David McElroy

When I was much younger and even more foolish than I am today, I had trouble saying three simple words: “I don’t know.” Instead, I had a view about everything. And I was right about everything, of course. I was certain of it.

As the years have gone by, I find that I’m certain of fewer and fewer things. I find that there are a few root-level “first things” that I’m sure of, but there aren’t many things outside of those few principles that I can say I know with certainty.

The list of things I proclaim as “truth” shrinks all the time. I have more questions and fewer answers, partly because I’ve seen myself be wrong so many times and partly because I see that the world is far more complex than I realized even a few years ago.

So the idea of asserting so many opinions as absolute fact seems strange to me now. It feels jarring. I wonder if the certainty I expressed about so many things when I was younger was as annoying to others then as it is to me when I see it in others today.

I find that both science and Christian faith offer insights and truths to me about certain things, but scientists go wrong when they go beyond what they reasonably can know to assert things that they don’t know — and Christians go wrong when they claim certainty about things beyond what they’ve experienced as truth.

Why do people assert things as fact when they’re not in the position to know those things? I think it’s because they’re afraid of uncertainty. They don’t mean to “fill in the blanks” when they don’t know things, but they do, because they’re terrified of not knowing. Singer-songwriter Pat Terry addressed this tendency in a song called “Nothing I Say.” He wrote:

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I’m not a psychologist, but I think Matt Pitt is probably crazy. Or at least badly disturbed. He’s an independent evangelist in the Birmingham area who developed a huge following over nearly a decade. He’s destroyed his ministry now, and I think the story says a lot about people who latch onto charismatic narcissists.

Pitt is a former drug abuser who turned to God at some point while he was in college. In 2004, he started holding events in his parents’ basement to warn other young people about what he had gone through and turn them to God. In time, the event grew large enough that he had to move to bigger venues, eventually holding weekly meetings at a large area church. He was on top of the world with his ministry that he called The Basement.

Friends of mine who visited his meetings said his “preaching” was shallow, rambling and superficial. He has no serious theological training and those I trust say it’s obvious to them. But impressionable young people loved the flashy shows he put on. His events attracted thousands.

Pitt’s undoing started more than a year ago. He was driving along I-65 south of Birmingham when he began flashing blue lights on his vehicle, forcing other cars to pull out of the way for him. Police in the small town of Calera arrested him for impersonating a police officer. His only defense? A local sheriff had made him an “honorary deputy,” so he claims that made him a real police officer. “Honorary deputy” is a designation given by some sheriffs as a public relations move. It carries just as much legal authority as a child’s plastic badge. It’s merely an ego thing.

When it came time for his misdemeanor trial, Pitt pleaded guilty and got a suspended sentence with probation. He apologized to the court and said he had learned his lesson.

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Every political group attracts a few crackpots, but no group attracts as high a percentage of crackpots as groups with unpopular opinions. Outcasts are drawn to fringe groups — and fringe groups have little enough support that they don’t want to alienate any potential supporters.

I’ve been aware for a long time that libertarian and some conservative groups attract crazy people. Many times, these crazy people are highly intelligent, very weird and often obsessed with something strange. Those folks aren’t generally going to be accepted among the mainstream parties, because those groups have plenty of support and it’s easy to edge the weirdos out. But fringe groups accept the weirdos more readily.

And why not? One of the core libertarian beliefs is that people have the right to be whatever they want to be. If somebody’s life centers around promoting drinking colloidal silver to cure every ailment under the sun — or trying to communicate with aliens or researching conspiracies about how the Bilderbergers rule the world — hey, that’s his business, even if he’s nuts. As long as he agrees with us that other people have the right to believe and act as they choose, he’s welcome in the “liberty tent.”

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