From Certainty to Kindness

I own a copy of Systematic Theology. Like, the big one. Bought it during my “serious theology” phase in my early twenties.

I never read it beyond a few pages.

Same story with a few of Andrew Wilson’s books (UK not US). I even learned from him directly during my “Impact” year, a church-run volunteer programme through Newfrontiers. I have Francis Chan, Timothy Keller, and yes, a couple of Mark Driscoll titles still sitting on the shelf. I wanted to be the kind of Christian who devoured theology. Though, in truth, I rarely made the time or had the focus to finish any of them.

Parts of that year were good. I liked the study time. I liked being around people who cared about faith and purpose. I liked the small moments: the laughter, the community, the feeling of being useful.

But the year itself? It was intense. Physically, emotionally, spiritually. We didn’t have our own church building, so every service meant packing up vans, setting up sound systems, and turning hired halls into holy spaces. Most of us were volunteers, living on scraps and goodwill. Looking back now, I can see how much was asked of us and how much of myself I gave without question.

I threw myself in because I wanted to serve. Because I thought that was what maturity looked like.

At the time, I even wrote a post about it.

“I feel like a 7-year-old in a 20-year-old’s body… My Christian faith is at the maturity level of a young tree, I have a few rings and branches but not much fruit yet. My goal is to be bigger in faith and maturity.”

That was an old post on Tumblr One Day I’d Like to Think of Myself as a Big Oak Tree.

And in another post, A Child at Heart, I wrote about the need to stay childlike in faith, to see God with wonder and trust, like a child looking up to a loving parent.

It’s funny, reading those side by side now. One yearning to grow up fast, the other reminding myself not to. Back then, I treated maturity and childlike faith like opposites. As if growing up in Christ meant outgrowing dependence, questions, or joy.

I can see now that both were right. They just didn’t know how to talk to each other yet.

Eighteen years later, I still want to be the oak tree but not the perfect, towering kind. I’m content to be one that’s weathered a few storms, gained a few rings, and learned that growth doesn’t happen through striving. It happens through staying rooted.

And those roots don’t grow through certainty anymore. They grow through kindness.

I used to think faith was about having the right answers. If you could defend your theology well enough, you were strong.

When I had my stroke in 2020, lying in that hospital bed, certainty didn’t help me. I often talk about that moment as a turning point because it’s an easy marker, but really, the change had already begun. My faith had been slowly expanding for years. Shaped by new surroundings, new people, and the broader culture I found myself part of in London.

What mattered wasn’t what I could explain about God, but whether I trusted Him enough to still see goodness when I didn’t understand.

That season stripped a lot away. It made me realise how much energy I’d spent trying to be the “right kind of Christian.” And how often that meant silencing parts of myself: my questions, my doubts, even my identity.

I’m bisexual. That’s something I could never have said back then, not in the circles I was in. It wasn’t safe to. But naming it now, without fear, has become part of my faith not in opposition to it, but as an act of honesty and wholeness. Acknowledging I am who God made me.

Because the truth is, when we make people hide who they are, we’re not protecting holiness, we’re damaging community.

Over the years, I’ve come to see that much of what we call theology is really a set of frameworks human attempts to articulate mystery. They’re often useful, sometimes beautiful, and occasionally harmful. I’ve learned to hold them lightly.

I still care about theology. I read, listen to, and watch more now than I used to, but differently. Not to win arguments or chase certainty, but to understand. I’ve learned to trace where ideas came from, what questions they were trying to answer, and what cultures shaped them.

But when all that gets too heavy, I come back to something simpler: the words and actions of Jesus.

If a theology complicates what he made simple: love God, love people, then I question its usefulness.

That’s probably the biggest shift between 20-year-old me and now. I used to think maturity meant having airtight beliefs. Now I think it means knowing which questions matter most and choosing to live out the answers, not argue them.

When people ask me now what happens when we die, I tell them the truth: we don’t know. We can comfort each other with hope, we can lean on centuries of tradition, but ultimately we walk by faith, not by sight.

The better question, I think, is how we live.

Because the ripples we make in how we treat outsiders, how we show kindness, how we love don’t stop at our death. They carry on into eternity.

And if that’s what good theology looks like, then maybe I’ve finally started to live it.

I’m still growing, still learning, still childlike in faith. The difference is, I’m no longer chasing perfection. Just presence.

Kindness over certainty. Roots over branches. Faith over fear.