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 fear and condemn, 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.
