And that's okay. Our doubts, like our faith, come from a variety of places. Again, I think of teenagers I've worked with, who often go for the shock value of declaring their atheism to clergy, to see how we respond. Maybe they do it to declare independence from churchgoing parents. That effort to be free, to strike out on one's own, is one root of doubt.
Doubts can come, of course, from genuine intellectual inquiry.
There are many good and hard questions to be asked, and we'll be the first to tell you we don't have all the answers. One of the great sources of energy for this parish is its hospitality to the questions. In our Life at St. Bart's course, where we are constantly asking people to ask questions. In our Center for Religious Inquiry, where we try to convey the good news that there is no bad question. I bet each of us hears that voice in some corner of our head every now and then.