Positive and Negative Doubt

Don: Doubt can lead to growth in faith or to disillusionment. What factors—inherent or external to the thing doubted—influence the direction of our doubt?

The stages of faith model we have been discussing allows for the fact that some people may never move from one stage to another; but the model nevertheless does describe the ways in which faith typically advances for those who do not remain in faith stasis. If one is growing in faith one will inevitably pass through these stages and cannot skip over stages—each is a necessary basis for the next.

It is hard for people to minister to people more than one stage below them, with notable exceptions such as Jesus. Church is full of stage 2 people, who look for structure. It is challenging for a church therefore to deal with people who move to stage 3. The result is that many people leave the church.

I am going to try to refine the model using different terminology:

1. Experience Faith. This is an introductory or elementary type of faith, typically developed in young children, that is stimulated by participation, by learning the liturgy, doing the rituals, following the traditions of the church, lighting the candles, singing the songs, saying the prayers, and so on. It is a sensory faith, being highly dependent on the sights and sounds and smells of church. It is a meaningful faith to many.

2. Affiliative faith. This is a faith that is strengthened by belonging to something, by joining a church or a study group and so on. It might entail going through some induction ritual such as baptism or affirmation of faith. It seems especially attractive to adolescents, who join church youth groups, Pathfinders, Boy and Girl Scouts, and so on.

3. Searching Faith. This is most like stage 3. It is a faith where the certainties of affiliative faith begin to seem less certain, where given doctrines and everything that was taught are questioned. It is a faith that seeks answers, and is often seen in late adolescence as young people enter college or the workplace and begin to be exposed to ideas and worldviews different from the closeted ideas and worldviews they are now emerging from. Its primary attribute is fear of the unknown and leads many to retreat to an earlier stage of faith, to recover their sense of certainty and lose their fear. But is only through this faith that one can advance to the next stage.

4. Owned stage. This is a self-developed stage of enlightenment, built upon the individual’s analysis of his or her personal experiences and exposure to ideas that have resulted from the Searching stage. The Searching phase is prerequisite to the Owned stage. There may be residual doubts but they are not disabling.

What is the process, and what are the elements within that process, by which a faith grows or recedes? Does Job offer some pointers? He went through these stages of faith, and the more doubt he had, the more distressed he became, the closer he got to god.

Job clearly describes his transition from stage 3 (Searching) to stage 4 (Owned) faith when he says to god “I used to know who you were, I knew all the answers about you; but now, I have seen you with my eyes.” His faith has changed from a cause-effect relationship to a much grander picture. The more Job doubts, has questions, and even rails against god, the closer he gets.

Jonah, on the other hand, also has dramatic encounters with god and doubt equally deep to that of Job, but he ends up sitting under a hot sun with no conviction that he has seen god.

What’s different between Job’s doubt, his questions, and those of Jonah? Jonah’s is destructive. He argues with god about how god should go about his business. Job goes through similarly great gloom and doubt, but his outcome is qualitatively entirely different.

In the Garden of Eden, we see the contrast between the Tree of Life and the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil—which we may call the Question Tree. It is clear that god did not want wo/men to ask questions, because Adam and Eve were specifically prohibited from eating the fruit of the Question Tree. When they disobey, their relationship with god starts to unravel.

Since the Fall, every time god encounters wo/man he is the one who tends to ask the questions. He rarely answers when questions are put to him. According to an article I read recently but cannot cite or vouch for, people asked questions of Jesus 153 times in all. In 147 of those, Jesus answered with a question. It seems that asking questions is a way back to god, a way to redeem ourselves after the Fall. Churches should recognize that doubt is not necessarily disillusionment.

Does the outcome of doubt—increased spiritual strength, or disillusionment—depend upon the questions asked? Upon the circumstances of the questions? Upon the questioner’s attitude? Upon how one sees god? The bible is a book of questions, not the book of answers that most people take it for. The questions asked by the great personages of scripture are the same questions that beguile us today. The notion of certainty, of complete resolution to one’s doubts, is not the scriptural view. In Job and Jonah, the questions arose out of crisis. People who are placid and untroubled tend not to ask questions of god. The crises can be emotional (as with Elijah), they can be spiritual, they can be the loss of a loved one, financial ruin, and so on.

Job seems to suggest that doubt is best tackled in a group, not alone. It enables ideas to be shared, points of view to be sharpened. As the proverb (27:17) says:

Iron sharpens iron,
So one man sharpens another.

Doubt dealt with alone seems potentially more destructive than doubt dealt with in group discourse. This is why it seems to me imperative that churches and faith groups give people an opportunity to ask questions and to challenge traditional thinking.

Cases such as Job’s strongly imply that one of the key ingredients of constructive doubt is never to disengage with god. Another is to be prepared to doubt one’s doubts—an intellectually honest position that requires some humility. A difference between Job and Jonah is that the latter shows no sign of humility. He knows what’s what and tells god how he (god) ought to behave.

What other elements lead to faith growth?

Pastor Ariel: Job’s question can be summarized as “Why does god punish a righteous person?” while Jonah’s can be summarized as “Why doesn’t god punish evil people? Why does he not destroy Nineveh?” It’s the same question but asked from two different perspectives. And the answer in both cases is because god does not think the way we do. His ways are not our ways.

Harry: Despite a long history, in both scriptural and historical record, of faith in god seemingly having no power to ward off disaster, faith remains. It’s not that things get any clearer; it’s just that it still feels right to have faith. God doesn’t really answer Job’s question, but Job goes on to live a long, happy life.

Jay: Humility is a key factor. Jonah arrogantly complains that god is not doing what Jonah wants him to do, while Job humbly appeals to god for understanding of what god is doing. He does not receive a logical explanation, but he achieves acceptance of god for who and what god is, and given that acceptance goes on to lead a blessed, doubt-free, life. Faith is strengthened by the acceptance that whatever happens, no matter how illogical or how bad, is god’s will.

Pastor Ariel: God never tells Job what he tells us; namely, that Satan and god had discussed him before the calamities started to befall him. God gives us details of his dialog with Satan in Job 1, but Job never had any inkling of that background to his troubles. Job could not understand his journey through life, but we can.

The questions god asks of Job, about how the universe came to be, etc., were unanswerable back then. Science may have given us more insight into some of the questions but the point of the questions is that there will always be things that are bigger than we can ever know. Why do god’s creatures serve him? It’s not out of love; it’s because of something else. Behind the scenes, god is answering a bigger question than whether I will be able to pay my mortgage since I am a good Christian. There is more to our lives than simply this cause and effect: There is trust. God never called Job to account for his sins.

Don: Not only that; he proclaims Job to be blameless. This not to say guiltless. It is a testament to god’s grace that he called Job blameless, even though he may not be guiltless. This is important.

Chris: A blind trust underlies the doubts of Job. There is no point at which Job ceases to trust in god. But Jonah does not trust god right from the start. He goes off in a different direction to the one god gave him. Job doubts but trusts; Jonah doubts and distrusts.

Pastor Ariel: Job tells his friends he just cannot understand why god is treating him this way; it seems out of character. Even so, he avows he will trust god even if that entails his own destruction. At the end of Job’s story, god tells Job’s friends (Job 42:7): “My wrath is kindled against you and against your two friends, because you have not spoken of Me what is right as My servant Job has.” God, who has revealed to us a part of the story that Job did not know, is telling us that indeed we mistake his character if we think he is a candy store keeper and will shower us with candy if we serve him right. The relationship is so much deeper than that; it is a relationship based on love—and love trusts.

Jay: The cosmic question of why people serve god is the same as the human question of why good things happen to bad people and its obverse, why bad things happen to good people. This latter often precipitates the crisis moment in faith. If I am god’s good servant, why do I get sick? Why does my child die? Why did my husband lose his job? Here’s where humility must enter if faith is to be preserved and strengthened, in the recognition and acceptance that god is in and even behind these events, as he was with Job. If instead we see only the illogicality of a good god being behind bad things happening to good people, then we lose our faith in him.

Harry: The question is the answer. Bad things happen to good people is just a fact of life. Belief in god does not exempt one from it. God’s concern in Genesis 3:22:

Then the Lord God said, “Behold, the man has become like one of Us, knowing good and evil; and now, he might stretch out his hand, and take also from the tree of life, and eat, and live forever”

… is based on the fact (revealed earlier in Genesis) that Adam and Eve’s understanding of their new knowledge of good and evil is skewed. They are like god in knowing good and evil, but not in understanding that knowledge. That seems to me to be the only reason why (verses 23-4) god would not want them to be immortal, and instead drove them out of heaven and padlocked the gate. Our view of what is good and what is bad is not the same as god’s view, and the proof of that can be seen in the fact that evil has always persisted on Earth, over which god gave us dominion, whereas it was not present in Eden, where god has dominion.

Robin: Job 42:3-6 suggests that Job did receive an answer as to why god was treating him this way:

‘Who is this that hides counsel without knowledge?’
Therefore I have declared that which I did not understand,
Things too wonderful for me, which I did not know.”
‘Hear, now, and I will speak;
I will ask You, and You instruct me.’
“I have heard of You by the hearing of the ear;
But now my eye sees You;
Therefore I retract,
And I repent in dust and ashes.”

Job realizes that’s god’s ways are beyond comprehension. Even John the Baptist, who had the opportunity of baptizing Jesus and seeing the holy spirit descend on him in the form of a dove, doubted enough to send his disciples to ask Jesus if he was really the messiah. John was in prison and undergoing his own crisis of faith.

David: We have been discussing how the searching stage leads to growth (or loss) of faith. Should we not take a step back and ask how we get into the searching stage to begin with? Whence do the doubts and the questions originate? All we’ve discussed so far as a candidate for the origin of doubt is crisis and the fear a crisis engenders. We face a crisis and discover god is not there for us. But surely there are other reasons, for example:

• We are browsing through YouTube and stumble across a video of a very charismatic and smart atheist tearing the scriptures to logical shreds.
• We join a group, say, a tennis club, and find the people in that group have a totally different perspective on god.
• Someone introduces us to another major world philosophy or the scripture of another religion and we realize that our scripture may not be the be-all and end-all we thought it was.
• We return to reading the bible after maturing more, after gaining more world experience, and just start to think that certain parts of it no longer make sense; that we are no longer prepared to accept it at face value.

Any of these can cause us to enter the searching stage. Then the question becomes “What factors cause us either to construct a firmer faith from our doubt, or to lose the faith we had?”

Jay pointed to a fifth stage of faith, which I think is the faith of the newborn, of a being who has no language and so has had no opportunity to be propagandized and whose faith can only come from within—from the inner light.

Ada: As children we are taught that god loves us like our parents, he wants the best for us. We carry that message with us until we reach a crisis in life, and we may observe others also in crisis. If my crisis is resolved, but that of another is not resolved, then I cannot help but wonder why god would treat me—love me—more than the other person.

Michael: Job’s question was not answered directly, but it was enough to reassure him. I wonder if we can trace the progress of this journey to reassurance through the story—can we find any clues leading to the revelation that god’s ways are not Job’s ways, or did it come out of the blue, at the very end?

Philip (a welcome new member of our group, from Kenya): The vital factor in dealing with crisis is trust—trust that there is a bigger picture, that god will help albeit behind the scenes, helps us through crises.

Kiran: Jonah’s doubt was based on the culturally given picture of a vengeful god; the only picture available to him in his culture at his time. That’s enough for him. He does not want to grow beyond that and understand the grace of god, whereas Job is prepared to go further than his limited understanding. God answers Jonah’s questions more directly than he does Job’s, because Job found the answer in a sense on his own, because he sought it.

Jeff: It seems hard to blame Jonah when, after all, it was god who told him to go and tell the people of Nineveh that he, god, was going to destroy them because of their wickedness. So the concept of a god who works on a quid pro quo basis is clearly stated in Jonah, and indeed is reiterated over and over in the bible. But so too is the “my ways are not your ways” concept. There is this dichotomy throughout the bible.

Pastor Ariel: One wonders why Jonah left, when god had told him he was going to destroy the Ninehvites? Then, when god did not destroy them, Jonah could have done a told-you-so: “See! That’s why I left! I knew you would do renege!”

Robin: I don’t think god actually ever told Jonah he was going to destroy the Ninehvites—he only told him to go talk to them. Jonah assumed that god would destroy the Ninehvites, so he told them that was what god planned to do.

Harry ended with an appeal to everyone to interact through the website. David said anyone having difficulty in registering could email him and he will help.

 

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