Doubt is extremely problematic to a faith-based community. When reaching out or defending their community, they point to the immutability of their truth as a reason why you should join or believe as they do. When people agree with them and join, it strengthens the group’s faith in its perceived truth.
Doubt is like a vote of no confidence in that perceived truth. When doubt takes hold in the mind it means one has just lost confidence in what one had previously held to be truth; in the very pillars of faith which, one had supposed, provided assurances of both a good life and a life after death. It affects one’s participation in one’s existing community of faith.
To question what one once thought was immutable can be devastating for those one loves and those with whom one shared communion in one’s community of faith. That community by its very nature must try to rescue you from your doubt and will do so using the same tools that captivated one in the first place. It will seek to re-indoctrinate one to the principles of its perceived immutable truth, couched in love of course, and it will honestly fear that you will be lost if they can’t get you back.
So what does one do when one begins to doubt? Should one ignore it? Share it with others? I feel at this point in my own life and journey that doubt it is better dealt with by me alone and shared only with those I believe to have like minds. It is one thing to doubt one’s own faith but quite another to create doubt in another’s faith.
People who reside comfortably in a faith community are at peace with their truth. They don’t want to hear that you doubt their truth and its capacity to provide security in their journey through life. Your doubt and especially your confidence in your doubt creates great anxiety in, and is seen as a threat to, the community and its individual members.
Firm faith is usually established by growth of one’s community and the acceptance of such prescribed truths by others. The old adage “There’s strength in numbers” emboldens them to think they must be right, since so many others think the same way as they do.
I personally do not see that sharing one’s doubts in a community set in its faith is a good thing. It might even be evil. I came to my own doubts by a thought process that was within me. To share my doubt with others who are not asking the same questions would be wrong and selfish. By doing so I would be trying to get them to confirm my own conclusions so I might be even more at peace with my choices.
Doubt is private and should only be shared in a community that has as its conviction that there is no capital-T Truth except the one that God alone can ever know. In our journeys, we progress from one lower-case-t truth to another, evolving as we journey down life’s road. The only tangible immutable truth I can attest to with confidence is that we all shall die. I believe in faith that God is love and if we apply love and kindness to our neighbors we might change the world and make it a better place. Beyond that, I know nothing.’
Harry Tompkins
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.