From: REXLEX@fnalf.fnal.gov
Newsgroups: soc.religion.christian
Subject: Belief in Doubt
Date: 22 Jul 92 06:23:55 GMT
Organization: Fermilab


     Though the "Doubting Thomas" series of posts have been terminated, their
questions, and questions in other postings about faith, homosexuality, postXian
Era and others are somehow tied in with this idea of doubt.  What do most
people do when they begin to doubt?  Do they bring their doubt out into the
open to examine it or silence it and pretend it never happened?  Or do nothing,
hoping the problem will go away?  Or attack that which causes the doubt in the
1st place?  The way people react to their doubts is an excellent indication of
their attitude to doubt itself and their level of spiritual maturity.
     Xians today are not normally known for their candor about doubt or for
their confident ability to resolve it.  Why is this?  If doubt is human and
universal, why do so many Xians treat it as hard and unmentionalbe, a problem
that gnaws at the mind like the suspicion of cancer or troubles the concience
like a guilty thought?  To some it is even the ultimate treason against faith,
the unpardonable sin.  They are so scared of it you can rarely get them to
discuss openly anything about *their* belief system.
    Sometimes I almost feel on fire with the immensity of this: Each of us is a
person, alive, growing and relating. From the moment we wake to the moment we
fall asleep, we think, we feel, we choose, we speak, we act, not as isolated
individuals but as persons among people.
     And underneath everything lies trust. From friendships of children to
agreements among nations life depends on trust. Counting on people is trust.
Enjoying people is trust. Trust is the shared silence, the exchanged look, the
expressive touch. Crying for help is trust, shaking hands is trust, a kiss is
trust. The highest reaches of love and life depend on trust. Are there any
questions more important to each of us than, Whom can I trust? How can I be
sure?
     This is why when trust goes and doubt comes in such a shadow is cast, such
a wound is opened, such a hole is left.  God is a person too, and what is more,
the person on whom personhood itself depends. That is why to know him is to
trust him, and to trust him is to begin to know ourselves. That is why the
chief end of man is to glorify God and enjoy him for ever. It is also why
doubting God is so devastating.
     Some people who are approaching faith in God doubt God because they want
to believe but dare not. How would you feel if someone flew more than halfway
around the world to say to you, "I am at a loss. Life has no meaning unless God
is there. There is hardly anyone left whom I can trust. Will you help me in my
search?" Just recently I was talking to a man who had crossed the world to see
someone for this very reason. How would you respond if you knew that after his
previous failures to find answers he had cried out louder and more often, and
that the scars of the razor blades were still on his wrists to show it? What
would you say? How would you help him? How would you introduce him to God who
would never let him down, especially since God is less certain to him than
human beings who have let him down?
      Other people who are backing away from faith in God doubt God because
they do not want to believe but do. I will never forget a girl who sat in the
booth accross from me at Geno's East in Chicago. She argued, she cried, she
pounded the table. Why should she trust God? He was a monster, a hard,
unyielding monarch, a Mafia boss whose power was everywhere, a merciless
creditor who demanded his pound of flesh. Hadn't she tried to obey? But the
more she saw God the more she feared, and the more she feared the more she
became angry, and the more angry she became the more she hated, and the more
she hated the more afraid of God she grew.
     She knew she was caught in a vicious trap, sliding down a slippery spiral.
She was young, she was loved, she was successful. But none of it made any
difference.  She could not trust God, and in the bitterness of doubt her spirit
was like darkness at noon.
     The doubts of these two people were entirely different, but they were both
doubting God for the same reason:  They did not know God as he really is. The
man, however, knew that he did not know, while the girl thought that she did.
Her picture of God (which came from experiences in the past) was so distorted
that without realizing it she was believing a grotesque caricature of God which
for sanity's sake she was forced at the same time to doubt.
     Fortunately, she is not in that position today. She has come to know God
as he is, she is able to trust him, and her whole life reflects the difference.
They are only two types of doubt among many others, but they introduce us
directly to the heart of our problem.
     Doubt is not primarily an abstract philosophical or theological question,
nor a state of morbid spiritual or psychological anguish. At its most basic.
doubt is a matter of truth, trust and trustworthiness. Can we trust God? Are we
sure? How can we be sure? Do we trust him enough to rely on him utterly? Are we
trusting him enough to enjoy him? Is the whole of living different for that
trust?
     Xianity places a premium on the absolute truthfulness and trustworthiness
of God, so understanding doubt is extremely important to a Xian. Of course,
faith is much more than the absence of doubt, but to understand doubt is to
have a key to a quiet heart and a quiet mind. Anyone who believes anything will
automatically know something about doubt. But the person who knows why he
believes is also in a position to discover why he doubts. The Xian should be
such a person.
     Not only does a Xian believe, he is a person who "thinks in believing and
believes in thinking," as Augustine expressed it. The world of Xian faith is
not a fairy-tale, make-believe world, question-free and problem-proof, but a
world where doubt is never far from faith's shoulder.
     Consequently, a healthy understanding of doubt should go hand in hand with
a healthy understanding of faith. We ourselves are called in question if we
have no answer to doubt. If we constantly doubt what we believe and always
believe-yet-doubt, we will be in danger of undermining our personal integrity,
if not our stability. But if ours is an examined faith, we should be unafraid
to doubt. [I have noted before, that I have doubts about the Trinitarian
concept, and my wife hates when I go through this reoccurring authentication] 
However, if doubt is eventually iustified, we were believing what clearly was
not worth believing. But if doubt is answered, our faith has grown stronger. It
comes to know God more certainly and it can enjoy God more deeply.
     Obviously then, each one of us should understand doubt for God's sake and
for ours. God is to be trusted yet people are doubting. That is justification
enough for trying to understand doubt. But an understanding of doubt will also
bring two particular benefits to the church at large.
     First, it will act as a safeguard against today's widespread and
unnecessary breakdown of faith. Xians are confronted by a situation which
militates openly against faith. The Xian foundations of Western culture have
been torn up and discarded. Our Xian past is in disrepute, and the very basis
for any faith, Xian or otherwise, is held to be discredited. Into the vacuum
has sprung a bewildering variety of alernative philosophies, facing us with a
post-Xian mosaic of confusing pluralism. Many of us are smarting emotionally
under the sting of reactions to our belief and are keenly aware of the
deficiency in our response. It is hardly surprising if at times we falter as
believers in this disbelieving age.
     This state of affairs has aggravated the already serious problem of doubt
among Xians. The loss of faith has not been stanched, and this has suggested
that the Xian faith is a fragile, vulnerable belief with little intellectual
integrity. [even on this board we attack its intellectual intergrity] This
suggestion, in its turn, lends support to the common rejection of Xianity among
thinking people. What is most damaging to Xianity is not that Xians doubt but
that there seems to be so little open discussion and understanding of doubt.
This must be changed.
     Second, an understanding of doubt helps us to prepare for the years of
testing which, I think, are to come. Faith at its truest is radical reliance on
God. It is a conviction born of understanding, grounded solidly in the truth of
who God is and what he has said and done. But what our faith "should be" may be
far removed from what our faith "is." In practice many of us have become Xians
and are continuing to believe for less than the best reasons and clearest
motives. This may have serious consequences in the critical years ahead.
     For example, one person's faith may be a genuine trust in God but also a
trust in certain Xian friends, while another person has truly committed himself
to God and also to the care of a Xian community. Or again, someone may honestly
put himself under the lordship of Christ yet at the same time adhere to a Xian
lifestyle or espouse Xian values which by temperament or nationality he would
be likely to appreciate anyway.
     In each specific case it is impossible to determine the exact line of
distinction between faith and faith plus, between our faith in God and our
faith in other men. Even where faith is weak or even wrongly based, it is not
necessarily illegitimate. (If our motives had to be completely pure, which of
us would pass the test?) But such faith is running a risk. To the degree that
other motives are also at work faith is not radical reliance on God alone.
     Seen in this light, every test which shows us what we are really relying
on can be constructive. If testing shows that our attachment to Xian friends or
to a particular lifestyle is stronger than our attachment to God himself, we
must ask whether these supports for faith are in danger of becoming
substitutes. What we need, then, is to be stopped short before the process of
substitution is complete.
     Jesus challenged the Jews of his day with a searching question: "How can
you have faith so long as you receive honour from one another, and care nothing
for the honour that comes from him who alone is God?" (Jn. 5:44). Ostensibly
their faith was solely in God, but that faith was only nominal. In reality
their faith was in each other. More precisely, their nominal faith in God was
supported and accredited by a closed system of mutual human honoring which made
the need for any honor from God superfluous.
     We should ask similar questions of ourselves, particularly those of us who
are Western Xians. What sort of faith do we have? How can we know how strong
our faith really is so long as we are comparatively untroubled in a world of
material affluence, social ease and spiritual privilege? Or to reverse it,
could it be that in the deepening turbulence of our generation God is not only
judging a culture which has abandoned him but also, as it were, shaking up the
bag and testing the foundations to see if we Xians are as ready as we think for
the critical years ahead?
     The coin has two sides. Much of the breakdown of faith we are witnessing
is a logical consequence, pure and simple, of the deep deficiency of faith
today. On the other hand, it may also be a sign of God's hidden sovereignty and
wisdom preparing us for the future.
     Long-standing supports are crumbling, and many of the accepted assumptions
of normal Western life are being shaken-such as social stability and a
reasonable prosperity. We are forced to see the true foundations of our faith
(that is, our practical rather than professed faith, our day-to-day trust, our
matter-of-fact belief, our down-to-earth reliance). Far better to be tested
today and have the chance to put right what is shown to be wrong than to be
tested tomorrow and be found wanting.
     The issues we are facing in the present crisis of faith touch on what has
been called  the Square One Principle. Life can proceed with deceptive ease on
the basis of a faith which was once vital but has become so taken for granted
that it is no longer authentic. At that stage any pressure may be such a test
for faith that the believer is faced with a choice: Give up or go back to
square one. If we give up, then we abandon faith altogether. But if we go back
to square one (and so back to our roots, back to our foundations, back to our
beginning), we will find a faith which is solid and secure. The lesson of the
Square One Principle is this: The person who has the courage to go back when
necessary is the one who goes on in the end.
     Seen this way, the collapse of Christendom is a blessing for Xianity, and
the present crisis of faith may be the best opportunity in centuries, at least
for Xians in the West. To use this opportunity fully we must stop the severe
hemorrhaging of faith among believers, we must work toward a clearly
discernible Xian mind, and we must carefully answer the questions and
objections of our contemporaries. Developing a fresh understanding of the old
problem of doubt will contribute to this.

      What is faith? [I've tried to aid in an understanding of this in other
posts] And what is the misunderstanding or mistreatment of faith which causes
doubt, and how can it be avoided? And, above all, what does it mean to let
faith be faith to such an extent that it will in turn let God be God? These are
the questions we should examine and our goal-to let God be God.
          Getting to the heart of doubt is rather like peeling a black walnut:
It's worthwhile in the end, but it entails getting through a black leathery
layer. The layers surrounding doubt are the various layers of misunderstanding
which obscure what doubt actually is. There are three basic misconceptions
which are especially common:  first, that doubt is wrong because it is the same
thing as unbelief; second, that doubt is a problem which troubles faith but not
knowledge; and third, that doubt is something to be ashamed of because it is
dishonest to believe if you have doubts.
     Then, since there is no believing without some doubting and since
believing is all the stronger for understanding and resolving doubt, we can say
as Xians that if we doubt in believing it is also true that we believe in
doubting.

For more on this, there is an excellent book by Os Guinness titled,
IN TWO MINDS: the dilemma of doubt & how to resolve it  (InterVarsity Press)

Also, C.S. Lewis' MERE CHRISTIANITY, James Thurber in I BELIEVE, Martyn
Lloyd-Jones, SPIRITUAL DEPRESSION: ITS CAUSES AND CURE, G.K. Chesterton's,
EVERLASTING MAN and of course his ORTHODOXY.

Pray for the peace of Jerusalem,
Rex