Iris Dement is a folk singer/songwriter who frequently appears on The Prairie Home Companion and similar venues.  I first heard her on the radio singing a duet with David Byrne of The Talking Heads, where they were singing a catchy little tune she had written called “Just Let the Mystery Be.”   The song has since been covered by a number of groups, most notably 10,000 Maniacs.  With “Just Let the Mystery Be,” Dement expresses her religious convictions, or lack thereof.  In her younger years Dement professed to be a Pentecostal Christian, but now she describes herself as an agnostic.

An agnostic is not an atheist.  The agnostic doesn’t deny the existence of God; she or he denies our ability to know whether or not there is a God. 

“Everybody's wonderin' what and where they all came from.
Everybody's worryin' 'bout where they're gonna go when the whole thing's done.
But no one knows for certain and so it's all the same to me.
I think I'll just let the mystery be.” 
 
This is the typical agnostic argument.  Since so many disagree, all must be incorrect.  Therefore, she contends, she is justified in washing her hands of the whole matter.

“Some say once you're gone you're gone forever, and some say you're gonna come back.
Some say you rest in the arms of the Saviour if in sinful ways you lack.
Some say that they're comin' back in a garden, bunch of carrots and little sweet peas.
I think I'll just let the mystery be.”

The line about coming back as a vegetable lampoons reincarnation pretty well, don’t you think?

“Some say they're goin' to a place called Glory and I ain't saying it ain't a fact.
But I've heard that I'm on the road to purgatory and I don't like the sound of that.
Well, I believe in love and I live my life accordingly.
But I choose to let the mystery be.”

Like most arguments for agnosticism, the song trips on its own logic.  It claims to renounce all religious assertions, and then proceeds to make assertions anyway.  “But I've heard that I'm on the road to purgatory and I don't like the sound of that.”  Not very agnostic about that, are we? 

The truth is I’ve never met an agnostic who truly lets the mystery be, because no one can.  Her song is evidence she can’t let it go.  We are all created in the Divine Image; we all have an awareness of the transcendent, the eternal, and the divine.  We are pursued by the One Who created us.  Jesus Christ is the very revelation of God, before us in human flesh.  Iris, like the rest of humanity, can distort and suppress the divine witness, but—again, just like the rest of us—she can’t just let the mystery be.