A wonderful writer in the world of medical ethics, spirituality and health care insists that uncertainty in our lives may be healthy.

Dr. Daniel Sulmasy, a professor of medicine at the University of Chicago Medical School and School of Divinity, is also a Franciscan monk.

He will be speaking at a conference at Baylor this fall on “Human Dignity and the Future of Health Care.”

In his book, “The Healer’s Calling: A Spirituality for Physicians and Other Health Care Professionals,” Sulmasy explores what he calls the fear of uncertainty.

Sulmasy maintains that our need for proof is unhealthy and fear caused by lack of proof is a key moral and spiritual issue for everyone connected to health care.

“Health care professionals are gradually becoming paralyzed by their inability to tolerate uncertainty,” Sulmasy writes.

I agree. It is the cause of the explosion of unnecessary testing, treatment, escalating costs, and the exponential loss of trust and faith in the health care system itself.

Sulmasy contends that it becomes a religious question and is intimately related to faith.

Faith, he says, is about trust — and trust in the health care system is rare.

Our need for certainty, truth and perfect outcomes has limited our ability to live. Our demand for perfection and truth has put enormous stresses on our health care system. We do not know how to live with mystery or ambiguity.

Faith is not a matter of facts that we agree with intellectually, but is living with a certain type of orientation in our lives.

It is about a relationship — ith the ultimate holy mystery as well as with our patients.

A typical patient of mine is a 66-year-old successful businessman. He lives in the world of spreadsheets, contracts and making deals.

Every sentence is parsed to an extreme and every fact is mastered. He is a titan of industry and a master at what he does. Yet when faced with a critical illness, he wants to master the illness in order to defeat it.

It becomes another way to measure success or failure and the process itself gives way to a series of negotiations with the health care team.

He can’t let go of the need to control.

He desperately needs silence, peace and space to sort through the implications of his disease, particularly its interactions with business and family demands.

But in his obsessive need to control, he loses sight of something fundamentally important to his own survival — the nature of trust, faith and mystery.

If he could just take 30 minutes a day to quiet his mind and heart, he would hear what he needs. Then the decisions he faces can be seen with a spiritual clarity.

It is always possible to experience healing in the midst of darkness. Yet to do that we must relinquish control.

Michael Attas is a local doctor, a medical humanities professor and an Episcopal priest. Email him at Michael_Attas@baylor.edu