as proof, but as conviction in the face of uncertainty.
That is a very different concept than the religion I often found myself arguing against.
Perhaps faith and certainty are not the same thing. Perhaps faith is meaningful precisely because certainty is unavailable. If there were no uncertainty, there would be no need for faith at all.
This realization has caused me to reconsider what many religious people are actually trying to express. The most compelling forms of faith may not be declarations of absolute knowledge. They may be acknowledgments that some questions are larger than us, yet still worth pursuing.
Ironically, that position feels far more intellectually honest to me than claims of certainty from anyone who believes they have fully resolved questions that may ultimately be beyond human understanding.
What If Belief Was Enough?
This raises a question that I find increasingly difficult to ignore.
What if belief was enough?
What if we could hold our convictions deeply without insisting that everyone else arrive at the same conclusions? What if a Christian could believe wholeheartedly in Christianity while recognizing that a Muslim, Jew, Hindu, atheist, or agnostic is engaged in the same search for meaning and truth? What if disagreement did not automatically imply condemnation?
The older I get, the more I suspect that humility may be one of the most underrated virtues in modern society. We often treat certainty as a sign of strength and doubt as a sign of weakness. Yet the people I most admire are rarely the most certain people in the room. They tend to be people who hold strong convictions while remaining open to the possibility that they do not possess the entire picture.
The same principle applies far beyond religion. Political movements increasingly demand loyalty. Public figures attract followers who defend them regardless of evidence. Ideological tribes form around shared narratives and punish dissent. The human tendency toward certainty has not disappeared. It has simply found new outlets.
Perhaps the problem was never religion.
Perhaps the problem has always been certainty.
Why Religious Freedom Matters
For me, this is where the conversation ultimately leads.
The strongest argument for religious freedom is not that every religion is true. It is that none of us knows enough to justify controlling the conscience of another person.
Religious freedom protects believers and nonbelievers for the same reason. It acknowledges that human beings are fallible. It recognizes that our understanding of reality is incomplete. It leaves room for people to search, question, believe, doubt, change their minds, and arrive at different conclusions about life’s biggest questions.
That freedom is not a weakness of society. It is one of its greatest strengths.
The moment we become convinced that our certainty justifies limiting the freedom of others, we have forgotten the very lesson that religious liberty was designed to teach. The principle exists because human beings disagree. It exists because we are imperfect. It exists because no institution, no government, no church, and no individual should possess unchecked authority over the conscience of another.
Perhaps that is the part of religion I could never accept.
Not faith.
Not belief.
Not the search for meaning.
Certainty.
And perhaps that is also why I have come to value religious freedom so deeply.
Not because I know who is right.
But because I don’t.
Author’s Note
Like most people, I spend a lot of time reacting to the world around me. Running a business, maintaining relationships, following current events, and keeping up with daily responsibilities leaves little time to step back and ask a simple question:
Why do I think the way I do?
This essay began as an exploration of religious freedom. I assumed I already knew what I thought about the topic. Instead, I found myself asking a different question entirely: Why didn’t religion ever stick with me?
The answer turned out to be more complicated than I expected.
As I worked through the essay, I started noticing connections between my views on religion and my reactions to other parts of life. The same discomfort I feel toward religious certainty often appears when I encounter political tribes, personality cults, organizations that discourage questioning, or any system that seems to value loyalty over inquiry.
What surprised me was realizing how consistently that theme appears throughout my life.
That doesn’t mean I’ve arrived at some final conclusion. If anything, the opposite is true. The process left me with more questions than answers, which is probably a sign that the topic is worth exploring further.
More broadly, this experience reinforced something I’ve come to appreciate about writing. Sometimes we start with a topic we want to understand, only to discover that we’re actually learning something about ourselves.
My hope is that these essays encourage a little of that kind of reflection. Not because we’ll all arrive at the same conclusions, but because understanding how our beliefs were formed may be just as important as the beliefs themselves.
The better we understand our own assumptions, experiences, and instincts, the easier it becomes to understand why other people see the world differently.
And in a time when certainty seems abundant and understanding often feels scarce, that strikes me as a worthwhile place to start.