Is Doubt God’s Fault?

Don: As we discussed last week, it seems that in the Garden of Eden, before the Fall, there was neither faith nor doubt. Adam and Eve “walked by sight and not by faith.” There was no ambiguity in Genesis about who owned and ran the Garden: It was god.

The two important trees in the center of the Garden—the tree of life and the tree of knowledge of good and evil—have been taken as metaphors for obedience and disobedience, dependence and independence, for creature and creator. I see them as “the way of grace”—the gift of god; and  “the way of works”—man trying to discriminate moral authority. One might say they represent certainty and uncertainty, respectively.

After the Fall, god communicated with humans directly, for a while. He took Abraham to a Judaean hillside to see the stars and told him he would rule a nation as plentiful as the stars in the sky. He spoke to Moses at the burning bush, telling him to take off his shoes and giving him a message. He led the children of Israel in the wilderness in the form of a cloud by day and a pillar of fire at night. He communicated his will to the people of Israel through the Urim and Thummim stones embedded in the breastplate of the high priest of the Sanctuary.

After the Israelites demanded a king and correspondingly profane kingly government to replace the sacred priestly government, god seems progressively to have withdrawn from direct communication with the people. Through the prophets, he continued to send the people messages but they were much less specific, much more general than before; messages such as to turn from their evil ways. This left a clouded scriptural picture of god until Jesus came to reintroduce god to man. (John 14:9: “…He who has seen Me has seen the Father….”) But this picture of god was radically different to the one generally accepted at the time.

Faith is what hardwires man to god. It is god’s way of maintaining communications with fallen man. Romans 12:3 says “…God has allotted to each a measure of faith” and in Ecclesiastes 3:11 we learn that “He has also set eternity in their heart.” Faith is a gift given to every human being. Hebrews 12:2 says that not only is it a gift, and not only is the gift from god, but that god is also the “finisher” or “perfecter” of the gift.

Faith goes by other names, such as holy spirit, holy ghost, the inner “…light that lighteth every man” (John 1:9). This faith is seen most clearly in children and even in babies, and indeed Jesus tells us our faith must become like that of a child in order to be effective. In Luke 10:21 Jesus “…rejoiced greatly in the Holy Spirit, and said, “I praise You, O Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that You have hidden these things from the wise and intelligent and have revealed them to infants. Yes, Father, for this way was well-pleasing in Your sight.” So faith does not require, and indeed is impeded by, adult maturity. In Matthew 18:3, Jesus said that “…unless you are converted and become like children, you will not enter the kingdom of heaven.”

The bible is full of godly babies that influenced the course of sacred history. Hebrews 11:23: “By faith Moses, when he was born, was hidden for three months by his parents, because they saw he was a beautiful child; and they were not afraid of the king’s edict.” All parents tend to see their babies as special, but in this case there may have been a special insight into just how special Moses was. What did the three wise men see that was so special in Jesus when they visited the stable in Bethlehem? What did Anna and Simeon see in the 8-day-old Jesus when he was brought to the temple and they broke out in ecstasy?

Then there is John the Baptist, whose father-to-be was told by an angel (Luke 1:15) that his son was destined to “…be great in the sight of the Lord; and he will drink no wine or liquor, and he will be filled with the Holy Spirit while yet in his mother’s womb.” So great was the faith even in the fetal John the Baptist that when Jesus’s mother-to-be Mary came close it “leaped in [his mother Elizabeth’s] womb; and Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit” (Luke 1:41). The psalmist declares in Psalms 22:9: “Yet You are He who brought me forth from the womb; You made me trust when upon my mother’s breasts.”

Jesus said we only need a mustard seed of faith to move mountains. In today’s vernacular, he might have said a quantum, a subatomic particle, an iota, of faith. In the boat during the storm, he asked his disciples why they were afraid (Matthew 8). Had they had the smallest element of faith, they would not have been afraid. It is an important lesson for us.

Although a measure of faith is ingrained in us, it does not remove all the elements of spiritual uncertainty. It seems to me that our spiritual uncertainty must be vastly important to god, otherwise he would surely be at pains to clear it up by telling us in plain language exactly what to do, what is his will, in any given situation. That would certainly make life easy. Perhaps in some of us, some of the time, this does happen; but most of have to find our way through a great deal of fog. We fly our faith by the seat of our pants. We don’t understand the spiritual thinking and behaviors of others, of god, and even of ourselves. Paul talks about this in 1 Corinthians 3-4:

But to me it is a very small thing that I may be examined by you, or by any human court; in fact, I do not even examine myself. For I am conscious of nothing against myself, yet I am not by this acquitted; but the one who examines me is the Lord. Therefore do not go on passing judgment before the time, but wait until the Lord comes who will both bring to light the things hidden in the darkness and disclose the motives of men’s hearts; and then each man’s praise will come to him from God.

Why does god leave such ambiguity concerning his will? Consider all the violence, all the bloodshed—spiritual and emotional, as well as physical—that has resulted and still results from spiritual disagreement about whose view truly speaks for god, about whose dogma faithfully reflects his will. 2 Corinthians 5:6-7 says: “Therefore, being always of good courage, and knowing that while we are at home in the body we are absent from the Lord—for we walk by faith, not by sight…” Why must we walk by faith and not by sight? Why did god replace the “sight” Adam and Eve had before the Fall with the “faith” they, and we, have had ever since?

Michael: Whenever one of the prophets asks god a question, god answers with a question. It’s as though he is evading giving answers, Could it be that god’s question is better than his answer?

Don: Clearly, the uncertainty is important in god’s eyes, otherwise he would respond with clear answers.

Jay: Uncertainty is important firstly because we cannot handle certainty. It might make us feel better, but the more certain we become, the more exclusionary we become also. It is anti-social, anti-community. Secondly, uncertainty seems somehow necessary in helping us at some level to fathom god’s unfathomable unconditional love and grace. It sounds contradictory, I know.

Harry: Civilization evolves through uncertainty. Doubt is part of the evolutionary process of learning and growing and advancing. Either god does not exist or he does. The problem is that in trying to find a way to him we miss the simple fact of his ubiquitous presence. In a sense, maybe we can’t see the real tree for the forest of trees that look real to us. Continual searching helps us to move towards the real tree, even though we may never get to hug it. Doubt protects us from the mistaken certainty that the particular tree we select (for whatever reason) is god.

Kiran: Lucifer had sight of—was in the presence of—god all the time before he became Satan. Yet even with that apparently unassailable advantage, he still had doubt. So we may deduce that living by sight does not guarantee the absence of doubt. Lucifer’s fall also suggests that the emergence of doubt is devastating to one who lives within sight and presence of god. The only place to go is down, away from heaven. But doubt strengthens the faith of one living by it, and the only place to go is up, toward heaven.

Jeff: God is ambiguous because the bible was written by multiple authors for disparate reasons, and is not always congruent.

Don: If it were important that the bible be unambiguous, would not god have made it so? Despite its incongruence, it tells a holy story that—alongside Nature and one’s life experiences—enables man’s search for god. I have to think there is value in the incongruence. As Kiran said, living in the presence of god does not eliminate the possibility of doubt.

Kiran: The same was true of the Prodigal Son who doubted his father and left home. But having seen how bad life was away from home, once he returned he was not likely to leave home again. The dutiful elder son, however, began to doubt the father as well, because of the father’s grace toward his prodigal brother. So it seems better to fall, to live in doubt, at least once, so that one can appreciate the value of living in sight of god.

Jay: Once having exercised free will and eaten of the tree of knowledge, Adam and Eve could no longer live forever in the presence of god. Knowledge of the existence of good and evil creates uncertainty, without which one cannot build faith. Developing faith helps us to live with uncertainty. So uncertainty is necessary for the growth of faith.

Chris: Knowledge breeds certainty, which tends to reduce one’s dependence on god.

Ada: If god gave us a road map. we would not be as close to him. In our uncertainty we turn to him for reassurance and guidance.

Michael: So faith I develop by myself is better than faith that god could give me directly?

David: Uncertainty is at the core of Daoism, of “The Way.” The Way is uncertain, but there is no doubt to the Daoist that the Way is what is to be followed as best we can. The key message is not to fight against uncertainty, not to try to replace it with certainty, but rather to embrace it. The Daoist has no doubt and therefore no faith. Neither concept has any meaning or place. This runs counter to the common Christian belief that uncertainty is something to be feared and challenged. But I think our discussion of doubt has shown this fear to be groundless, and that to try to eliminate it is a mistake.

Don: Is there a sense in which the more certain we become, the more we tend to idolize our certainty? It’s easy for us to memorialize our ideas and viewpoints as theologies, which we end up worshiping rather than worshiping god. Is this one reason why god keeps us on edge? To prevent us from growing complacent?

Kiran: It does not mean that whatever certainty we get from our communication with god is mistaken. The mistake is in believing it to be exclusive—“for select ears only,” as it were. This has been the problem with the Jews. Through Abraham, all people in the world were supposed to be blessed, but the Jews took the blessing to be their exclusive prerogative, and they denied it could belong to the gentiles as well. Jesus explicitly rejected this exclusivity. Our churches make the same mistake of exclusivity, of applying god’s word selectively to suit themselves.

Jay: The call, the desire, is not to increase one’s certainty but to increase one’s faith. They are not the same thing. An increase in faith is an increase in acceptance of uncertainty. To have more faith does not mean to be more right or to have more knowledge. Scripture is full of exhortation to faith, so it must be a very important thing to have in this world. It seems counter-intuitive to have the faith of a child, but the faith of the adult depends more on certainty, which is based on increasing knowledge and intellectual capacity, than does the faith of the child.

Michael: Moving to a higher level of faith cannot involve more certainty. It would be a contradiction. It would lead to a belief that one’s faith is superior, exclusive.

Jay: Indeed, perhaps we are wrong to be talking about a “higher” stage of faith; perhaps we should just distinguish it as “strong” faith. Strong faith is not certain faith, not faith that is sure of itself. Such “certain” faith leads to intolerance. Strong faith is humble or, perhaps, egalitarian, like that of the child, who has no sense of superiority over others.

Kiran: Getting to stage 4 faith is essentially to go backwards, right back to the beginning, to a childlike state.

Harry: As has been remarked, we need to be sure of what we are talking about: Faith in what? In what I believe? In my religion? In my church? In god? To me, god’s existence and his love are the broad, all-encompassing objects of faith. The hermeneutics of any given “faith” (a belief system, a religion) limit one to that “faith”’s interpretations of god’s word.

Most Christians are motivated by the belief that their particular “faith” will bring them security in this life and in the next. To deviate from this belief is to face death, which invokes fear. So their “faith” gives them a sense of superiority through the belief that their lives are built on the one-and-only rock of truth.

That’s why I read scripture for what it actually says rather than for what I would like it to say. It can lead one down some very dark paths, but that seems to be where god wants us to go. God’s message is: “I created you. I love you. Go and find your way. You can be sure of my grace. I will protect you, but in ways you cannot fathom.”

Ada: The recognition of god’s gift should remove any feelings of superiority based on a mistaken belief that we somehow made it on our own.

Joyce: We live in an uncertain world, but catastrophe is nevertheless certain to happen. That is when we need faith, when we struggle to start over, to find a new and hopefully better way.

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