I am a pastor.
When most people hear that, they assume my job is to stand on a stage and hand out neat, pre-packaged, unquestionable answers. They assume my worldview is fragile, built on avoiding hard questions, and that my ultimate goal is to get people to just shut up and believe.
But before I ever stepped behind a pulpit, I spent years in university lecture halls getting my assumptions aggressively dismantled. I went into higher education thinking I had the world figured out. I left realizing that almost everything I thought I understood was just a cartoon sketch of a much more complex reality.
And if there is one thing university taught me—a lesson that completely overhauled both my theology and my mental health—it is that cheap certainty is the enemy of a resilient mind.
Which brings us to the core question: Why are we so terrified of saying “I don’t know,” and why does pretending we have it all figured out actually make us incredibly anxious?
If you don’t understand the mechanics of how you form your beliefs, you are navigating life’s hardest moments with a map drawn by a toddler.
The Science of Knowing Nothing
In 2002, researchers at Yale University conducted a fascinating study. They asked people a simple question: “How well do you understand how a zipper works?”
Most people rated their understanding very high. It’s a zipper. You pull it up, the teeth lock. Simple.
Then, the researchers handed them a piece of paper and said: “Great. Now write down, step-by-step, exactly how the mechanical components of the teeth interlock.”
Almost no one could do it. When forced to actually explain the mechanism, people realized they had absolutely no idea how a zipper worked. Their confidence plummeted.
The researchers discovered that humans suffer from a persistent illusion: we confuse our familiarity with a concept for actual mastery of it. We think we understand how the economy works, how depression works, or how theology works, simply because we recognize the words.
When you apply this to everyday life, it’s dangerous. But when you apply it to the core beliefs that hold your identity together, it is a psychological time bomb.
If you build your life, your faith, or your mental health strategies on the Illusion of Explanatory Depth, your foundation is made of sand. The moment a real storm hits—a job loss, a divorce, a diagnosis—you realize you don’t actually know how the structural beams of your life work.
The Evidence: Cognitive Closure vs. Epistemic Curiosity
To build a resilient mind, you have to look at the psychological data on how people handle uncertainty.
Evidence shows that human beings have varying levels of what psychologists call the “Need for Cognitive Closure” (NFC). People with a high need for cognitive closure are deeply uncomfortable with ambiguity. They want a firm answer immediately, even if it’s the wrong answer. They prefer a comfortable lie over a complex truth.
But when researchers measure the mental health outcomes of these people compared with people who tolerate ambiguity, the results are stark.
People who demand instant, black-and-white certainty experience higher cortisol spikes (stress hormones) when they encounter situations that defy their expectations. Their rigidity makes them fragile.
On the flip side, evidence suggests that people who possess “Epistemic Curiosity”—the drive to seek out new information and explore complex problems without needing immediate resolution—are highly resilient against anxiety and depression. When their worldview is challenged, they don’t panic. They get curious.
This is the greatest lesson university ever taught me. It didn’t teach me what to think; it taught me how to dig. It taught me that it is completely acceptable to sit in the tension of a massive, unsolved problem without hyperventilating.
There is an ancient piece of wisdom in the Bible that mirrors this exact psychological framework. Proverbs 25:2 says: “It is the glory of God to conceal a matter; to search out a matter is the glory of kings.”
Think about the sheer weight of that statement. It doesn’t say, “It is the glory of kings to blindly accept what they are told.” It says the mark of leadership, maturity, and royalty is the willingness to pick up a shovel and search it out.
God is not threatened by your shovel. Truth is not fragile. If something is actually true, it can survive the scrutiny of your hardest questions.
The Counterargument
Now, here is where the skeptics and the deeply religious both push back.
“If you spend your whole life questioning everything, you’ll never stand for anything. Isn’t faith all about believing without needing the evidence? Isn’t relentless questioning just a slippery slope to becoming a cynical, paralyzed nihilist?”
The claim sounds plausible, but here’s where it breaks down.
There is a massive difference between chronic cynicism and diligent investigation. Cynicism is just another form of intellectual laziness—it assumes everything is a lie so it never has to do the work of finding the truth.
And regarding faith? Blind acceptance isn’t faith; it is abdication. Faith isn’t pretending you aren’t standing in the dark; faith is keeping your eyes open while you search for the light switch. If your worldview requires you to shut off your brain, ignore primary evidence, and never ask “why,” you don’t have a worldview. You have a cult.
When you actually “search out a matter”—whether that’s reading the primary literature of a scientific study, going to therapy to understand your trauma triggers, or deeply studying the historical context of your religious texts—you don’t lose your convictions. You temper them. You forge them in fire so they don’t snap the second life hits you with a hammer.
What This Means For You
This means you need to stop outsourcing your certainty.
If you suffer from anxiety, stop accepting the surface-level TikTok diagnosis and start digging into the actual neuroscience of your nervous system.
If you are wrestling with your faith, stop feeling guilty for doubting and start treating your doubt as an invitation to study deeper than you ever have before.
Treat your brain like a muscle. When you lift heavy weights, the muscle fibers literally tear. It hurts. But when they rebuild, they are denser and stronger. When you expose your beliefs to hard questions, you experience cognitive dissonance. It hurts. But the worldview that rebuilds on the other side is practically bulletproof.
Limitations
Let’s state the boundaries clearly. Evidence doesn’t establish that we can fully understand everything.
You can search out a matter for fifty years and still hit the bedrock of human limitation. You will never have perfect, 100% complete data on why a specific tragedy happened, how the universe began, or how consciousness fully operates. The goal of searching isn’t to achieve absolute omniscience. The goal of searching is to move from fragile arrogance to resilient humility. We know that the act of searching builds mental flexibility, but we also know that demanding perfect answers leads right back to anxiety.
The Takeaway
Stop settling for the cartoon sketch of reality just because it’s easier to look at.
Truth doesn’t mind being questioned, only fragile egos do; the deeper you dig, the stronger the foundation you actually build.