A few years ago, Garrison Keillor told a story on his public radio show A Prairie Home Companion about a mother who had a high school son. Her son and his friends had just waited in a long line all night long to buy tickets for an upcoming rock concert. A few days later this mother read an alarming article about that rock group. The article talked about how awful their songs are, how they encouraged drug use, and how horrible an influence they were on American young people. After reading the article, she went to her son's room and found the tickets to that rock concert. She took out a cigarette lighter and wondered, "Should I burn these tickets or not?" She went back and forth, debating the decision. And with that, Garrison Keillor ended the story.

On his next show, Keillor said he received large numbers of e-mails and letters that week from listeners who felt frustrated that he left them hanging, that he left the story unresolved. Then he said, "I don't know about your life, but in my life, a lot of things are left unresolved."

Uncertainty can make people uncomfortable. But absolute certainty is generally not possible: ambiguity is part of life. Unfortunately, a lot of Christians claim to have absolute certainty, closing their minds to any new or conflicting ideas, and they often come across as arrogant and become intolerant of anyone who disagrees with their rigid positions.

People of faith need to be willing to ask hard questions, to grapple with our faith, to debate, to think, not just because God endowed us with reason and intellect that we should not abandon in the name of faith, but also as a matter of humility, a virtue Jesus emphasized highly. Christian arrogance and anti-intellectualism are two of the greatest barriers to faith for many unbelievers.