Healthy religion always is open to mystery and paradox.

I have a story that shows how it's done: How you live in the tension of paradox long enough to allow God's creativity to be manifest. A few years ago Los Angeles had one of those Fayetteville-like conflicts in a battle over gasoline-powered leaf blowers. "They're too loud," said the beautiful people from their manicured estates. "They are scandalous polluters," said the environmentalists. "Let them be banned," said the city officials.

Nearly 65,000 people in the L.A. landscaping business, especially low-income Latinos, were faced with the loss of up to a quarter of their monthly incomes. Lawn workers united to form the Association of Latin American Gardeners. When protests didn't work, eight members began a hunger strike.

Seeing more than a win/lose situation, a Salvadorian refugee auto-mechanic named Gody Sanchez watched the hunger strikers on TV. His heart was moved to "save his brothers from starvation." Instead of stepping into the battle to defeat the powerful and wicked, Sanchez held the tension of the situation before God in prayer.

According to Sanchez, God gave him a vision to create a machine that would ease the labor of the lawn workers without creating pollution and noise. He invented a leaf blower put together with car parts, powered by an ordinary car battery and a radiator fan. He took it to the strikers at city hall, and within two days the mayor promised to help find legal replacements for the banned leaf blowers. The hunger strike was over.

With exquisite symbolism, Sanchez accepted a further divine revelation and adapted an automatic weapon silencer into the exhaust pipe of a gas-powered blower to produce a lighter, quieter version. Artist Ruben Ortiz observed, "He refitted swords into plowshares." Another commentator from the evangelical Sojourners magazine called Sanchez an "applied mystic."

Mystery and paradox are at the center of religion. A distinguishing feature between healthy and unhealthy religion is that healthy religion always is open to mystery, paradox and creative doubt.

Mystery and paradox are at the core of reality itself. All of the really important truths have a paradoxical quality. Physicists know that as well as theologians.

Does light consist of waves or particles? Yes. The material world is virtually entirely non-material. Amazing! Things hold together in a relationship of opposites – the dance of centrifugal and centripetal forces, the creative interplay of positive and negative fields. Most truths of science begin with a willingness to live in the creative tension of unanswered paradox. The "answers" always produce another set of questions.

The great truths of religion have a dialectic and paradoxical nature. Christians speak of God as One Being in Three Persons. We speak of Jesus being both fully human and fully divine. We insist that all human beings are good, created in the image and likeness of God, and we recognize each of us is also broken. We know the Scriptures to be a revelation of God's Word as well as a human and historical response to the experience of God. God the Holy Spirit is symbolized as both water and fire. The central act of worship for Christians is a participation in a sacred meal that is both earthly bread and Christ's bodily presence.

And, to speak of God ... well, finally, we move into silence before ultimate mystery. Christianity's greatest systematic theologian Thomas Aquinas, after writing volumes of stunningly brilliant theology, had an experience of God so profound that he laid down his pen and refused to write any more "rubbish."

Creativity emerges from the interplay of seeming opposites. That is why fundamentalisms of all stripes are so damaging to the religious quest and to the community of humanity. Fundamentalisms short-circuit the living truth for a cheap imitation of false certainty and pseudo precision. Without creative doubt, religion becomes hard and cruel, degenerating into the kind of fake security that breeds intolerance and persecution.

The opposite of faith is not doubt. The opposite of faith is certainty. Certainty is the belief that we are smarter today than we will be tomorrow. The day we are certain about God is the day we have created an idol. Certainty leads so easily to arrogance. Openness and a willingness to doubt nurtures wonder and humility, essential qualities for people of science as well as people of religion.

Living in the creative tension of paradox and being open to mystery is the way we evolve spiritually; it is the way we grow in truth.