The truth is:

Is there anything else I consider true that functions in such a way that I have to maintain a web of beliefs around it, as if they were all co-dependent in a fragile ecosystem? This is the hardest question. There is a precedent, however, for this sort of system or web of beliefs that we consider real and yet aren’t descriptions of anything to which we can point as verifiably, scientifically, materially there in reality. One such example is ethics. We all know that corruption is real and undesirable, but to explain why we believe as we do about corruption, we have to raise a mass of beliefs that were holding together unseen beneath the surface.

In a strange way, this question about the fragility of belief systems is akin to the problem of evil in that both questions reveal the presence of evil with which we are promised in Scripture to wrestle and which God eventually overcomes in us. The weeds of doubt in goodness grow from our observations of evil—and this may come as a surprise to some, but the truth is that we cannot finally uproot them. The good news, though, is that God does the work Himself when Christ steps into the tangled garden of our doubts, sins, and fragility and answers not with explanations but with redemption. His life, death, and resurrection hold together the web of our beliefs, even when it seems impossibly fragile.

As we wait for that final consummation, the truth about this so-called ‘web’ is this: nothing we discover, believe, or contemplate—nothing we say, think, or do—will affect what happens to us when we die. Until then, the great beyond will remain beyond our reach, period, end of story. And we should let that sink in for a moment; it isn’t an endorsement of despair, but a recognition of our freedom from having to make an effort to maintain the web. Salvation is not the result of our efforts to hold the web together or to make sense of evil in creation; it is entirely the work of God despite our sinful thoughts, words, and deeds, all of which are full of the sound and look of death.

This truth highlights another tension we face: Either we’re mostly blamelessly coping with everything nature demands, or what we think and do is blameworthy because it offends the Creator and Sustainer of nature. Both of these are hard to believe, and they can’t both be true, can they? But here’s the thing: that very dichotomy—between blameworthiness before God and blamelessness before nature—is false. Christians are called to live in a way that neither denies the worldly reality of our struggles nor reduces us to mere creatures coping with the natural order. We are called to rest not in the coherence of our webs of belief but in the one who holds all things together. This is both liberating and humbling. It allows us to acknowledge the limits of our understanding without despair and to live in the tension of earthly fragility with a hope anchored in divine promises.

The truth is Christians don’t live with the same telos or end as this world has; in that sense, we therefore don’t need to consider the physical, psychological, and spiritual demands or hardships that hang around our necks in this world as ultimate. It isn’t any less likely that we are sinners as described by Christ in Scripture than that we are creatures struggling through dire straits as described by nature in this world. Both are true, and both find their resolution in Christ.

This dual existence is not without purpose. God uses the tension, the suffering, and even the apparent contradictions to draw us closer to Himself. Ole Hallesby’s words capture this beautifully: “Oh, how merciful! He gives us sorrow in the world, but joy in the Lord. He permits us to be ill in body, but well in soul. He makes us poor in the things of this earth, but rich in peace and hope.” God’s mercy transforms our earthly hardships into instruments of His grace. The struggles of this life, the weeds in the garden of our beliefs, and the brokenness we experience are not signs of His absence but of His presence. They are His tools for shaping us into the image of Christ.

And so, the truth is that the gospel answers questions the world cannot resolve. The systems we construct—whether ethical, philosophical, or theological—will always feel fragile, because they are. But the good news is that our salvation does not rest on these systems. It rests entirely on God’s grace, revealed in Christ and worked within us by the Holy Spirit. This frees us to live in the tension without despair, to endure worldly hardships with hope, and to trust that God will hold the web together, even when we cannot.