Doubt has a pretty good reputation in church these days.
I wonder if that is a good thing.
I can’t think of too many situations in life in which I find doubt a virtue. When I need my furnace fixed, I don’t want a repairman who is doubtful about the right way to do the job. When I need my heart fixed, I don’t want a surgeon who doubts his ability to do the job. When I go to the bank, I don’t want the teller to be in doubt about the balance in my account.
Oh, but faith and religion aren’t these kinds of hard, practical things, you might say. Well, we might have a disagreement about that, but let’s take your lead for now.
In college, the absolute best instructors I had were the ones who thought they knew exactly what Shakespeare or Plato meant. They had read the materials. They had listened to and participated in the debates. They understood the other sides and other opinions. But when it came down to it, they were sure of what they believed to be the case. It was the students who floundered around in doubt – usually doubt about what we needed to write to get an “A.”
Being open to new ideas and new information, I understand. Trying to understand why someone believes something different, I appreciate. Listening to each other, I applaud.
But why the praise – even glorification – of doubt? We cannot escape uncertainty about many things. We are finite and imperfect. Our ways are not God’s ways, and our thoughts are not God’s thoughts. Doubt is unavoidable so long as we remain merely human.
But I can think of no other phase of my life in which I consider doubt something to be desired. The only times I can think of when it is good to be in doubt is when the only certain alternatives are bad. When a plane goes down in flames, doubt about whether your child got on board may be the only ray of hope for a parent. But in most situations, doubt is something we want to eliminate or at least reduce. Why do we cherish it so much when speaking of the most important of things, when speaking of God?
I am a part-time local pastor serving 
The doctrine of original sin is surely more humbling to man than the opposite: And I know not what honour we can pay to God, if we think man came out of His hands in the condition wherein he is now.
I am definately someone who has been known to have a soft spot in my heart for grey areas. I’m not usually the one with the sure answer when it comes to defending a particular interpretation of a difficult passage.
I think in part, I come from a place where I want to respect mystery. Where I respect the finitude of the human mind when it comes to the vastness that is the divine. There are some things that I just don’t know and I might never know. And that is okay.
Maybe it is a lack of confidence in the work that I, personally, have done on say, who John is really referring to with that mysterious “616″ reference (or is it “616″) in Revelation. Maybe its my youth. Maybe its that little bit of postmodernism creeping in. But at the end of the day – I don’t see my job as telling someone what the right answer to that riddle is. My job is to help my congregation ask the question, to seek for themselves, to wrestle with possibilities, and at the end of the day, to trust God.
I think what you are hinting at with the “glorification” of doubt is perhaps a pendulum swinging between absolute certainty and a kind of relativism where nothing is “true.” As a pastor, I do want to shake things up a bit and look at something with a hermeneutic of suspicion… in part, because I want to be open to new ways of understanding something. I want to be open to seeing a passage from a different angle or perspective. I want to break open a text and let it breathe and speak to us… and yet, to move that pendulum sometimes means it pushes to an extreme before it settles back in a healthy medium again.
I think doubt can be beneficial in the same way that all other sufferings can be beneficial–for instance, the suffering of a child who hasn’t developed that ‘object permanence’ thing, when its mother goes away for an hour. The problem is, God being what God is, we’re sort of stuck in that state until the Eschaton. As for what the benefit is that God can bring out, I think Chesterton summarized it pretty well in The Man Who Was Thursday, but I dare not spoil that passage. However, I also think that the danger of doubt, particularly in times when the world grows ever skeptical of traditional religion (before, of course, at least its utility if not its truth is shown by the recurrence of that climax and breakdown of haughty pagan society)…was summarized by Helen Parr in The Incredibles, when she lovingly told her daughter that “doubt is a luxury that we cannot afford right now.”
Having been through a time in my life that I felt in the grip of “that final skepticism, which can find no floor to the universe” (GKC, Thursday), however, I will say that the most immediate benefit is that the testimony of my life serves to add to the evidence that leaves the radical skeptics, and others who would reject Christ, without a real excuse for doing so.
Yesterday, someone with a very serious medical condition said to me “I’ve always had a strong faith and now it seems to have evaporated into thin air and I’m scared”.
I wonder what you would say to her? I have heard people say things in this situation like “As Christians we must be strong and trust that God will help us.”
If I’m ever in the situation of the person above, I pray that God doesn’t send me the person below.
Doubt is real and it’s part of real faith. I think we only run away from it because we we’re afraid of it. (But you probably knew I was going to say something like that.)
Katie, Dan, and Pam – Thank you for the comments.
As you all indicate to various degrees, I’m not saying doubt can be avoided or removed from the human condition. As I write in the post, it is not avoidable. But that does not make doubt something to lift up as a wonderful thing to be praised. Spending time in the desert may have been necessary for Jesus and the Israelites, but the were not meant to live forever in the desert. It was a time of trial.
Some folks seems to write as if doubt is itself a goal or end state for faith, that we are being most faithful when we say, “I don’t know if I believe or I don’t.” We may be honest in those moments, but being sincere and being faithful are not necessarily the same thing.
Your friend in the hospital, Pam, I would not scold. Based on what you said, I’m not even sure she’s in a state of doubt. She may have lost her faith entirely. Whether in doubt or unbelief, though, I see no guilt or shame in that. I just don’t want to hold up those moments – or years – of our lives as the mountain top.
I have days when I am sick. I have days when I am healthy and vigorous. And I have days when I feel kinda crappy. Not really sick, but not really healthy. I can’t avoid the crappy days, but I do not view them as a good. Just a necessary part of life.
That’s how I view doubt.
John – do you have a concrete example of a passage from a book, blog post, or some other source that demonstrates what you’re referring to as “praising doubt”? Doubt does seem to be getting a lot of attention, but I my reading of it has been more along the lines of in “praise of honesty.”
Great question, Larry, but at the moment none comes to mind. It may be fair to say it is a mood more than a specific trigger.
People throw around two lines from a Tennyson poem about honest doubt and speak of doubt as a divine gift. Maybe it is. Maybe all of us need to be wracked with doubt to break up idols and other mistakes we make. I’m not saying doubt should be excluded from the life of faith. It cannot be any more than death can.
But I value assurance much more than doubt. I experience doubt not as a good thing, but a loss – a real loss. It is good to emerge from doubt with a stronger faith — the point of the stanza of verse from Tennyson that is often lost. Doubt is a transitional state that we often must experience.
Maybe what I’m reacting to is just a tone of relief and joy that people have because they have come to doubt false or harmful things and now are in a healthier or more mature place.
In this postmodern air, though, I often sense that we praise doubt as a good in itself. So, I am not responding to anyone quote or post or book. Perhaps all I am doing is projecting my own issues on the world.
Kathleen Norris recounts the story of a person who came to a monk and said the creed was full of things she could not affirm. She did not know if she believed them or not. The monk said, keep saying it anyway. The person said, but how can I do that? The monk said, it is not your creed. It is the church’s creed. You just keep saying it until you can believe it.
He did not castigate the person for doubting the truth of the creed, but neither did he praise doubt as the basis for making decisions about faithful living.
The man said, “I believe, Lord, help my unbelief.” If I’m misreading the mood of the church, then I’m happy to be wrong. I just don’t want to say, “Lord, I don’t know if I believe, thank you for that.”
I don’t think it’s a matter of whether doubt is good or bad. People who have been raised in oppressive religious environments where honest questions were discouraged or labeled as sinful need to be told that honest doubt is a good thing, questions are encouraged, etc. Doubt may lead to deeper faith, though it is not necessarily the case. At least, doubt need not be feared.
I agree doubt should not be feared. I hope I did not say that anywhere.
You raise a point that may explain some of my confusion, Craig.
I am not fleeing an oppressive religious environment, so I suppose I am tone deaf to those issues. But even here, what I would want is not freedom to doubt, but freedom to differ or disagree.
Abusive Pastor X tells me I have to belief in his private theology to be saved. He tells me that questioning him at all is wrong. If I question what he teaches, I’m going to Hell on the express train.
I see how living in that environment would make “doubt” seem like a lifeline. But the salvation from Pastor X is not doubt. It is conviction that he is wrong. When I’m not sure whether to believe pastor X or not, I am hanging in the middle of nowhere. When I come to the conclusion that he is being abusive and oppressive, then I am crossing the Jordan into something new.
Doubt – and maybe I’m being pedantic here – is a state of not knowing whether we believe or don’t believe. It is a state of radical uncertainty. It is being lost at sea.
To say you doubt, to refer to a recent discussion here, that Jesus was raised bodily from the grave would be to say you honestly cannot say whether it did or did not happen. You simply do not know and cannot make any commitment or action based on that claim. You cannot put any trust in the claim any more than you would walk on ice over pond if you did not know how thick the ice was.
Often, what we seem to do is say “doubt” when we mean “no longer believe” or “disagree with” something. To say we “doubt” something is less confrontational than to say we don’t believe.
Again, doubt is not something I am trying to do away with. You cannot do away with it. I’ve had times of doubt and there are matters of doctrine and faith in which I find myself in doubt. I’m not condemning or saying we should fear doubt or saying that at times it is not necessary.
Like you, I don’t see it as good or bad in itself. Therefore, I do not see it as good, just real.
For me, personally, I would echo what Craig says above. In my own faith journey, times of doubt have resulted in a deepening of my faith. I’m a person who likes the answers to thing, and coming to terms with not knowing all the answers about God had been a big struggle for me through the years. I’ve learned to love the idea of God as Divine Mystery. Maybe not so much doubt as questioning and skepticism sometimes – maybe that’s the nuanced difference – but even as a child, the times I remember really feeling like I took a big step in faith were because of questions I was asking about God.
I remember once a very elderly retired pastor talking to me about how he had come to believe with some apparently quite fierce certainty that God does not exist and, if we don’t face death in the knowledge of the non-existence of God, we are being dishonest with ourselves and frightened of death. (Very Nietzschean) The context of this was that I was taking the funeral of one of his dear friends. His was an active disbelief in God. A positive pronouncement that God does not exist. He was quite certain that his faith was superior to mine and told me so in no uncertain terms. According to him, I did not understand his point of view and once I attained his enlightenment, I could never go back. Now, I respect his personal point of view. But I’m also glad he wasn’t preaching in a Christian church. And I wonder if it is this “level” of doubt that you are talking about? I don’t know.
Another level of doubt is one that I think is honest in the face of death and tragedy. And, I have to say, that I’m slightly surprised that you – John – think that fear is a sign of not having any faith at all. I don’t agree.
Now, here’s where I’m at with this. I think that in most congregations most of the time (whether conservative, moderate or liberal), there really is no way to be with a group of people and say “I fear this, I doubt this, I am anxious of this” and to let those feelings sit as an honest expression of where the individual is at without someone judging them, someone jumping in with the counter-point “right theological answer” or someone saying that they shouldn’t think as they do. And because we raise those shields, we actually stop other people and ourselves from growing spiritually. Because I don’t think a person can grow unless they are honest, unless they try out what works for them, and unless they think that God is big enough to shoulder their doubts.
Yeah, John, we have a different paradigm. To me, doubt is a stage. A question arises. So, you look for an answer. Sometimes you find one. Sometimes you don’t. Sometimes a question arises about what you had previously accepted as an answer. So, you need to re-examine the issue. It’s all good (even though it’s unsettling at the time) because it’s leading you to deeper, more adequate answers in the long run. If there were no questions there would be no investigation. We don’t want to encourage a you can’t ask questions culture in the church.
No argument here, Craig.
But even in the way you explain, doubt is a transitional stage. It is useful because it leads you to “deeper, more adequate answers.” You move through doubt to something better than doubt.
I agree whole-heartedly that oppression, suppression of free will, and tyranny are bad things.
Pam, when did I say fear is not having faith? My speculation was based on you writing that the woman in the death bed said her faith had “evaporated into thin air.” I merely noted that it sounded to me as if her faith may have indeed done as she said. My comment was not about her fear – which may exist with or without faith. Sorry if I was not clear there.
Maybe it is impossible to get to agreement on terms here.
To say “God is a mystery” is not doubt. It is to say “I do not know.” To say “I do not know” is not to be in doubt. It is to be in a state of positive affirmation about the state of what we know, in this case, nothing. We are – in the literal sense – agnostic about that issue or attribute of God. If all we have to say about God is “I don’t know and no one can know,” then we are agnostic in the total sense.
I agree the Nietzchean pastor should not pray at a Christian funeral. I’m not sure what I wrote that implied I would.
Here’s what I struggle with in this conversation.
Why can’t we say, “You know, judging and demeaning other people is wrong. You should not jump in an condemn someone who is uncertain about what they believe”?
And also say, “Being uncertain about what you believe is sometimes unavoidable, but mature faith does stand on some firm beliefs. It does claim to know some things. We all doubt at times, but we do not want to live in doubt. We want to live in faith that what we believe is true.”
And why could we not say to the dying woman – or the grieving family – “I know death is scary and fearful. We cannot see with our eyes what lies beyond this life. There is nothing wrong at all in what you are feeling right now. But, if I could, I’d like to tell you what I believe.” I’ve actually said something similar to a dying woman not long ago. I did not see it as condemning her for fear or saying she had no faith.
But I could not imagine saying to her: “You know, in the end, we really can’t know what lies beyond the grave and you are probably justified to doubt what you have believed your whole life. Who knows what comes next? It is a mystery.” That strikes me as not terribly pastoral.
If I understand your central question, John, it is something like “Is doubt a perpetual state of mind or heart that Christians should praise / welcome / encourage for the sake of honesty?” How would the Wesleyan quad. deal with this question?
1. Scripture – the Scriptures do not endorse doubt as a desirable place to stay in one’s faith development (such as James 1:6-8).
2. Experience – my experience tells me that doubt is real, and can be healthy. Experience also tells me that I appreciate it when others do not condemn me when I have doubts, and knowing that I am not alone in my doubts is comforting.
3. Reason – Logically, I would conclude that unresolved doubt either leads to agnosticism or outright unbelief. If my starting question is about the long-term effects of doubt on faith development, reason would lead me to conclude that faith and doubt cannot co-exist over the long term – either my faith will grow or my doubt will grow.
4. Tradition – the history of the saints is not one that confirms doubt as a Christian virtue, yet something that many incredible women and men of faith have faced; those who persevered in the faith in spite of their doubts often found themselves being an amazing blessing to others (Wesley himself comes to mind, as does Mother Teresa). While the modern interpretation of Thomas’ doubting the report of the other disciples has tended to go easy on Thomas, the overwhelming tradition of the church is to point to Thomas as one not to emulate in respect to doubt.
For the flaws the WQ may have, if we use it I think on this issue it does not lead to a conclusion that doubt is is a healthy place to stay.
Thanks, Larry. I think if this conversation has demonstrated anything it shows that I need to be more systematic in my thinking and more careful in my explaining.
John, I somehow sense that we are talking past each other, but I’m not entirely certain how. I agree with larry that doubt is not a place to dwell, but I also think it’s absolutely necessary for both transition and honesty. And the reason I get so het up about it is that I think the church’s phobia about dealing with doubt basically prevents most of us from growing spiritually much beyond the “spiritual milk” stage.
I do stand contrary to a lot of the people who think that the church is going to hell in a hand basket because the theological “liberals” allow doubt. Speaking as a self-identified theological “liberal”, I think that there is a lot of lousey popular liberal theology out there, just as there is a lot of lousey popular conservative theology out there. The problem is the sloppiness of the thinking, not the allowing of doubt.
(Since I’m speaking in an American context here, I’d like to note that I’m talking only about liberal and conservative theology and not about the associated liberal or conservative politics that so many Americans think goes hand and hand with theology.)
Well, Pam, as a theological liberal you are driving the hand cart to hell, so what do you know.
(This is intended as a joke, not the smiley.)
I do think we are talking past each other, and I have the same lack of clarity about exactly how. I do appreciate the conversation, though.
I do think we are talking past each other, and I have the same lack of clarity about exactly how. I do appreciate the conversation, though.
Me too. I think that trying to communicate these ideas to others helps us to sharpen our own thoughts. I’ve not really figured out how to communicate what I mean either!
I was trying to figure out if I was going to be talking past you also… =) The distinction between not knowing something and being honest about that is very different than proclaiming a truth that you doubt – that you don’t believe in.
I may not understand the details of the eschaton or how exactly it will come to pass. I may see many different interpretations of Revelation or Matthew or Mark. But I don’t doubt that in the end Christ will come and God will reign.
If I’m right, John, you are pointing towards an acceptance/praising of those who say outright – I doubt Christ will come. I doubt the resurrection ever happened. I don’t believe it. A raising up of agnostic Christianity.
Doubting Thomas is seen as someone who was brave enough to ask the question… to demand proof and not to follow blindly. Historically, we have seen him as someone with little faith, but it seems like today, he is kind of a hero. In a world of instantaneous answers, we too, often want proof before we are willing to accept a belief. Is this more of what you are thinking of?
Katie, I think that is a large part of what I was getting at.