Delving Deeper into Doubt

Robin: Henry Drummond (1851-1897), a scientist, evangelist, and lecturer at the Free Church College of Scotland wrote in a sermon entitled “Dealing with Doubt”:

Christ never failed to distinguish between doubt and unbelief. Doubt is “can’t believe”; unbelief is “won’t believe.” Doubt is honesty; unbelief is obstinacy. Doubt is looking for light; unbelief is content with darkness.

Roget’s synonyms for doubt include uncertainty, indecision, and fear. Antonyms include faith, assurance, and calmness.

Does doubt encourage or discourage? Or both? Does it uplift, or push down. Does it show unity, or sow discord?

Harry: Doubt does none of those things for me. I think it depends on the individual. But for a community, it can create hesitation to participate. Doubt is not a problem for the scientific community, though: It is a virtue.

Kiran: Doubt stimulates curiosity and further research. It takes us further in the direction of truth.

Lloyd: God exhorts us in scripture to test him. Doubt in our personal lives can stimulate our search for truth, but we often dismiss the doubts of people outside our community as ignorance, when we should be using their doubt to test our own certainties and thus lead us closer to truth. So for the most part, it is positive, but it can be detrimental in a community.

Harry: To Seventh Day Adventists who stick to the belief in six days of creation, this week’s news of a major scientific corroboration of the Big Bang theory ought to cause doubt.

Robin: Do faith and science have to be at loggerheads over this? Creationism and the BB theory both posit the creation of something out of nothing. And scripture sometimes reveals its truths slowly, over time, so there might yet be reconciliation.

Harry: The problem is that in a community of belief, that belief is sacrosanct, therefore doubt must be heretical.

Robin: Can we choose how to use doubt, and how to react to it?

David: Science makes a virtue of doubt. Indeed, scientific method is premised on doubt. And with good reason: It brings the truths of nature closer. Why can’t the church adopt this attitude and use doubt, and an equivalent of the scientific method, to bring the spiritual truth closer?

Pastor Ariel: Doubt that seeks is positive; doubt that glorifies itself, that sees itself as a conclusion, is negative and dangerous. It stops us from seeking, from asking hard questions. Churches are afraid of some questions, but god is not at all afraid of them. We need to distinguish what kind of doubt we harbor, but that is not easy. Jesus’ own disciples needed the assurance of touching Jesus’ wounds from the cross before abandoning their doubt about his resurrection. Jesus did not reject such doubt. He was willing to confront it and deal with it. So we should turn to god with out doubts.

Robin: Abused children tend to doubt their self worth, the value of their existence and their contribution to society, and offers of friendship and love. Is self-doubt real, or just an artifact of overwhelming fear? Is it sinful to admit that one does not know everything? Can one have faith in the intangible or should one demand proof? If the latter, does one get to decide what constitutes acceptable proof?

Noah was told to build an ark, and it took him 120 years to get the proof of its necessity. Gideon, on the other hand, got his proof, using fleeces, practically on the spot. Does god know what is best for us individually? How can a person born blind have faith in what others tell him about the existence of a blue sky?

Lloyd: It is not sinful to admit that one does not know everything. God inspired the bible to be written in such a way as to stimulate the search for him. Otherwise it would have been written in plain and simple child-like language requiring no interpretation, stimulating no questions.

Kiran: The proving of the BB theory beyond doubt (which really never happens in science—nothing is ever beyond doubt) still would not shake my faith in god, because my faith is experiential, not intellectual. Science once thought and taught that a person’s behavior could not affect his or her distant progeny genetically. Now, researchers at Emery University have found that fear in individual mice affects the behavior of their progeny for three generations. This about-face in scientific belief did not invalidate science: On the contrary, it strengthened it, by demonstrating that science had taken us another step forward toward the truth.

Science sees the world in shades of gray. Religion sees it in black and white, and feels threatened when that perspective is challenged. It ought not to feel so: It should know that the active embrace of doubt will lead ever closer to truth, as it does in science. It should realize that god does not abandon us during our journeys of doubt. Far from it! He will wrestle with us, but we have his assurance as our loving father that we can and will learn and benefit from the struggle.

Harry: Doubt is healthy and it should be encouraged. “Truth” that once seemed immutable does in fact mutate, but that does not have to affect one’s faith, or one’s faith community, provided that one’s faith and one’s community are not based on the shifting sand of presumed-immutable mutable “truth.” Church tends to deny that truth is mutable. I suspect that most individual churchgoers do not really share their church’s certainty. God is much more flexible about doubt in him than his church is, as we’ve seen in the stories of Jacob, Thomas, and so on.

Robin: John 3 tells the story of Nicodemus:

Now there was a man of the Pharisees, named Nicodemus, a ruler of the Jews; this man came to Jesus by night and said to Him, “Rabbi, we know that You have come from God as a teacher; for no one can do these signs that You do unless God is with him.” Jesus answered and said to him, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born again he cannot see the kingdom of God.”

Nicodemus said to Him, “How can a man be born when he is old? He cannot enter a second time into his mother’s womb and be born, can he?” Jesus answered, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit he cannot enter into the kingdom of God. That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit.

We have talked about spirit, but what is this water? In Isaiah and Ezekiel, water is a cleansing agent for our spirit, our attitude, our willingness to open our minds and our hearts.

Do not be amazed that I said to you, ‘You must be born again.’ The wind blows where it wishes and you hear the sound of it, but do not know where it comes from and where it is going; so is everyone who is born of the Spirit.”

We believe in wind, and we have some scientific understanding of it, but we don’t really understand where it comes from or where it goes. You can’t see it, though you can see its effects. You can’t touch it. You have to have at least a small amount of faith to believe in the wind.

Nicodemus said to Him, “How can these things be?” Jesus answered and said to him, “Are you the teacher of Israel and do not understand these things?

Is Jesus implying that one cannot teach what one does not understand? Or is he asking Nicodemus: “Are you too fixated on the flesh right now?”

Truly, truly, I say to you, we speak of what we know and testify of what we have seen, and you do not accept our testimony.

Perhaps here Jesus is trying to reveal his identity to Nicodemus and to dispel some of his doubt.

If I told you earthly things and you do not believe, how will you believe if I tell you heavenly things?

Again, he is asking Nicodemus to open his mind.

No one has ascended into heaven, but He who descended from heaven: the Son of Man. As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of Man be lifted up; so that whoever believes will in Him have eternal life.

“For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life.

Here he seems to be trying to dispel the Jewish belief in a harsh god.

For God did not send the Son into the world to judge the world, but that the world might be saved through Him. He who believes in Him is not judged; he who does not believe has been judged already, because he has not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God. This is the judgment, that the Light has come into the world, and men loved the darkness rather than the Light, for their deeds were evil. For everyone who does evil hates the Light, and does not come to the Light for fear that his deeds will be exposed. But he who practices the truth comes to the Light, so that his deeds may be manifested as having been wrought in God.”

As Jason said last week, scripture tells us that Jesus did not want us to doubt. Matthew 28-34:

Peter said to Him, “Lord, if it is You, command me to come to You on the water.” And He said, “Come!” And Peter got out of the boat, and walked on the water and came toward Jesus. But seeing the wind, he became frightened, and beginning to sink, he cried out, “Lord, save me!” Immediately Jesus stretched out His hand and took hold of him, and said to him, “You of little faith, why did you doubt?” When they got into the boat, the wind stopped. And those who were in the boat worshiped Him, saying, “You are certainly God’s Son!”

And James 1:5-6:

But if any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask of God, who gives to all generously and without reproach, and it will be given to him. But he must ask in faith without any doubting, for the one who doubts is like the surf of the sea, driven and tossed by the wind.

Does god chastise doubt, or does he chastise refusal to budge from doubt? Can one be certain without first being doubtful? Does one need to be convinced?

Lloyd: Doubt must be based on prior knowledge of the thing doubted. That knowledge is either wrong or right. One must have what seems to be a reasonable explanation for one’s doubt. God is asking us, like Peter, not to focus on the knowledge that give rise to doubt but instead to focus on him. In other words, he is asking us to have faith. Faith overcomes doubt. Since we admit we don’t know everything, but we accept that god does, then why would we not do that?

Alice: I do not see doubt as a good thing. It has always rebounded negatively on me, tossing me about like a boat in a storm and leaving me unhappy and not at peace. To me, doubt is a major sin, spiritually. Doubting the fidelity of a spouse can lead to divorce. Doubting the behavior of a daughter who stays out all night causes great and prolonged anguish in a mother. Why go through this anguish? Why struggle with this doubt? Why not, instead, let it rest in god’s hands? This is much easier, simpler, and more child-like.

Nicodemus was not doubting; he was seeking new knowledge, like a child. Once a child’s question is answered, s/he accepts it, and that’s that. We should certainly question, but we should not doubt. This is especially true of scripture. It takes a lifetime of experience and reflection, but scripture is a light shining in the dark. It is the place to turn when doubt raises its ugly head, when one is ill at ease, when one needs certainty and comfort and peace and Truth.

Pastor Ariel: It seems, then, that doubt is not necessarily lack of information; rather, it is one’s attitude towards the information that one has been given. We should not doubt information that has come from god. Jesus did not say to Peter: “You are doubting;” he asked “Why are you doubting? Why have you been ignoring the information that I have been giving you?”

I’m not sure that the bible was made difficult to understand so that it would lead us to dig deeper. Nothing could have been simpler, easier to understand, easier to have faith in, than the presence and words of Jesus himself, in the flesh; yet even his disciples had doubts! God wants us to have faith, and to do that we should turn to scripture, as Alice said. So doubt is healthy to the extent that it leads us back to scripture.

Scientists too need to have a lot of faith. They must make many assumptions, such as that hummingbird beaks co-evolved with certain flowers so that only they and not their competitors could reach the nectar at the base of those flowers. When I asked a scientist: “Which adapted first, the bird or the flower?” the scientist grew upset at my apparent lack of faith in the completeness of the scientific explanation. It led me to believe that science can be a religion for some, too; and gave me peace of mind in knowing that while religion may not have all the answers, neither does science.

Doubt is not lack of information; it is how one reacts to information that has been revealed. As Christians, we should be prepared to go to scripture—to the word of god—and allow god to confront our doubts. He will ask us not whether but why we are doubting.

Robin: Nicodemus was driven by the spirit to visit the rebel Jesus at night to ask questions—to resolve his doubts. Our lives are like a series of tiny mustard seeds, each of which grows into a large bush which then produces more seeds. Do we get hung up on the doubt as to whether the growth has to come all at once? Or can we practice trusting that they will germinate eventually?

Faith is not certainty. Only god can have certainty. We all go through periods of doubt. He asks us to have confidence in his certainty. It’s not a sin to seek to know more; it’s a sin to remain in doubt and stagnate. One should not be discouraged by doubt. If “No doubt = no growth in faith,” then “Know doubt = know growth in faith,” as someone has said. It’s all a matter of what we choose to do with our doubt.

Kiran: Nicodemus was embarrassed to be seen visiting Jesus in the daylight. As a Pharisee, he knew his religion, and had no doubt that he belonged to the religion of god. When Jesus came along with his radical ideas about god, he grew curious. He approached Jesus with humility, and that helped him grow in faith. We and our churches should approach science and religion with the humble curiosity of a Nicodemus.

Pastor Ariel: In Matthew 12:20, Jesus repeats the words of Isaiah:

“A battered reed He will not break off,
And a smoldering wick He will not put out,”

Doubt puts out the flame of faith. Coming to Jesus, as Nicodemus did, kindles it. His wisdom encourages the germination of the mustard seed. Jesus knew how to “grow” Nicodemus, how to blow on the smoldering wick enough to kindle it into a flame but not so much as to put it out entirely. There is no doubter whose wick Jesus cannot re-ignite.

Michael: A person in stage 3 of faith development will not be satisfied with scripture. It has to be experiential, not intellectual.

Robin: Experience can lead us to re-read the bible with new understanding.

David: Science has faith in the scientific method, which modestly claims no more than to lead the scientist in the direction of truth. Religion, on the other hand, claims to lead the faithful to The Truth. A spiritual person who has certainty can only have got it from having witnessed the inner light. S/he cannot describe or define it, but s/he also cannot (and would not want) to deny it.

Harry: Stage 2 people generally cannot deal with stage 3 people. When challenged, stage 2 people will rally in defense of their community.

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