I Doubt!

Doubt has gotten a bad rap. In more than fifty years of personal Christian faith lived in community, the last fifteen of them as a Protestant minister I have witnessed doubt treated derogatorily, even with contempt, as if it were only a step removed from the Devil, temptation, and all things threatening to faith. If you had doubt you had not faith. If you had faith you had not doubt.

This I find to be at odds with my own experience, which is that I have a faith which I endeavor to reconcile with experiences which give pause, introduce questions, and leave me with doubts which often can not be entirely banished so long as I have the intellectual integrity to acknowledge the validity and persistence of the experiences and observations which contribute to doubt.

That I doubt does not mean that I do not have faith; My doubt is a part of the fabric of my faith. Looking back on my experience, doubt has often represented a leading edge for spiritual growth. It was as if doubt represented the irritant which eventually produced treasure.

Doubt can be a component which spurs the one who doubts to dig further. Some who doubt refuse to be satisfied with repeating, unconsidered, patterns which have become familiar.

This sort of doubt would seem a precious commodity in the midst of a landscape littered with churches which lack vitality-giving purpose apart from the relative spiritual poverty of taking care of their own insular community, keeping the doors open so that relationship may be initiated largely by those outside coming in. These isolated churches, and perhaps all churches to some degree, need to break free of patterns which fail to doubt the status quo.

To these communities of faith the acknowledgment of doubt may well be a gift which invites the community and it’s individuals to ask afresh how God’s purposes can be served here and now by personal participation.

We must consider with openness our listening, prayers, discernment, daily practices, our willingness to be formed and reformed. The more common tendency may be to question God, presuming our own parts to be well-executed.

Unacknowledged, doubt is denied a place in wider considerations of faith, and perhaps more tragically, some, including persons who face particularly challenging seasons in life, find far too little accommodation of their spiritual need for an accepting community which acknowledges without stigma the very real experiences of doubt such persons face.