Too much mystery?

One of the greatest gifts progressive Christianity has given me is the gift of mystery. I grew up in a church tradition that put a lot of stock in certitude, so I am grateful now to be able to affirm simultaneously that I am a person of faith and that my answer to many religious and spiritual questions is “I don’t know.” Unwavering intellectual assent to a set of black-and-white doctrines is no longer my litmus test for faithfulness. I don’t spend my days worrying about my doubts or feeling like I’ve flunked Christianity because I don’t have concise and elegant answers to every theological conundrum. The spiritual life I have embraced these days is so much bigger, more nuanced, and more three-dimensional than what I once knew.

And so I am startled and even a bit disturbed to find myself asking this question about the progressive Christianity I have wholeheartedly adopted: Is there such a thing as too much mystery? Or, more provocatively: Have I reached a point in my faith life where I’m using mystery as a cop-out? As a refusal to commit, to engage, to bear public and vulnerable-making witness in the name of Jesus? Is it possible to turn mystery into a self-protective shield, so that I won’t have to stand with conviction and urgency in a world that needs to know the healing love of God?

These questions have been creeping up on me for a while. I think about them every time I see a version of Christianity in the media that is divisive, fear-based, racist, sexist, or nationalistic. I wonder where the impassioned progressive response is. Where is the bold articulation of an alternative Christianity? A Christianity that insists—without polite equivocation—on inclusion, self-sacrificial love, and restorative justice?