Wrestling with Doubt

Don: Doubt seems to run counter to faith and is therefore to be discouraged. For example: 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.

The idea seems to be that if doubt raises its ugly head then it should be smothered under a thick blanket of faith. And yet, in scripture story after story is about men doubting and questioning god, his goodness, his plan. The very first story, in the Garden of Eden, has the serpent introducing doubt into Adam and Eve’s minds. The stories of Abraham and Sarah, of Moses doubting his ability to lead the Israelites out of Egypt, of Elijah doubting whether god can protect him from Jezebel, of Gideon and the fleece; of Job, Jonah, “Doubting” Thomas, John the Baptist who asks if Jesus is really the messiah, and even Jesus himself doubting the necessity of his impending crucifixion and doubting god’s loyalty during it.

Last week, Alice asked what should we doubt? What is doubtable? What makes one doubt a poison, and another a medicine? Doubt is an essential element in the transition from stage 2 to stage 4. There is a sense that stage 4 is achieved when one has accumulated enough doubt in stage 3.

I think the story of Jacob, in Genesis 32, might give us some insight into these issues. It is the story of Jacob wrestling with god. I think Jacob’s physical wrestling is a metaphor for humankind’s mental wrestling with god. Jacob was the second-born twin brother of Esau. His name is associated in Hebrew with deceit and duplicity, and indeed that was his character. But the tables are turned on him and he ends up facing the wrath of Esau, whose birthright as first-born had been stolen by Jacob. In a cowardly act, Jacob sent his family ahead of him as a shield against Esau’s forces. It is at this point that he wrestles with god. Genesis 32:24- :

Then Jacob was left alone, and a man wrestled with him until daybreak. When he saw that he had not prevailed against him, he touched the socket of his thigh; so the socket of Jacob’s thigh was dislocated while he wrestled with him. Then he said, “Let me go, for the dawn is breaking.” But he said, “I will not let you go unless you bless me.” So he said to him, “What is your name?” And he said, “Jacob.” He said, “Your name shall no longer be Jacob, but Israel; for you have striven with God and with men and have prevailed.” Then Jacob asked him and said, “Please tell me your name.” But he said, “Why is it that you ask my name?” And he blessed him there. So Jacob named the place Peniel, for he said, “I have seen God face to face, yet my life has been preserved.” Now the sun rose upon him just as he crossed over Penuel, and he was limping on his thigh. Therefore, to this day the sons of Israel do not eat the sinew of the hip which is on the socket of the thigh, because he touched the socket of Jacob’s thigh in the sinew of the hip.

There are some interesting points to be drawn from this passage. First, wrestling is a very intimate sport, with physical contact of a degree normally reserved for a husband and wife. Second, why would a being who has the ability to dislocate his opponent’s hip with a single touch be unable to overpower the opponent? There has to be some meaning in such a bizarre story, which is perhaps that the being had no need to overpower Jacob. The meaning is in the wrestling, not in who wins.

God engages Jacob—and, metaphorically, all of us—in this wrestling match not to overpower him or us, not to conquer, but because of the intimate encounter in and of itself. To be sure, he does want us to know that he is all-powerful and could defeat us, but he also wants us to know that that is not his purpose. His purpose is to enable us to struggle through our doubts and fears to reach a place beyond them. It is not a curse, but a blessing. In Jacob’s case, it resulted in a complete change from being a deceiver and a supplanter. The change was reflected in the change of name god gave him. Instead of Jacob the deceiver, he was henceforth Israel, one who (in its Hebrew connotation) struggles intimately with god and the ideas that god wants us to understand.

This kind of conflict with god about what is happening to one serves firstly to allay one’s fears and secondly to confirm that god is answering—even though he refuses to answer direct questions—with his blessing, with his removal of one’s fear, and with his willingness to wrestle with us for as long as we are willing to wrestle with him.

What is the opposite of faith? Jacob’s faith in a god who would overlook or even condone and support his deceitfulness changed when he was renamed as Israel. It became instead faith in a god with whom one must struggle. In this story and in Mark 4, where Jesus has to calm the waters to calm the fears of the disciples in the boat, faith is put in juxtaposition to fear. In verse 40, Jesus asks them: “Why are you afraid? Why have you no faith?”

So perhaps it is not doubt that is the opposite of faith, but fear. Some have said that certainty is the opposite of faith; even assumed certainty. Unbelief is another candidate. But fear is perhaps the strongest contender for the title of The Opposite of Faith.

It seems to me that doubt is a matter of the mind, the brain, the intellect; whereas fear of things spiritual is a matter of the heart. Are our thoughts and feelings about god—is our approach to god, is our relationship with god—more thought, or more feeling? Are they more a matter of the brain, or more a matter of the heart?

Robin: Does “heart” stand for emotion, and “brain” for logic?

David: There is scientific theory that says fear is a basic, instinctual, innate, survival trait pre-wired into our “reptilian” brain—the original brain upon which our present brains are built. But such concepts as philosophical or spiritual doubt, it would seem to me, are intellectual constructs of the neocortex, the most evolved part of our brain.

A couple of meetings ago, Pastor Ariel stresses that we need to understand what it is that we doubt, and why. Jesus’s “Oh god, why have you forsaken me?” outburst was not doubting the existence of god. It was doubting god’s presence. If one is wrestling with an entity, one must acknowledge the existence and the presence of that entity, or there would be nothing with which to wrestle. So the doubts expressed during the wrestling match can only be about god’s power, his intentions, his nature, and so on—not about his existence or his presence.

If faith and doubt are each other’s obverse, then one must ask in what does one have faith? Is it faith in god’s existence, period; or is it faith in his existence AND his ability to answer prayers, perform miracles, and so on?

Chris: I think of doubt as triggering a flight or fight response. Jacob instinctively chose to fight. Jesus too instinctively chose to fight (against god’s plan for him) in the Garden of Gethsemane. But after such fights, there is resolution. I meet people who question what god is about yet end up serene and untroubled. So to me, the outcome of doubt is more important than its cause.

Robin: Is faith then an emotional state that the brain tries to overcome with logic? And vice versa?

Jay: I am not sure doubt is instinctual, but fear is. Scripture seems to me to urge us not to doubt more than it urges us not to fear. Doubt is more within our capacity to control than fear is. It is more cerebral than instinctive. It is a kind of cognitive dissonance. We can wrestle with doubt, but not so easily with fear. Doubt is what we wrestle with in transitioning through the stages of faith. What we do after wrestling with doubt is key.

Kiran: I think one can wrestle with fear if one acknowledges and trusts god’s love and his willingness and ability to help. It puts one inside the “safety zone” M. Scott Peck wrote about in The Different Drum.

Jay: Many people have faith such as this, and it is a fine faith as long as one does not turn it from “Thy will be done”—which is what Kiran is describing—to “My will be done.” Unfortunately, many do just that: They say “Since you love me, I am sure you will do x for me,” where x is the thing they want. Faith based on that misconception often leads to great tribulation and doubt. The fact is that bad things do happen to good people.

Kiran: I agree. The key is to accept that whatever happens to one, whether good or bad from one’s own perspective, is god’s will.

Alice: Does sin affect our fears and our doubts? Jacob knew he had sinned against Esau and feared retribution, and knowing that made him doubt that god would help him. But it takes time before a struggle with doubt even begins. In the early stages of faith, perhaps one does not reach that level, because one has not reached that level of intimacy with god. The resolution of the struggle—the outcome of the wrestling match—is wonderful, but the struggle itself can be very long, hard, and exhausting.

Don: It was a long, dark night for Jacob, and the blessing did not come until dawn broke. The struggle takes place in darkness, so one cannot anticipate that dawn will even arrive. But it does, and with it comes the blessing. These encounters are not brief. They are indeed long and difficult, and may feel overwhelming. But the message, the good news, is that dawn will break, the struggle will end, and blessing will follow.

Michael: I have struggled with doubt about the existence of god. It seems paradoxical, but it is only possible to wrestle with a god whose existence one denies if god is an inseparable part of oneself. The struggle of necessity requires his existence, so the struggle is really not about his existence but about his character. This seemed to be the nature of Jacob’s struggle.

Chris: Jacob did not at first know who or what he was wrestling with. Perhaps this created fear—of the unknown, of a shadowy assailant. The fear fostered doubt, and the process, the struggle, began. When it finally and literally dawned on him who his opponent was, the struggle ended and Jacob found blessing, peace, and a stronger, higher level of faith.

David: Perhaps we fear the Unknown less than we fear having what we thought we knew turn into the Unknown. We are born not knowing anything in an intellectual sense. Faith misperceived as a belief that god will exercise his power to do our will seems to me to be an adult, intellectual knowledge construct influenced by social, environmental and other factors that wire our neocortex as we go through life. The relatively unwired neocortex of a child is a blank slate upon which these influences have not had time to work. Blessed are the children for their lack of intellect-based faith! Theirs is a fundamental, hard wired, instinctual faith which needs no, indeed can have no, intellectual struggle. As we lose this primal knowledge through the influences I mentioned, we acquire intellect and with it the kind of knowledge that is the root of all evil. We fear losing this intellectual faith construct, not realizing that getting rid of it is exactly what is necessary to remove our fear!

Jay: Jacob’s story has many layers. When it starts, one might characterize him as a man of no faith, as a faith stage 1 man willing to put his own safety before that of his wife and children. But how can a man wrestle with a faith he does not have? Jacob seems to transition all the way through stages 2, 3, and 4. Maybe he had the instinctual faith that god exists.

Kiran: Jacob would have assumed god to be a just god who would punish him for his sins. But Jacob would have wanted god’s mercy and forgiveness, and perhaps struggled with the dissonance between a god of justice and a god of mercy.

Alice: It is as if the angel fighting with Jacob’s faith represented a just god and wanted to convince Jacob that he was a sinner who deserved judgment. But Jacob persisted in seeking god’s mercy until the angel relented at daybreak. Maybe?…

Don: The struggle is important. Were it not, Jacob would have been defeated in an instant given an opponent who could disable him with the touch of a finger. But the angel—god—exhibits enough resistance to enable the struggle to continue and build towards an outcome. So the struggle seems critical to the outcome.

David: Perhaps the story is telling us that god in fact cannot prevail against us. We’ve got free will. While god might crush us physically with a finger, he cannot force us to give up our free will of our own free will. Giving it up under duress would not count. It is we who must take god on, call him out, throw down the gauntlet; and in so doing we logically accept him. The importance of the struggle is its intimacy. The more one wrestles with god, the more intimate the relationship grows until it leads to an outcome: Understanding, enlightenment, etc. But it is up to us to throw down the gauntlet, to engage god in the struggle, and to persist in it until we feel enlightened, one way or the other.

Kiran: Michael shared with me a prayer written by Paulo Coelho which begins as follows:

Lord, protect our doubts, because Doubt is a way of praying.
It is Doubt that makes us grow because it forces us to look fearlessly at the many answers that exist to one question….

Michael: It seems to me that angel could not defeat Jacob because Jacob would not give up struggling. The outcome was both a disabling and a blessing.

Robin: Perhaps it is meant to show us that god would rather be merciful than just. The touch on the thigh was meant to show Jacob that god had the power to punish him, but Jacob’s refusal to submit even in the face of such a threat and to persist in seeking mercy was what got him the name change and the blessing.

Jay: Paul too came away from his encounter with god enlightened but also somewhat disabled (by the thorn in his flesh.) This is the right kind of selfless faith, one that does not expect god to return our faith in him with favors. On the contrary! It is more likely to leave us disabled in some way. That in itself changes us. We walk away from such an encounter different from when we entered it.

David: It is intensely interesting to consider in what ways we are disabled by god’s touch. The touch of the thigh and the thorn in the flesh are perhaps metaphors for the disabling of our will and the enabling of god’s will.

Jay: Jacob was going into what he thought was battle, yet he submitted to being disabled on the very eve of that potential battle. He accepted that the situation was out of his hands—beyond the power of his own will to control or influence—and left the situation in god’s hands and will. He was more reliant on god, and it is perhaps easier to rely on god when one is disabled. Walking away from an encounter with god disabled is then a blessing, not a curse.

Alice: Perfect love casts away all fear. Only god’s love is perfect. If we do not doubt that, we can more easily overcome our fears. But where can I get such confidence, that god will be good and merciful to me? It does not make much sense when one looks at it from the perspective of the law, which demands judgment and justice for our sins.

Don: Stage 2 faith is like a contract. In return for this and that, you agree to do things for me and I agree to worship, etc., you. If either side reneges on a clause in the contract, the deal is off. A contract is written precisely because two sides distrust each other.  A covenant, on the other hand, is a relationship of trust. Both parties agree to trust one another but allow for things to go wrong sometimes without destroying the covenant as a whole.

Alice: We are inherently untrustworthy and likely to betray god’s trust. Is god’s response mercy, or justice?

Kiran: He responds with mercy, because of his perfect love.

Alice: That is the crucial thing to hold on to.

Don: This is just what Jacob did. He hung on through the long night to this very notion.

Robin: Did Jacob want forgiveness? He did not seem to want to defeat the angel and thereby show that he was the more powerful wrestler. He held on for the blessing, which  I think meant forgiveness, mercy.

Alice: To me, the blessing is to know that god is pleased with one and not angry with one.

Michael: Jacob’s struggle seems to strike a personal chord in all of us.

 

* * *