To KNOW or Not to KNOW? That Is the Question.

The longer I live, the more I discover that I do not KNOW. At first glance that may sound like failure, but I have come to see it as one of life’s greatest liberations. There was a time when I believed that certainty was the goal of the spiritual journey. Now I find myself increasingly at home in mystery. I no longer feel compelled to define what cannot be contained within words. I do not KNOW what the word God truly is. I do not KNOW what the words Christ or Holy Spirit ultimately describe. Strangely, this does not diminish my faith. It deepens it. The surrender of false certainty has opened a door that certainty itself could never unlock.

One of the central questions I continue to explore throughout Christianity Without Fear concerns the nature of belief. Belief has its place. Every journey begins with trust in a possibility. Yet belief becomes a prison when it mistakes itself for KNOWING. Belief adopts a position, often inherited from tradition, culture or religious authority, and then defends that position as though it were the destination itself. KNOWING, by contrast, is never borrowed. It cannot be handed from one person to another. It is always born of direct revelation. Belief speaks about reality; KNOWING participates in it.

The older I become, the less power I place in words. I still love them. They have accompanied me throughout my life, helping me explore mysteries that lie beyond ordinary understanding. Yet words can never become the reality they seek to describe. They remain, as an old Zen saying reminds us, the finger pointing towards the moon. The tragedy is not that we have fingers. The tragedy is that we so often mistake the finger for the moon itself.

Perhaps nowhere has this become clearer to me than in my meditation upon one simple word: “I.” Of all the words in Scripture, this has gradually become, for me, the most significant. I am not referring to Tony Cuckson, nor to the personal self with its history, personality and opinions. The “I” to which I refer is the silent Presence that has always been before every thought about who we imagine ourselves to be. It is the “I” that goes before us to make the crooked way straight. It is the mystery encountered whenever we sincerely ask the ancient question, “Who am I?” That question is not an invitation to construct a better self-image. It is an invitation to discover that to which every sacred name ultimately points. It is the “I” that declares “I AM the Way the Truth and the Life.”

To enter this mystery requires a willingness to step into unknowing. Opening to genuine revelation begins precisely where certainty ends. We must become empty enough for the deeper “I” to reveal itself through us. This can feel unsettling because it asks us to loosen our grip on everything we have accumulated through belief alone. It asks us to leave behind the menu in order to taste the banquet. This is not an invitation to become an unbeliever. It is an invitation to revelation. It is not asking us to reject Scripture or the wisdom of those who have gone before us. It is inviting us to discover for ourselves the living reality to which their words bear witness.

As I continue writing Christianity Without Fear, I increasingly recognize how easily we can become attached to the words rather than to the reality they seek to reveal. I know this tendency because I have lived it myself. We can memorize Scripture, master theological language and defend carefully constructed doctrines, yet never awaken to the living Presence to which they point. We may know the menu by heart while never tasting the meal itself.

By grace, I have occasionally tasted something of that banquet. Those moments cannot be manufactured, nor adequately described. Once even a single taste has been received, however, words can never again be mistaken for the reality itself. They become what they were always intended to be: beautiful servants, faithful signposts and compassionate guides. They cease to be substitutes for direct experience.

This is why I write as I do. I am not asking anyone to exchange one set of beliefs for another. I am inviting a movement beyond second-hand certainty into first-hand KNOWING. That movement is not the achievement of the separate personal self. In fact, the deeper one enters this mystery, the more one discovers that there is no individual who possesses KNOWING. There is only KNOWING itself. The moment the personal self claims ownership of revelation, the mystery quietly slips back into belief.

Words remain precious. Scripture remains precious. The wisdom of those who have walked this path before us remains precious. But sooner or later every sincere seeker is invited beyond the words, beyond the concepts, beyond belief itself, into the silent Presence where the finger is forgotten, the moon is seen, and the banquet is finally tasted.

The invitation into KNOWING has always been present within the Christian tradition itself. The Psalmist does not say, “Be still and believe that I AM God.” He writes, “Be still, and KNOW that I AM God.” There is profound wisdom in that distinction. Stillness is not simply the absence of noise. It is the quieting of the personal “I” with all its ideas, beliefs, opinions and carefully constructed images of God. Only within such stillness does the deeper “I” reveal itself as living Presence.

This is why the journey into KNOWING always begins with entering the unknown. It is not the rejection of faith but the willingness to move beyond second-hand certainty into first-hand revelation. Words, doctrines and beliefs have brought us to the threshold, but they cannot carry us across it. Beyond that threshold lies the mystery to which every sacred word has always pointed—the Presence of the Divine that can never be captured or confined by language.

For many believers, this is perhaps the greatest challenge of all. For most believers Scripture is precious. The language of faith has shaped our lives and become woven into our very identity. Yet every sacred text ultimately asks a deeper question than whether we agree with its words. It asks whether we are willing to awaken to the reality of which those words speak.

The question is both simple and unsettling. Do you wish to believe in that experience to which the word God points, or do you wish to KNOW that experience? One is mediated through concepts and language. The other is immediate. One is inherited. The other is revealed. One remains a description of the banquet; the other is the banquet itself.

It is this KNOWING that Jesus speaks of when he declares, “You shall KNOW the truth, and the truth shall make you free.” Truth is not merely something to be believed. Truth is something to be realized, something lived, something directly known as Presence. Belief may promise freedom, yet remain only a script rehearsed by the mind. KNOWING is the banquet itself—the living taste of eternal LIFE.

Tony Cuckson Cordressogagh Ireland