It’s a scene that plays out in my office every year: A bar or bat mitzvah student sits across from me, leans in with a look of practiced defiance, and prepares to blow my rabbinic mind.

“Rabbi,” they say, “I have to be honest. I don’t really believe in God.”

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I don’t gasp. I don’t recoil. Instead, I ask the question that has become (almost?) every rabbi’s favorite opening move: “Tell me about the God you don’t believe in.”

Inevitably, they describe a giant, bearded man in the sky who pulls levers, rewards the “good” with candy and punishes the “bad” with lightning bolts. I usually wait a beat, nod, and say, “That’s interesting. I don’t believe in that God either.”

By the end of the hour, their eyes are a little wider. They begin to glimpse the vast, shimmering landscape of Jewish theology — the metaphors, the struggles and the ancient debates. But at 12 or 13, they are standing at the very edge of a deep ocean, armed only with feelings, overheard snippets of adult conversations and the noise of the surrounding culture. They have a lot of learning left to do.

Recently, I had a meeting with a young adult that felt like an eerie case of déjà vu. We weren’t talking about God, though the intensity was the same. We were talking about Zionism and Israel.

This young person was not yet too distraught, but swimming in the waters of uncertainty. They were worried about what it meant to be in a relationship with Israel when they were–to put it mildly–less than thrilled with what they were seeing on their feeds. They felt a sense of “unbelief” in the project of Israel that mirrored the middle-schooler’s “unbelief” in God.

So, I reached for my “conversations about God” toolkit. I started asking questions such as “Where are you learning about this? “What books have you read?” “Have you sat down and talked to an actual Israeli on the ground?”

Ultimately, I realized what I was really asking was: “Tell me about the Zionism you don’t believe in.”

As we peeled back the layers, the realization set in. Much like the seventh grader with the “Old Man in the Sky” theology, this young adult’s understanding of a century-old, complex geopolitical and political movement was based on a curated digital diet that floated on the surface level of the deep waters I swim in every day. I don’t judge them for it. I’m ready for them to dive deeper.

The parallels between these two conversations are striking. Both the “atheist” teen and the “questioning-their-Zionism” young adult share four things:

1. A rejection of an outdated ideal.
2. A lack of depth in their understanding of the subject.
3. A hunger for more, even if they start the conversation with a defensive posture.
4. A relationship with a mentor whom they trust enough to challenge.

My job isn’t to hand them a pamphlet and tell them what to think. My job is to hold up a mirror. When we look in that mirror, we realize that our “certainty” is often just a lack of information.

We live in a TL;DR culture that demands we have a “take” on everything before we’ve even read the preface. We feel pressured to either believe or “cancel” based on a feeling. But Judaism is a tradition of wrestling. You cannot wrestle with a shadow; you have to get close enough to feel the weight of the thing you’re grappling with.

I told that young adult what I tell my bar mitzvah students: it’s okay to not know. It is even okay to be uncomfortable. But it is not okay to mistake a few headlines for an education — especially when it comes with an agenda.

I’ve been a rabbi for nine years, and I still consider myself a student. I continue my education every single day, because the God I believe in and the Israel I love are far too complex to be captured in a single conversation or a 30-second clip.

If you find yourself ready to walk away from a big idea — be it faith or peoplehood — ask yourself first: How much do I actually know about the thing I’m walking away from? You might just find that the version you’re rejecting is one that the rest of us don’t believe in, either.

Rabbi Rachael Klein Miller serves Temple Emanu-El in Atlanta.