Do not be afraid of doubt if you are a real seeker of truth.
Is there an honest person who has never questioned, or suspected, or been skeptical or doubtful? Such expressions as freethinker, open-minded, modern, scientific, liberated, intellectual . . . are often used to cover or legalize doubt. Please study the story of the skeptical father described in our Scripture reading. (The original idea for this meditation is taken from Dr. John Thompson’s sermon for college students: “The handling of our doubts”).
THE VARIOUS APPROACHES TOWARD SKEPTICISM.
We can REPRESS our doubts, stifle them, or drive them from the conscious to the subconscious. It is falsely assumed that it is wrong to doubt. Some do not dare to talk about their doubts or admit to them.
Then there are those who use doubt for easy SECURITY. Certain questions may bother or upset our accepted creed or established belief, therefore the usual proverb is applied: “Don’t rock the boat”. We are more interested in security than in God’s truth. One may say that tradition is “sacred” and cannot be changed without serious consequences. For these people, faith will not be destroyed from outside but will be starved from within.
And there are people who COURT their doubts; they think that questioning and analyzing are in vogue. They do it not only to be modern but also to underline their prejudices with doubt. Often people’s prejudice against religion is actually their insufficient knowledge about it. Superficial information is “good enough” to ridicule and criticize but profound knowledge is needed to compare and evaluate. Remember, Jesus had seriously studied when He was only a child; see Luke 2:41-52.
We will find some people who favor doubt to AVOID MORAL RESPONSIBILITIES. That is, this group finds doubt as a justifiable excuse not to take seriously the consequences of faith. Paul Tillich clearly spells out this in his Dynamics of Faith: “Where the contents of someone’s ultimate concern is Jesus as the Christ such faith is not the matter of doubtless certainty; it is a matter of daring courage with the risk to fail.”
THE CONSTRUCTIVE SKEPTICISM.
There is another way to handle our doubts other than to repress, court, or misuse our uncertainties. To understand the positive approach we need to first see the constructive role of doubt in the function of faith. To deny the reality of doubt is to deny the possibility of faith. If we cannot doubt God, neither can we know Him through faith. Doubt is what faith successfully overcomes. Real faith comes out of struggle; please see the story of the doubting Thomas, John 20:24-29. Daniel Day Williams says in The Minister and the Care of Souls: “Believing involves knowing what real doubt is. No Christian minister can interpret the meaning of faith unless he knows what faith is up against, and that means he has known what it is to doubt.”
Doubt is also a condition for growth. Only by asking questions and through criticism are reevaluation and growth possible. If we have never questioned our earlier concepts of God, we would still be holding on to our immature ideas about Him. Since our faith is never perfect, only being continuously perfected, do not our doubts have active and incentive roles to keep our faith from becoming outdated and irrelevant?
We see a wonderful example how to handle doubts in Mark 9:14-29, as a father asks Jesus to heal his son. This father faced his doubts honestly and confessed them frankly: “‘But if you (Jesus) can do anything, have pity on us and help us.'” (From the 22nd verse.) Later the same father said: “‘I believe, help my unbelief!'” (From the 24ht verse.) His son was cured.
This uncertain, yet “willing to give it a try” father teaches us also: a. with honest confession our doubts have a way of yielding to faith, (I can do anything . . .) – b. faith will overcome doubt if we act on the positive faith we already have, (I believe; help my unbelief) – c. God accepts any amount of faith we bring to Him, – d. our Lord has the power to increase our faith: “The apostles said to the Lord: ‘Increase our faith!'” Luke 17:5.