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Areas › Anger › What you are actually defending
There is the discomfort of not knowing, and then a second layer on top: the sense that you were supposed to know by now and something has gone wrong. The second layer is usually the heavier of the two and it is the one that can go first. You do not have to become comfortable with uncertainty in order to stop treating it as a personal failing.
Avoid making too many assumptions (Quran 49:12). The instruction is to hold your guesses loosely, which takes for granted that you were never going to have the full picture.
الحجرات
يَٰٓأَيُّهَا ٱلَّذِينَ ءَامَنُواْ ٱجۡتَنِبُواْ كَثِيرࣰ ا مِّنَ ٱلظَّنِّ إِنَّ بَعۡضَ ٱلظَّنِّ إِثۡمࣱۖ وَلَا تَجَسَّسُواْ وَلَا يَغۡتَب بَّعۡضُكُم بَعۡضًاۚ أَيُحِبُّ أَحَدُكُمۡ أَن يَأۡكُلَ لَحۡمَ أَخِيهِ مَيۡتࣰ ا فَكَرِهۡتُمُوهُۚ وَٱتَّقُواْ ٱللَّهَۚ إِنَّ ٱللَّهَ تَوَّابࣱ رَّحِيمࣱ
Believers, avoid making too many assumptions- some assumptions are sinful- and do not spy on one another or speak ill of people behind their backs: would any of you like to eat the flesh of your dead brother? No, you would hate it. So be mindful of God: God is ever relenting, most merciful
Qur’an 49:12read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
Across several experiments, people who had just been socially excluded reported stronger religious affiliation and more intention to take part in religious practice than people who had not been excluded. When the ground moves, people reach for something steadier, which is a very human response rather than a weakness. These were brief laboratory manipulations of exclusion, so they show a tendency rather than describing anybody's faith.
Aydin N, Fischer P, Frey D. (2010). Turning to God in the face of ostracism: effects of social exclusion on religiousness.. Personality & social psychology bulletin doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
Half the weight of not knowing is the belief that you ought to know.
Say what you would prefer and what you will do, not what they have to feel. I do not like being spoken to this way, and if it carries on I am going to step out of the conversation.
A small child works out how to feel about itself by looking at its parents' faces. If that face was missing, or busy, the looking does not stop, it just moves on to teachers, coaches, friends and strangers.
Anger and doubt cannot really occupy the same moment. Anger sharpens everything to a point, and a genuine maybe blunts it.