Cassian Bellino didn’t start her podcast from a position of expertise. She started it from a position of not knowing—wanting to believe, but unable to get there through blind acceptance. She wanted logical answers to honest questions. So she started asking scholars directly.

What she discovered surprised her:

I think just, over time, you really understand that God invites these questions because He doesn’t want us to live blindly or have blind faith.

The word that stops me is “invites.” Not tolerates. Not permits as a necessary evil. Invites. As if the questions themselves were the point, not obstacles to overcome on the way to certainty.

This reframes something fundamental about how dialogue works. We typically assume that the person who knows should be doing the talking, and the person who doesn’t know should be listening until they achieve similar certainty. Questions are temporary states to be resolved. Doubt is a problem to be fixed. The goal is to arrive at solid ground.

But Bellino is describing something different. Her questions weren’t barriers to connection—they were the connection. When she approached scholars with genuine uncertainty, asking things like “this doesn’t make sense to me, can you help me understand?” she found they responded with openness rather than defensiveness. Her doubt created space for actual dialogue.

Consider what happens when someone enters a conversation already certain. There’s nowhere to go. The exchange becomes either agreement (boring) or argument (adversarial). Certainty closes things down. But when someone enters from genuine not-knowing—with an honest question and an open heart—the conversation has somewhere to travel. Both parties can discover something.

This cuts against our instinct to show up prepared, knowledgeable, competent. We think we need to have our position figured out before we can engage meaningfully. But Bellino’s experience suggests the opposite: the unfigured-out position is precisely what makes genuine engagement possible. She wasn’t performing expertise. She was genuinely trying to understand. And that authenticity—the willingness to admit “I don’t know”—opened doors that expertise might have kept closed.

There’s a vulnerability in entering conversation from doubt. You’re exposed. You might ask something that reveals ignorance. You might not have a clever response ready. But that exposure turns out to be the thing that invites real exchange rather than performance.

What if more conversations started from genuine uncertainty? Not performed humility (“I’m just asking questions”) but actual not-knowing? Not the strategic ignorance of the devil’s advocate, but the honest admission that we haven’t figured this out yet and we’re hoping to learn something?

Bellino frames this theologically—God inviting questions because He doesn’t want blind faith. But the principle extends beyond any particular tradition. Genuine dialogue might require doubt the way fire requires oxygen. Take away the uncertainty, and there’s nothing left to explore together.

This field note references the Podtalk episode “Faith with Cassian Bellino,” published June 12, 2025.