Chine McDonald reflects on the wide–eyed innocence of starting school. We don’t always need to have all the answers. 03/09/2026

After a long summer break, my children are back at school, and for my youngest son, this is his first time. Like many four–year–olds across the country heading into reception this week, he has no real concept of the journey he is beginning. Not really. I recall some years ago, a family member mentioning school to my eldest, then a toddler, and he replied inquisitively: “What is school?” Oh, the beauty of not knowing.

It’s been said perhaps too often that September feels like just as much of a new year as January does. After a long summer break, many of us are back at our desks with the familiar feeling of seasons changing and the sense of a new school year beginning, which maybe has never left us. (Which reminds me, I do need a new pencil case and a shiny new notebook). 

In the wide–eyed innocence of school starts I am witnessing this week, I’ve been thinking about the fact that not knowing things feels counter–cultural in our society so gripped by certainty and hot takes. We are expected to know whose side we are on, and what we think about the huge issues and debates swirling around us; and we’re expected to know these things quickly. We can’t move for opinion pieces and social media reels and threads in which people are adding their two pennies worth to the latest debate, their creators hitting publish within minutes, before there has been a moment to really grapple with the issues at stake, to listen or to understand. Many of them are based on very little actual knowledge.

As E.M. Forster writes in the dystopian fable The Machine Stops: “Let your ideas be second–hand, and if possible tenth–hand, for then they will be far removed from that disturbing element – direct observation.”

This is something we think quite a lot about at Theos. As several of the team return from summer breaks, we are looking ahead to all that we have planned before Christmas. There are a number of exciting projects we’re looking forward to sharing with you, and events we would love to see you at.

Like everyone, we can be tempted to have a ‘take’ on things, with the algorithm pushing us to have that take and post it quickly. Our weekly team meetings include discussion on what’s in the news, and what ‘Theosy’ thing we could say about it. In those conversations, there can be a sense of pressure to say ‘something’, but that pressure is an external one rather than an internal one. More often than not, we decide not to comment. Not because we don’t care, but because we don’t yet know enough to have something genuinely useful to say. In a culture that rewards speed, certainty and reaction, there is something quietly counter–cultural about that. Because, as an organisation with research at its heart, being measured and nuanced, and taking time to understand is a big part of our raison d’etre. At the start of a research project, we are aware we don’t know all the answers. Guided by the wisdom of the Christian tradition, we aim to enter into the themes we’re exploring – whether motherhood or cathedrals, AI or social prescribing or Christian Nationalism – with curiosity, ready to be challenged. We know we don’t know all the answers.

In our frenetic culture of certainty and knowing, being cognizant of what we don’t know or at least don’t know yet is in many ways liberating. The slow work of research requires us to pay attention, to listen to what we are hearing and ask informed questions. The alternative narratives we offer to the world’s certainties are based on centuries of wisdom inspired by scripture, not hot takes always ready at the tips of our tongues.

Christianity, of course, makes claims about what can be known. But it also has a rich tradition of acknowledging the limits of our knowing. As Paul writes to the Corinthians, “we see through a glass darkly”. In the gospels, the disciples spend much of their time misunderstanding what’s happening in front of them. And Jesus himself repeatedly answers questions with questions, not to deflect but to illustrate the true meanings of things.

Why are you afraid?

Are you asleep?

Why have your forsaken me?

Who do you say I am?

Unlike Jesus, we are not the answer, but in our work at Theos, we seek to answer the questions our world is so often asking: about how we live well together, what our responsibilities to each other and our communities are, and what it means to be human. All of this is perplexing and wondrous and glorious. It’s also a privilege to have the time and space to steadily seek to understand.

So as we head back to school this week, our prayer is that we will have open minds and hearts, embracing the beauty of not knowing all the answers. Or perhaps not knowing them… yet.

In the words of the poem The Real Work by the great Wendell Berry, who died this week:

It may be that when we no longer know what to do we have come to our real work,

and that when we no longer know which way to go we have come to our real journey.

The mind that is not baffled is not employed.

The impeded stream is the one that sings.

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