For most people, the story of the disciple Thomas and his doubt (John
20:24ff.) brings something negative to mind. People of faith believe that they
are not supposed to doubt. Many feel a sense of guilt when they find themselves
having doubts. After all, who wants to be known as a "doubting
Thomas"?
On the other hand, since doubt is part of everyone's life, many of us find ourselves faced with a dilemma. Can doubt ever be a good thing?
I have become convinced that doubt is powerful and life changing and the best way I know to discover the real depths of faith. Real life, abundant life, is much more about doubts than about certainties. Death is certain. Taxes are certain. It's a sure thing that life is going to hurt me if I dare to live it. The ugly things are always certain.
But life is a risk. And the best things in life always come with doubt built right in. Love, relationships, hope and beauty... all of them have doubt as a built in component. And the highest joy in life is when we embrace the doubts, plunge right in and take the risk.
Beyond Inherited Faith
First, doubt can move beyond an inherited faith or a borrowed faith to build a way of believing that works for us. A few months ago, a new member of the congregation said something to me that touched me deeply. We were talking about the spiritual journey that finally brought her to church. She said that, "getting to know Jesus was like finding the great love of my life and discovering that I could not deal with his family!"
Her spiritual journey had led her a number of places. And on the way she had met with narrow-mindedness and religious bigotry and the sort of winner-take-all Christianity which says that the people who don't agree with certain dogmas and doctrines couldn't possibly be the children of God.
So much religion is about answers and blind faith. So much religion is about rules and leaving your brain at the door. So much religion is about a simpleminded bargain that goes something like this: "Keep the faith and be good, obey the rules and God will love you and life will treat you well."
But what happens when the hollow promise of that bargain is revealed for the fraud that it is? What happens when the bottom falls out of your life or you are suddenly confronted with suffering you cannot understand or tragedy that you cannot bear? Or worse, what happens when you reach a point in your life when you are overcome with the feeling that you are not quite as good as you thought you were?
Four years ago, I ended up in the middle of a divorce without a job. As my old answers stopped working, my life was recreated in a way I never imagined possible. There were nights during that period of transformation when the only thing I had to hang onto were questions of God. Like so many, doubts forced me to deepen my faith and make it my own.
I discussed the idea of the positive power of doubt with a well-known New York therapist. He began to talk about the positive power of depression and I listened with amazement as he began to speak about how depression and other symptoms of a troubled spirit are often God's way of getting our attention, inviting us to travel deeper into the soul to search for meaning and answers.
Many people talk about something called the dark night of the soul --- about a time in life when things get turned upside down and you feel completely lost and alone. As a gardener, I know that unless you plow deep and turn the soil, the seeds won't grow. Do you remember the story Jesus told about the seed falling on the rocky soil? The rocky soil is the complacency of a borrowed faith. The rocky soil is a closed mind and a settled heart. The good soil is soil churned up and turned over. And that's exactly where that doubter Thomas was the day the risen Christ came to him. Grief and pain had turned his life over and he was ready, and God came to him.
Chaos Trusted
My friend Sal was a man who wanted nothing to do with religion. He was one of those people who had been forced to go to church when he was a kid. He had been abused by a church that insisted that there was only one right way to look at the world. When he doubted, they condemned. When he struggled, they gave him canned answers. When he married, he married a Jewish woman and his whole family disowned him, because he had married outside of what they believed was the one true faith.
Early in life, Sal began to call himself an atheist. I met him through a mutual friend. We never talked about Christianity or religion, but we did talk about life and struggle and about what it means to be a human being on this life journey. After I'd known him a couple of years, he was diagnosed with terminal cancer and for the next ten months I watched as his body shriveled and his soul expanded.
Once again, we never talked about Christianity. We never talked about doctrine or the Bible or any of that, but we talked about life and pain and the meaning of the human journey and the doubts we both had about life after death.
On the night Sal died, I was there with his wife and a few other friends. We held hands and we shared. One friend of ours read a quote from the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche who some people believe was an enemy of religion and faith. Listen to the quote: "Chaos trusted, becomes a dancing star."
There we stood, facing the chaos of a friend's death, repeating words that invited us to trust the very thing that was taking our friend's life away. It was a moment close to what the disciple Thomas must have experienced the night his friend died.
After Sal slipped away, two of us walked into the parking lot of the hospital and just stood there in the darkness, grieving. For some reason, we both looked up at the very instant a large meteor blazed across the horizon. "Chaos trusted, becomes a dancing star."
Doubt is the Doorway
Let me offer you three simple ideas. First, doubt is not the enemy of faith. It is the best introduction I know. Do you remember that beautiful image of Jesus standing outside a closed door? Doubt is the power which opens that door.
Second, in this life, if you wait for a sure thing, you may get it, but you won't like what you get. Sure things are always dead-end propositions. If you want any kind of relationship with another person or with God, you have to take a risk and embrace your doubts as a gift. Just get out there and love; that's what Jesus did.
And finally, don't wait to care. Being a follower of Jesus is about loving other people even when you doubt that your loving or your caring or your time or your gift makes any difference at all. Do you remember the story of the Good Samaritan? If he had waited until he had no doubts about the situation, that man would still be in the ditch.
When Thomas doubted, Jesus came to him. The risen one appeared in the very center of his doubts --- and that is as true today as it ever was. Doubt is the doorway on the journey of faith. "Blessed are those who have not seen and yet believe." Those are words of life, they may be trusted.
Dr. Ronald Patterson is an Associate Pastor at Marble Collegiate Church in NYC. Also check out Why I Believe in Heaven, another article by Dr. Patterson.