Doubt: learning to embrace the complexities of genuine faith
Travis Weber & Nathanael Breeden
Staff Writers
As cynical college students, we make the perfect skeptics. Someone might say the sky is blue, but that’s because their sheltered viewpoint tells them so. We, however, see that the sky is gray.
Trained to ask questions, we question everything. We want to know the how and why behind truth. We want proof, hard evidence, before we’ll agree to accept anything.
Is that wrong? Of course not. Quite simply, if something doesn’t provoke questions or the possibility of doubt, then it is probably not worth our time.
And so we come to the issue of faith. In many ways, it would seem that faith is the opposite of doubt, that faith and doubt are mutually exclusive. By that reasoning, it makes perfect sense why faithful Christians walk around so contently, without any care or worry – they have no doubts.
But we are Christians. And we doubt.
We doubt God cares about who we are, what we do, and what we think. We doubt that God could possibly love us. We doubt that God is active in our lives. We doubt that God is even there.
Our hearts tell us these statements are true, but the heart is masked with feelings and emotions. How can our intellectual minds trust something as fickle as emotion? And so we doubt.
Does this mean we have no faith, or that our faith is too weak? Perhaps, perhaps not. But again, if something does not provoke questions and doubt, is it even worth talking about?
At the risk of getting bogged down in complex definitions, we nevertheless run into a larger question – what is faith? In one sense, faith is the common denominator for humanity. We all have faith in something, whether that is God, ourselves, or even the belief that there is no God. All require faith.
And for us skeptics, the necessity of faith is the most frustrating realization. In many ways, faith is the antagonist to our methodology, our proof-burdened means of finding truth.
Yet, if we assume for a moment that an alternative to faith is possible, we will discover that it is no more certain than faith itself. Faith or no faith, complicated questions still give us doubts.
Clearly, faith and doubt are not opposites. The one does not replace the other; instead, the two quite often co-exist. Being the rational thinkers that we are, it seems natural then to question their functions.
Why do we doubt when we already have faith? What is the purpose of doubt? Indeed, what is faith?
The answers elude us. We have taken the time to ask these questions, to weigh the possibilities and examine what little evidence we have. This process has lent us no tangible results. Was it all a waste of time?
Not if we consider the process itself. As we ask the questions, we find great worth and value to that which brings genuine pause and hesitation.
Perhaps, doubt without faith is cynicism. Perhaps, faith without doubt is counterfeit.
Indeed, it most often takes a great deal of faith to ask the big questions, to doubt.
09-23-2004
