I don’t tend to take people on their word. Call it cynicism, skepticism, I don’t know. But if I am going to believe something to be true, I need to get there by myself. In fact, the easiest way to dissuade me from agreeing with you is to tell me that something is true without acknowledging other possibilities. Don’t get me wrong, I rely heavily, if not solely, on what other people think, but I can’t just take something at face value and subscribe to it without asking some hard questions.
I kind of figure that lots of people have this same attitude, especially when it comes to faith, so when I got the opportunity to lead a college discussion on Sunday morning, I decided to talk about doubt. Sure enough, it seems like many young people rely heavily on the process of doubting and asking questions in order to figure out what to think of God, their faith, Christianity, the church, and Jesus.
The problem is…that is a scary prospect for a lot of churches. Especially if those conversations are endorsed by people within the church. After all, aren’t spiritual leaders supposed to be leading young people toward God? Now, the youth leader here was fully supportive, but for some It seems counter-intuitive to encourage students to ask questions like, “Why should I believe God loves us when I have seen so many horrible things in my life?” or “How do we know Jesus didn’t just say he was God’s son to make people listen to him?” And so on.
What’s more, isn’t faith what you have when you don’t have to ask questions? Doesn’t faith mean that you believe something whether you have any proof or not? That means that doubt would really be the opposite of faith! In fact, when Thomas doubted whether Jesus had really come back from the dead, didn’t Jesus say, “Blessed are those who believe without seeing me?”
Yes, he did. But he also showed Thomas the holes in his hands and feet. And then asked him to put his fingers in the holes. And then included Thomas without question in a final meal of bread and fish with six other disciples.
What he did not do, was berate Thomas and cast him off into Hell for doubting. Instead, he willingly showed the doubter proof, and then gently admonished him for questioning the word of his eleven best friends who he should have trusted more than anyone. This happens a lot in the Bible: someone doubts, Jesus (or God if it is in the Old Testament) gives them proof, and then they get on with their lives, feeling much more confident in their faith.
So, I wonder if doubting isn’t often a very healthy part of faith. If doubting is simply the beginning of a conversation that will ultimately lead to stronger faith. After all, we do not have a physical Jesus to show up and shove his hole-y hands in our faces, or a voice of God that speaks to us out of a whirlwind. Instead, we have prayer, scripture, and the wisdom of a couple thousand years of people who have wrestled with these same doubts.
Maybe doubt is an inherent part of faith. Which would mean that faith is much less an unquestioning adherence to beliefs, and much more a process of “sacred questioning,” as my mentor David Dark would say. The “faith” part of it comes in trusting that God will take care of you through this process.
Of course, that is just one – very biased – opinion.
Are there times when doubting is unhealthy?
What happens if doubt ultimately leads someone away from God? Does that mean it was wrong to doubt in the first place?
Life Reconciling 
I would agree that there is much merit in that idea: to trust that God would weather your wayward ship safely home to port, though doubting, one might seem to storm the venture home. If it accords with your personality, then you ought be allowed the chance to battle try some of the ideas and tenets before integrating them into your person, and I would have to imagine that to successfully reform oneself, in the manner most religions require, would necessitate some combative response on the part of the practitioner against, as a rite of purification . Reform, itself, — from maybe a meaningless metaphysical stance — can be seen as violent: a tearing down before the building up.
My response is colored because whenever I think on such matters, my mind inevitably wanders back to a Yeats’ poem in which he has written this line of lines: “Hatred of God may bring the soul to God,” which, in of itself, maybe is a dangerous profession, but with a wise load of wisdom coupled to it, too.
Which is to say, that doubt — and more virile, a rage and struggle against — are necessary components to a faith as I see it, an important means to process and understand it, and maybe then is even part of the center to belief, but in the end, I think a true stand on the matter, the personal confession of faith or no, ought be decided. The rigidity of a binary decision forces meaning on that decision and resolutely informs how one is to mend his/her life or consecrate it as it is. But up to each individual to decide that day, nor to be expected that some form of these struggles will not continue.
The idea that life is a pilgrimage with different trials to different days, can be traced even as far as Chaucer and further, right? And so, too, doubts themselves will waiver and diminish, and rage subsides. Maybe stuck to a sticking point, the sorer issues are picked back up again at later times, but I think, also, I begin to look at recurring problems — at least of this unsolvable sort — as familiar friends.