Some people are bound together by faith. They believe the same things, and say so, and that connects them. Like saying the creed in church. Or agreeing about certain spiritual truths. Or sharing the same initiation or race or ritual.
But the world is a complex place. We're intimately connected to a wider, more diverse range of people than any people before in history. Our communities are hardly, if ever, closed. Even people who share faith increasingly have doubts.
Sometimes they admit it. Sometimes they don't. Sometimes they push doubt away and other times they embrace it, even deepen it.
There are more of us than ever who not only accept doubt, but see it as essential to faith. Doubt is good for you, in part because shared faith was never what we thought it was. It was mostly an illusion -- like the suburban cul-de-sac of religious truth. Living without difference does not a faith make.
It is increasingly clear to me that doubt is, in fact, the most important faith of all. Doubt invigorates faith, demands more of it, and causes us to ask more of each other. Doubt connects us to each other. Doubt binds my faith to yours. It makes me reach out. Discover. Explore. Question. Challenge. Learn. A person who doubts is one still on a journey.
If doubt defines you, too, check out Graham Greene's novel, Monsignor Quixote (1982). The story follows Father Quixote, an aging parish priest in the little town in La Mancha, Spain (yes, that La Mancha -- the allusion to Cervantes' holy-foolish Don Quixote is near-complete) as he vacations with his best friend, Sancho. Sancho is the retired, ex-mayor of the town and a committed communist. Both characters are men of very different but deep faith. But what ultimately binds them together are the ways in which they share doubt.
At one point, Father Quixote and Sancho have this conversation:
"I hope -- friend -- that you sometimes doubt too. It's human to doubt."
"I try not to doubt," the Mayor said.
"Oh, so do I. So do I. In that we are certainly alike."
And then Greene's narrator explains: "It's odd ... how sharing a sense of doubt can bring men together perhaps even more than sharing a faith. The believer will fight another believer over a shade of difference: the doubter fights only with himself."
Later on, the priest says: "Oh, I want to believe that it is all true -- and that want is the only certain thing I feel." And he wonders to himself, "How is it that when I speak of belief, I become aware always of a shadow, the shadow of disbelief haunting my belief?'" The rest of the novel shows these two characters embracing their doubts, and their doubts causing them to re-imagine their beliefs.
It was Graham Greene who said about himself late in life: "The trouble is, I don't believe my unbelief." He confused a lot of people by saying that, but I get it. Sometimes it is hard to tell when belief has come or gone. Instead, it is doubt that is the constant. Doubt shows a person wrestling God. What could be more important than that?
I also embrace doubt because the older I become, the less interested I am in belief and the more interested I am in practice. A spiritual life endures even when I doubt, misbelieve, or refuse to believe. Doubt engenders practice. I may not know for certain what I believe, but at least I can pray. I can give. I can love. I live in hope. I observe what is holy. More than belief ever could, these practices structure my life, and as Ludwig Wittgenstein once said, "You can't argue with the form of a life."
Graham Greene even took to calling himself an "agnostic Catholic" toward the end of his life. I get this, too. He was tired of belief as a measure of relationship with God. Belief comes and goes. It is fleeting. It is a state of mind. Belief is far too ephemeral upon which to rest something so important as faith. Instead, it is doubt that truly binds us together, and to God.
Jon M. Sweeney is a writer and editor living in Vermont. His new book is Verily, Verily: The KJV -- 400 Years of Influence and Beauty (Zondervan). He will be speaking at The Episcopal Church of the Heavenly Rest in NYC on Sunday morning, March 13.
Follow Jon M. Sweeney on Twitter: www.twitter.com/jonmsweeney
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Doubt ascribes credit to (glorifies) things rather than (giving the glory) to our Maker.
Doubt then is a belief in the power of things and objects rather than believing in God.
As a photon of light is a quantum particle, the light of God's word shows us His power which is greater than and supercedes all other powers of nature.
The Serpent told the truth; ".thine eyes shall be opened."
Have we all been worshipping the wrong "God" for 4000 years?
Another word for this phenomena is emotion.
The healthy human mind WANTS to find truth, it wants to be rational, and Doubt is the healthy brains security screener, it's the function that attempts to give pat downs to irrational invasions.
That's what doubt is, your brain trying to correct itself. it's trying to tell you that something is not right here, there is something fishy about the guy coming through the door. I like to call doubt my brains little bul-chet detector.
Ignoring doubt is like ignoring pain..... which also serves an important purpose.
You make a fabulous point and bring to light a crucial stage of spiritual and faith development - the searching stage. The challenge is that our religious institutions are not always very good at accepting, supporting and nurturing this stage of spiritual development. It is only through questioning, doubting, exploring that one can ever hope to come to a mature faith and in in the Christian world, become a mature disciple. I have found that when you give people permission, space and resources through which they can explore, they become empowered to live a life of compassion and mercy, working toward harmony and justice - qualities that it seems all religions are working toward and calling us to.
Lauri Lumby
Authentic Freedom Ministries
http://yourspiritualtruth.com
Perhaps it is not a shadow, but a spark of light. Many times people mistake darkness for light, or light for darkness. It is common for people that dont live in the grey.
- Ye are the birds that soar upward into the firmament of knowledge, the royal falcons on the wrist of God - Abdu'l-Baha (1844-1921)
I have beliefs - even strong beliefs that I can't quite get rid of and do not even want to, but I am friends with doubt. I'd like people to see it less as the "cute little first step to becoming a fully-functioning atheist" (I find such sentiment condesending to the point of wanting to punch people), and more as just having a "thinking faith."
Show me a person who is sure they've got existance figured out and I'll show you a fool.
Doubt is the beginning of wisdom...but only if you follow it to its logical end and reject all supernatural beliefs. It would be nice if more religious people could do that and develop a humanistic, natural spirituality and a practice that reflected that.
There is no logical end to doubt, if doubt ends all you have is certainty and dogma.
certainty removes doubt, which is our brain telling us we don't have enough information. Once we obtain that information, it removes doubt and puts us in certainty.