The Beach Boys song “God Only Knows” is a classic within the modern rock canon. Reminiscing on the writing process, Beach Boys leader Brian Wilson recounted how he prayed with his brother Carl during the recording sessions, turning them into a sort of religious ceremony.
Wilson and lyricist Tony Asher had long discussions about whether to keep the word God in the song, given God’s alleged un-coolness in the 1960s. They needn’t have worried. The song spoke to the universal teenage yearning to fall in love and the universal teenage dread of what would happen “if you should ever leave me.”
Little did Brian Wilson know that a simple phrase, “God only knows,” meant so much more.
The idea that God only knows has a long and storied history in the Abrahamic faiths. The phrases “Lord knows,” “God willing,” and “Inshallah” are part of the modern secular lexicon — even if we don’t fully appreciate their religious origins. These phrases carry significant spiritual meaning and, as we will see, real political consequences.
Each statement tacitly admits a state of human ignorance and imperfection. The speaker is confessing, “I don’t fully know. I’m not in total control.” To say “God willing” is to acknowledge a fundamental difference between the almighty Creator and the not-so-mighty creature. While God is all-knowing, our knowledge is inherently limited. We, after all, are mere mortals, who pale in comparison.
Wilson sings, “God only knows what I’d be without you,” and he is right. He can try to imagine what his life would be like if the girl ever left him, as he fears she might, but he can never know for sure. God alone — here a stand-in for the great beyond, a higher power, or some spiritual force that we can’t grasp — can know. We can’t. Not knowing, it seems, is at the heart of what it means to be human. And it is at the heart of what it means to love and be loved.
The implications of this are that contrary to popular wisdom, “following your truth” is not always the best idea. Not believing in yourself can actually be the right thing to do. In fact, total certainty is bad for us and it can be destructive for democracy.
Think about it: if you have all of life’s questions completely settled, what is there left to discuss? If one political tribe has full and complete access to the truth, why should they include other tribes in the democratic process? Once one group possesses “the truth,” the give-and-take of democracy becomes nothing more than a waste of time. We don’t worry about citizens who have doubts. We worry about the ones who believe in themselves all the way down to their feet.
A healthy democracy requires citizens who possess intellectual humility, who can shrug their shoulders from time to time and say, “God only knows.” Intellectual humility is a trait and a practice that allows citizens to accept their limitations. Is it “evil” to prefer a marginal tax rate of 42% over one that is 36%? If two citizens are fighting over whether a particular intersection should have a stop sign or a traffic light, there may not be one right answer. It may just be a matter of preference, with each side having a legitimate argument. Even if we suspect that we are right, we must accept that we might be wrong.
This might all sound obvious, but we are not sure that it is. Quickly rejecting “bad” opinions — and rushing to label certain political beliefs as reflecting deep moral flaws — is not ideal in a democracy, in which bad ideas will always be plentiful. When someone disagrees with you, that doesn’t mean they are necessarily a bad person. It most likely just means that they are different. Citizens must reject the notion that, as philosopher Kevin Vallier puts it, “others disagree with our moral, religious, and political viewpoints solely because of some cognitive or moral vice.”
This is where simple phrases like “Inshallah” and “God only knows” become more than just an offhand phrase or a lyric in a Beach Boys song. They represent an essential starting point for a healthy democracy.
A practice that nicely illustrates our point began more than a millennium ago, instituted by a group of Muslim clerics. Whenever these jurists would write a fatwa, or religious edict, they would always conclude with the phrase Allahu a’lam, which roughly translates to “God only knows.” To be sure, these jurists were not moral relativists. They believed that their particular edicts were correct. They had real confidence in their rulings. However, at the very end, the jurists would reserve the last word for God. It was as if the jurists needed to remind both the reader — and themselves — of their own shortcomings.
Here we can begin to distinguish between human confidence and human certainty. Confidence in one’s beliefs is critically important in a democracy. Absolute certainty in one’s beliefs, on the other hand, is dangerous.
Christians have their own version of Allahu a’lam. Christians believe that the Bible is divinely inspired — “God-breathed,” as Paul puts it — even though it was written by flawed human beings. But Paul doesn’t pretend that every word he writes carries the same divine weight.
When Paul discusses marriage ethics, he is remarkably transparent about his sources. “For those who are married,” he writes, “I have a command that comes not from me, but from the Lord” — essentially, don’t get divorced. Fair enough. But then Paul encounters a thornier question, one that Jesus never directly addressed: what happens when a new Christian is married to someone who wants nothing to do with the faith? Should they divorce? Paul has an opinion — he thinks they should stay married. But listen to how he frames it: “I do not have a direct command from the Lord.” In other words, “This is my best judgment, but I am flying a bit blind here.”
The lesson is unmistakable: if Paul — writing under divine inspiration — could admit the limits of his certainty, then maybe the rest of us should too. Sometimes wisdom means saying “God only knows,” even when we are pretty sure we know what God would want.
A sincere faith does not depend on absolute certainty and it is unfortunate that our broader religious and political culture tends to equate the two. Feeling comfortable and confident in our convictions can actually engender greater intellectual humility, rather than hubris. After all, if we know where we stand, we may find ourselves less threatened by others’ convictions.
Let’s return for a moment to the Muslim jurists and the fatwa. Trusting God rather than themselves enabled these jurists to approach their legal opponents with generosity. If truth belongs to God alone, that changes the fundamental purpose of debate. As the great 8th- and 9th- century jurist Imam Shafi’i, one of Islam’s most influential scholars, put it, “I never once argued with anyone hoping to win the debate; rather I always wished that the truth would come from his side.” The search for truth, rather than victory, is the goal.
We, your authors, would like to uphold this standard. It is easier said than done, especially when the convictions in question are not about tax rates but about salvation. One of us is Christian, the other Muslim. Regarding the very nature of God, we disagree, and our disagreement is profound.
Years ago, in one of our Christian-Muslim dialogues at the University of Minnesota, a student asked me (Shadi) how I felt about the fact that many evangelicals — including my co-author Matthew — want me to know Christ, embrace him as my savior, and anchor my life in his grace. I feel no such need to see Matthew convert to Islam, so I can’t entirely relate to the impulse. I was a bit stumped about how to respond, since I was well aware of the imbalance in our perspectives.
Frankly, I am still uncomfortable with the idea that a dear friend might wish for me to replace one set of foundational beliefs with another — to, in effect, become something other than what I am. But I understand better now. My friendship with Matthew is premised on trying our best to understand each other. And if this is what Matthew believes, then I can’t expect him to suppress his own commitments as an evangelical who, by definition, has an interest in evangelizing. He wants me to convert to Christianity, and that’s okay.
Matthew’s confidence in his faith doesn’t threaten our friendship. Certainty would. If either of us believed he possessed God’s final verdict on the other, there would be nothing left to talk about. Matthew and I wrestle with moral and political uncertainty every day. We have found that our respective religious traditions do not forbid this wrestling. In fact, they enable us to wrestle more productively with our questions as well as our doubts.
So how can citizens hold political confidence while at the same time avoiding the destructive temptations of political certainty? It comes down to this: to be a person of political confidence is to place your confidence in something beyond yourself, something you can’t fully comprehend or control. To be a person of political certainty is to place your confidence in yourself and your ability to fully comprehend the truth. The writer Anne Lamott says, “The opposite of faith is not doubt. The opposite of faith is certainty.” This is not just another clever aphorism. It speaks to something deep and true about what it means to be human.
A cautionary tale of the dangers of making premature political judgments comes from the life and death of Ali, one of the most beloved figures in the history of Islam. Ali was the son-in-law and cousin of the Prophet Muhammad and the last of the four “rightly guided” caliphs. He was assassinated in 661 AD, during a civil war that haunts Muslims to this day.
Ali was embroiled in a bitter dispute with Muawiya, the powerful governor of Syria, who refused to recognize his authority. To settle the matter, Ali submitted himself to a formal process of arbitration, in which an ostensibly neutral party would adjudicate each man’s claims. Many of Ali’s followers were outraged that their beloved leader would humble himself in this way. How could he — the commander of the faithful, blessed by the one true and immortal God — subject himself to the ruling of a mere mortal?
Upon hearing their grumbling, Ali did something both startling and strange. He brought forward a copy of the Quran and touched it. Ali then declared in front of the crowd, “Oh Quran, speak to the people!” His followers were confused. “Oh Ali, why do you mock us?” they asked. The Quran, Ali explained, does not speak by itself.
It was a brilliant religious demonstration with profound political consequences. For Muslims, the Quran is indeed the word of God, every letter and word divine. As such, the book is ultimate certainty — truth with a capital T. But the Quran’s precise meaning and application are anything but.
The Quran requires a human interpreter. It was “written in straight lines between two covers,” as Ali said, so it can’t speak for itself. Human beings, with all their flaws and foibles, have to read, interpret, and apply it themselves. When they read the holy text, they bring their own biases. Like any book, the Quran requires readers. And readers can always find what they are looking for — if they look hard enough.
There, lying before the crowd, was God’s word, unmediated by human authorship. And yet, even here, Ali’s word of caution was clear: try as you might, you cannot directly access God’s true and perfect intent. The Quran will not speak exactly to this or that situation. Readers need to discuss, debate, and come to their own imperfect decisions. You can judge your fellow humans, but do so with care because your judgments will necessarily be limited. Not only that, but ultimate judgment will never be yours, and it won’t happen in the here and now. Ultimate judgment will be delayed until another world and another life. Only at the very end of time will God clarify who was right and who was wrong.
Ali’s exhortations failed to satisfy his supporters — some of whom became his betrayers. They wanted absolute certainty. They wanted answers. So they killed him.
The story of the Quran that would not speak — and Ali’s refusal to answer on its behalf — might be surprising to those who associate the early days of Islam with fundamentalism, fanaticism, and the often misunderstood term sharia. Ali’s pluralistic ethic was baked into the sharia itself. Sharia is Islam’s sacred law, but its origins come from a word that means “way to the watering-hole.”
According to a saying of the Prophet Muhammad, if a person strives to faithfully interpret God’s path and is successful, they will receive two rewards. If they try but get it wrong, they will still receive one reward for their good-faith attempt. If two interpreters of the Quran disagree with each other, only God knows which one of them is correct. As the Quran says, “No one knows the soldiers of God but God.”
Muslims and Christians disagree on many things but come together on one critical point: A mortal’s claim to fully comprehend the infinite truth of an immortal God is something close to blasphemy. In claiming intellectual certainty and mastery, blasphemers put themselves in the place of God. In Islam, one of God’s 99 names — the names that make God, God — is the All-Knowing. By definition, humans cannot aspire to anything comparable.
Here we begin to see why claims of absolute certainty, and the political fundamentalism that often follows, are not simply bad manners or undemocratic; they are something worse. Political fundamentalism is, at its heart, a rejection of human finitude and frailty. In this sense, fundamentalism is a rejection of the most important distinction in Islam and Christianity — the distinction between the created and the Creator.
God only knows. And that, if we are honest, is a relief. Or at least it should be.
This article is adapted from Matthew Kaemingk and Shadi Hamid’s new book, Can Religion Save Democracy? How More Faith — Not Less — Can Heal Our Public Life, used with permission from Brazos Press.
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