You’re Not Afraid of Commitment—You’re Afraid of Being Misled
by Dr. John Huynh | February 1, 2026
Many young adults today carry a real fear of commitment, especially when it comes to relationships. This fear is usually rooted in lived experience rather than a lack of desire for intimacy.
Social media has trained us to present curated versions of ourselves that look confident, fulfilled, and complete, even when the reality underneath is far more complicated. We scroll, swipe, and connect based on images and words that appear to promise substance but do not always deliver it. Catfishing isn’t just a dating phenomenon; it has become a metaphor for a deeper anxiety many people carry: “What if what I’m committing to isn’t actually what it seems to be?” When the gap between appearance and reality shows up often enough, caution can begin to feel like wisdom.
That same fear often surfaces in the realm of faith. Many young adults are not rejecting God outright so much as reacting to how faith is sometimes expressed by others. They hear language about love, mercy, and truth, yet encounter expressions of faith that seem divisive, judgmental, or even hostile. This disconnect can be deeply unsettling. If faith claims to offer meaning, belonging, and hope, why does it sometimes appear to produce division or fear instead? For those already cautious about misplaced trust, this tension between what faith proclaims and how it is sometimes lived can make commitment feel risky, if not irresponsible.
When people have seen relationships fall apart, promises revised, or institutions fail to live up to their proclaimed ideals, hesitation can feel like a reasonable response, and guardedness can present itself as a form of self-protection. To commit deeply—to another person, a community, or a belief—is to risk disappointment or real emotional harm. Many young adults are not afraid of commitment because they lack seriousness, but because they understand what is truly at stake when commitment is taken seriously.
The Catholic faith does not dismiss this tension or attempt to shame it away. In many ways, it begins by acknowledging it. At the heart of our faith is not a demand that people simply try harder to trust. Instead, the Church makes a claim about what God has already done: God did not wait for humanity to become consistent, reliable, or worthy of risk before acting, but chose to move first in Christ.
Jesus, therefore, is not an idea or a symbol of religious values, but a real human person in history—vulnerable to misunderstanding, rejection, and betrayal. The Catholic faith insists that God did not remain at a safe distance from the uncertainty of human life. Rather, God entered it fully, accepted the risks that come with relationship, and bound himself to a human story without preserving a hidden escape route. Before faith ever asks anything of us, it assures us that God has already crossed the threshold of commitment.
This is why Jesus is more than a moral teacher or an inspiring example. In him, we encounter God’s commitment in the flesh. The Church does not ask us to place our trust in an abstract system or a flawless institution. She points instead to a person: Jesus. Faith, at its heart, is less about trusting a version of God that has been packaged for us and more about responding to a relationship already offered.
Patrick Overton, in his poem “Faith,” describes faith as walking to the edge of all the light available to us and taking a step into the unknown, trusting that either there will be something solid to stand upon or we will be taught to fly. He gives language to a common human experience: what it feels like to move forward when we cannot yet see what comes next. Our faith adds something more specific: we are not stepping forward alone. God has already entered the darkness first, so faith is not a blind leap we initiate on our own, but a response to that prior commitment.
Because God has already taken the first step toward us, we do not need perfect clarity before taking the next step ourselves. What this means for us is that faith can still be real and steady even when doubt and fear remain. Our faith does not require us to arrive fully formed, with every question resolved. Instead, it invites a humble posture: a willingness to consider that trust might be possible precisely because commitment has already been shown to us first.
Commitment will always involve risk. Relationships and communities will continue to fall short. The Catholic faith does not pretend otherwise. What it offers instead is a different starting point: rather than beginning with our ability to trust without fear, we begin with God’s willingness to commit without retreat. In Jesus, faith becomes a response to a love that entered the messiness of real life and refused to walk away. When appearances no longer feel reliable, that claim matters. It suggests that faith does not begin with our courage, but with God’s; and that trusting him may be less about losing ourselves and more about discovering, over time, that there really is something solid to stand upon.