I can understand your compassion for this young woman. Like you, I can remember my own zeal at first for Christianity and then again for every new thing I’ve learned from studiously searching for wisdom wherever I could find it.

I think that journey from zeal and certainty to faith and humility needs to be talked about more. Not just in Christian churches, but also in academia, the sciences, politics, and every other religion. What is it about our society and culture that readily accepts bits of knowledge and wisdom, yet then holds so strongly to those tiny bits that we think we’ve figured out? Where is the societal pressure to tell folks to “hold your horses”?

Our current collective knowledge and wisdom is massive and accumulated from hundreds of generations over thousands of years. What makes any of us think we’ve got it all figured out? No one person could possibly know everything about everything, yet we have grown-up children thinking they do. Or worse, thinking they don’t need to know anything except this one tiny bit that they agree with.