Faith Without Doubt is Dead

“Doubt is the beginning of wisdom.”  Aristotle 4th century B.C.E.

“When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I understood s a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things.  St. Paul

Unless I see the nail marks in his hands and put my fingers where the nails were, and put my hand into his side, I will not believe.”  Thomas, a disciple of Jesus

 

Abraham and Isaac were elderly rabbis.  They had known each other since childhood and were the greatest of friends.  For 60 years they had been having a heated discussion over the question of God’s existence.  Interestingly, they often switched sides.  Some times Abraham took the position that God did not exist.  Other times he took the position that God did exist.  It was the same way with Isaac.  They were just never on the same side at the same time.  One evening they again took up their old argument.  Back and forth they went for hours until, late that night, they both, for the first time in 60 years, were on the same side of the issue.  They agreed that God could not possibly exist.  The matter was finally settled.  They were at Abraham’s house.  Because it was very late, Isaac stayed over.  The next morning Abraham awakened to the sounds of prayer.  He followed the sound of chanting to his garden.  There he saw Isaac on his knees praying.  Abraham exclaimed, “I thought we agreed that God does not exist.”  Isaac responded, “What does that have to do with anything?”

Western religion’s most famous doubter is Thomas, the disciple of Jesus, known to generations of Sunday school children as doubting Thomas because he would not believe until he had visual proof that Jesus had risen from the dead.  Thomas usually gets a bad rap.  Thomas is really a kind of hero.   We need to be more like him.  How can we be more like Thomas?

To be like Thomas is to put one’s faith beliefs to the test of every day experience.  Does what I believe as a Christian, a Muslim, or a Unitarian Universalist square with what I experience in the world around me?  I can say, with some considerable certainty, that there will be times when it will not.   The point is that the gap between belief and experience is where one needs to become a scientist of the spirit.  Doubt is an important, creative element of faith.  Imagine that faith is a coin.  One side of the coin is inscribed ‘belief,’ the other says ‘doubt.’ Neither side has any meaning without the other.  Belief informs doubt and doubt informs belief.  Trying to eliminate doubt from the faith equation is a little like a dog chasing its own tail.  The dog doesn’t get anywhere except dizzy.  Dealing with out doubts moves us towards a more mature faith.

Jesus said. “…unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the Kingdom of Heaven” This most certainly does not mean we should become childish by hiding our heads in the sand when experience and belief do not square.  Being as a child is a state of mind where one is open to the wonder, possibility, and hope one finds in communion with the deepest and most holy elements of life.

The bottom line is this: If we want to have a mature, dynamic faith that sustains and creates well lived lives we must, like our two old rabbis, admit doubt as an important element of our spiritual lives.  Faith without doubt is dead.

 

Peace,

Jim McConnell