Is It Okay If I Don’t Know What I Believe Anymore?

If a spiritual system makes it unsafe to ask deeper questions, if it makes you feel like less of a Christian for wondering out loud, or if it equates faith with certainty, then I want to say this clearly. That is not a healthy system. Those are bad systems to be a part of.

There are a lot of people quietly carrying the same question right now. Is it okay if I don’t know what I believe anymore. Most people will say yes on the surface, but the reality is much more complicated than that. Because when you actually stop knowing what you believe, when the answers that once worked no longer do, the fear creeps in quickly. Am I failing. Am I losing my faith. Am I still allowed to belong.

For many of us, the questions have not come from rebellion. They have come from life. From adulthood. From loss, disappointment, burnout, grief, responsibility, and the slow realization that faith built for camp highs and emotional moments does not always survive fluorescent lit offices, layoffs, heartbreak, and ordinary days. We were never told that growing up. We were told what to believe, not how belief would need to change.

I recently read a reflection from a writer who described an entire generation of Christians as jet lagged. People who grew up immersed in constant spiritual stimulation and then stepped into a quieter, heavier world. The lights went out. The noise faded. And suddenly God felt distant, not because God left, but because we had never learned how to listen without the volume turned all the way up. That naming alone felt like permission to breathe.

So here is the question again. Is it okay if I don’t know what I believe anymore?

Yes. And more than that, it might actually be a sign of growth.

What often gets in the way is spiritual authority that confuses certainty with faithfulness. When systems demand unquestioning agreement, when curiosity is treated as danger, when doubt is framed as disobedience, something has gone wrong. Faith rooted entirely in certainty cannot survive real life. It is too brittle. It eventually collapses under the weight of experience.

We have been taught to fear uncertainty, but the biblical story tells a different one.

There is a moment in the story of Elijah that I keep coming back to. Elijah is one of the most revered prophetic figures in the Hebrew Scriptures. He is bold, confident, powerful, and deeply connected to God. He calls down fire from heaven. He confronts false prophets. He stands alone against kings. By every metric we usually use, Elijah has it all together.

And then everything falls apart.

After one of the most dramatic moments in the story, Elijah receives a threat on his life. And the text says something that should stop us in our tracks. Elijah was afraid. He runs. He isolates himself. He collapses emotionally. He sits under a shrub in the wilderness and asks God to take his life. This is not a small moment. This is despair. This is exhaustion. This is the unraveling of someone who has given everything.

The Bible does not hide this. It does not clean it up. It lets the prophet fall apart on the page.

God meets Elijah there, not with correction, but with care. He lets him sleep. He feeds him. He invites him to keep going. Eventually Elijah ends up in a cave, and God asks a simple question. Why are you here.

Elijah answers with frustration, resentment, and self justification. He feels alone. He feels betrayed. He feels like everything he did was for nothing. And then God invites him outside.

A violent wind tears through the mountains. God is not in it. An earthquake shakes the ground. God is not in it. A fire roars through the space. God is not in it. And then comes a quiet whisper. And it is there, in the whisper, that Elijah recognizes God’s presence.

That detail matters.

Up until this point, Elijah had learned to associate God with the spectacular. With power. With domination. With visible victory. But in the moment where he needs God most, God is found in something completely different. Stillness. Quiet. Subtlety. Presence.

What if Elijah’s certainty needed to break for something deeper to form.

What if the story is not about how powerful God is, but about how incomplete Elijah’s understanding had become. What if the miracles were not the destination, but part of the journey. What if the collapse was not failure, but invitation.

That possibility reframes everything.

It suggests that moving from certainty to uncertainty is not the loss of faith, but a transition into a more mature one. A faith that is no longer dependent on spectacle. A faith that can survive silence. A faith that listens differently.

This pattern shows up everywhere in the biblical story. Abraham doubts. Moses resists. David breaks. Peter denies. Thomas questions. These are not exceptions. They are the story. The people we most admire in scripture are not defined by their certainty, but by their willingness to keep walking when certainty dissolves.

If you no longer believe the way you used to, you are not alone. You are in good company.

The danger is not questioning. The danger is staying stuck. The invitation is not to abandon faith, but to let it grow. To release the version of belief that no longer fits and to remain open to the one that is forming.

God has not stopped speaking. We just have to learn how to listen again.

If you are in that in between space, unsure of what you believe but unwilling to give up, that is not the end of the story. It might be the beginning of a better one.

Keep moving forward. Even slowly. Especially slowly.