In praise of Doubting
I’ read a book once by R. Scott Bakker that was called The
Darkness That Comes Before.
It is a fantasy book, set in a made-up world full of as many
faiths and cults and religions as our own world.
One of the
characters, a sorcerer who most of the religions both feared and condemned, is
thinking about “religion”. He thinks most religions carry “a plague whose
primary symptom is CERTAINTY.”
The passage
continues: “How the God could be equated with the absence of hesitation was
something Ach-a-mi-an had never understood. After all, what was the God but
the mystery that burdened them all? What was hesitation but a dwelling-within
this mystery?”
For my money,
there is something very profound in those musing. I have come to believe that much
that passes for “religion” in our time indeed carries “a plague whose primary
symptom is Certainty.”
Fundamentalism is
alive and well and gaining strength around the globe. Obviously, the Islamic
Fundamentalists worry many people, for example,
But Fundamentalism
is much closer to home.
Tim LaHay, who is
the co-author of the best selling “Left Behind Series”—books about the end of
time that, in my mind, totally misinterpret Christian thinking about “last
things”—was interviewed on CNN after a tsunami a few years back that caused
such utter devastation in the Pacific. Mr. LaHay, claiming to be speaking for
the Christian Faith, said that the tsunami was “not a bad thing” because it
shows us how the end is near and the rapture is coming.
Such “certainty”
in the face of unspeakable human suffering is, to me, part of the plague of
Fundamentalism. When someone—of whatever faith—claims to have a franchise on
Truth, or to know exactly what God knows, I become deeply worried. Our God is
recorded in the book of Isaiah as saying to the prophet—“My ways are not your
ways and my thoughts are not your thoughts.”
It is time some
part of the church reclaimed and celebrated “doubt” and “hesitancy” as a proper
response to the mystery of God. “Certainty” is a symptom of the plague of Fundamentalism
that can only divide and destroy us. Doubt and Hesitancy can lead us deeper and
deeper into the mystery of God.
Thomas is the
patron saint of Doubters, God bless him.
DOUBT is not the opposite
of FAITH—it is the “possibility” of Faith. Those who doubt are open to seeking
and being sought by the mystery that is God. Those who are “certain” have no
seeking to do, no wondering to wonder, no journey to take. Those who are
“certain” are stuck just where they are and their very “certainty” limits the mystery of God.
Doubt requires courage—Thomas wasn’t hiding in the upper room
with the other disciples, he was out somewhere, hopeful and courageous,
unwilling to be locked away in fear and un-certainty.
I once did a class on the creed—I said,
how many people here agree with the first statement of the Creed, “I believe in
God” and four hands out of twelve went up….I realized there was something there
to work with.
And Thomas’ doubt led
him to profound and deep faith when he exclaims, ‘my Lord and my God!”
The “doubting
Thomas” became the “Believing Thomas.” So should we all eventually. Amen.
