Agnosticism and Mystery
Saturday, November 22, 2025
I have said I am agnostic, not antagonistic and that I hold a generous agnosticism. I am not so much skeptical of God as I am of certainty about God. Furthermore, I want to both know about God and to know God deeply, but I have found that my ability to do so is limited. Divine hiddenness is, at this point, more real to me than the divine, and that makes me sad. I was never one to see God behind every bush, but I’d hoped to see him somewhere, and I don’t. At least that’s how it feels.
That said, I think agnosticism may make me more open to mystery. I can no longer hold to the systematic theologies I was taught, but I am more than ready to believe there are things and events that cannot be easily explained, and I wonder if that serves me better than certainty ever did. I no longer believe I can know about God in such detail, but I have become more at peace with unknowing. I don’t say comfortable because the subject vexes me, but I don’t believe that makes me unworthy or a bad person—I’m not at war with myself or anyone else over this.
While I’m conceptually OK with mystery, I still find it hard to grasp—of course, if I could grasp it, then it wouldn’t be mysterious, would it? How have mystics approached God? It seems they have swum in the sea of mystery and allowed it to carry them, recognizing how small they were compared to its power and vastness yet trusting it to hold them. Safe? Not likely. Good? Yes.