The fact is that all the great spiritual models of the ages before us found themselves, at one point or another, plunged into doubt, into darkness, into the certainty of uncertainty: Augustine, John of the Cross, Teresa of Avila, Meister Eckhart, John the Baptist, Thomas, Peter, one after another of them all wondered, and wavered, and believed beyond belief.
Surely, then, doubt is something to be grateful for, something about which to sing an alleluia. Unlike answers that presume the static nature of God and the spiritual life, doubt stretches us beyond ourselves to the guidance of a God whose face is not always in books.
Doubt is what leaves us open to truth, wherever it is, however difficult it may be to accept. But most of all, doubt requires us to reconfirm everything we've ever been made to believe is unassailable. Without doubt, life would simply be a series of packaged assumptions, none of them tested, none of them sure, and all of them belonging not to us, but to someone else whose truth we have made our own.
The problem with accepting truth as it comes to us rather than truth as we divine it for ourselves is that it's not worth dying for -- and we don't. It becomes a patina of ideas inside of which we live our lives without passion, without care. This kind of faith happens around us but not in us -- we go through the motions. The first crack in the edifice and we're gone. The first chink in the wall of the castle keep and we're off to less demanding fields.
Doubt, on the other hand, is the mother of conviction. Once we have pursued our doubts to the dust, we forge a stronger, not a weaker, belief system. These truths are true, we know, because they are now true for us rather than simply for someone else. To suppress doubt, then, to discourage thinking, to try to stop a person from questioning the unquestionable is simply to make them more and more susceptible to the cynical, more unaccepting of naive belief.
It is doubt that is the beginning of real faith.
This post is an excerpt from my book Uncommon Gratitude.
Cara L. Santa Maria: Is Science Just a New Religion?
Sister Joan Chittister, OSB: The Sweet Mystery of Life
Angie McQuaig: Camp Inquiry: A Summer Camp for Kids With Questions
Karl Giberson, Ph.D: Evolving in Monkey Town: A Good Read on Religious Doubt
The importance of doubt in religious faith
Beliefs - Uncertainties About the Role of Doubt in Religion ...
But a series of intense experiences led me to explore esoteric traditions. I avoided Christianity for decades. Had the usual assumptions of a superficial knowledge. Plus being certain that political action could solve economic inequities and end prejudice. With an internal separation between the prophetic mode (social justice) and a growing need to pay attention to...whatever it was.
Definitely a contrast to my dominant practical persona and a fascination with science dating to early childhood. A painting is scientifically a chunk of cloth with splotches of pigment. It is that other whatever-- poetic, artistic, mystical-- that gives it meaning. Same for human life.
Then I had an encounter with a field of Light. Which poured out of the objects around me, including my own body. I understood it as holding all things, all people, atoms, galaxies, alive in an intense love. Eventually, I made peace with my own cultural antecedents, identifying as Christian, albeit as an independent one.
But through a frankly horrendous lonely passage. That dark night of the soul. Mistreatment by theologians and Christian organizations broke any easy identity. Yet some were supportive; truthful about postmodern reality and the need to be comfortable with uncertainty and ambiguity.
I emerged from this spiritual maze. The experience itself an anchor; the way still Christian.
This article is a nice reminder of that in reference to faith.
Exactly. However, in much of life, doubt can prove things through research and experiment. Not so with the greatest packaged assumption of all, a belief in a god. This, as often stated, is neither provable nor unprovable. A believer can do as much research as they like but any proof they come up with is deduced from their own desire to believe.
"The problem with accepting truth as it comes to us rather than truth as we divine it for ourselves........"
This is hitting the nail right on the head. Where religion is concerned believers do divine it for themselves - but, does this make it true? Of course not.
"Once we have pursued our doubts to the dust, we forge a stronger, not a weaker, belief system."
Really? Any rational pursuit of doubts in a belief system should end up with a weaker belief system because other than deeply flawed ancient books and what the faithful have interpreted (or divined for themselves) as the nature of their god, there isn't a shred of evidence there is a god.
Oh yeah? Well... uhhh.... look! Trees exist! Therefore God!
Also... look! Mountains! Therefore God.
And additionally... I'm not killing and eating my neighbors, therefore God.
Because obviously without God all these things would not be the case. So there.
Actually this isn't an argument, it's a statement of ignorance and self delusion.
Look! War, genocide, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, tsunamis, floods, drought, famine, starvation, disease, pain, poverty. Therefore no God.
Peace and much love
Lara Jane
http://ultimatelifestyleproject.com
- James 1: 6-8
On the one hand I want to praise the call to avoid simply swallowing things you are told to believe as "the truth" instead of rigorously determining the truth through your own investigation.
On the other hand I want to pound my head against the wall that this is then claimed to be the foundation of anything that even remotely resembles the kind of religious "faith" required to believe in a deity, the truth of the existence of which cannot ever possibly be confirmed and will ALWAYS be simply a belief that is not tested and is not sure because the hypothesis that God exists is completely untestable! It is a totally unfalsifiable proposition.
I think that it is fair to divide doubt into weak doubt or strong doubt. Each will lead to how much fear of the unknown needs to be overcome when questioning faith.
May all doubters have great courage.
Truly doubting ones faith is hard work. May all doubter be convinced afterwards, for surely they have earned what they have worked towards.
I seriously doubt the belief of anyone who claims that they have never questioned a single facet of their "faith". Belief has its beauty---but unquestioning fanaticism is not, to my mind "faith". Too often, people will strong religious affiliation take any attempt at reason as an "attack" on their belief system. I believe that we are given the ability to think and question, and to fail to do so is also a failure of belief.