4 DOUBT

“THE MAGNIFICENT SEVEN- DOUBT”            April 10,1994
         I John 5:1-6; John 20:19-31

Our fourth magnificent word, which is in the blessing business more then we know, which is a part of the act of believing which keeps us honest in our faith and keeps our faith, as Frederick Buechner says, “awake and moving” is doubt.

Doubt...to be skeptical or uncertain about something; dubious, suspicious, question, wonder; it can even mean a lack of conviction or certainty.  Which is why we often fail to see its role in the life of faith.  Yet it is doubt which keeps us from a blind faith which swallows anything and everything it is given and questions nothing; a faith which celebrates Easter with all its joy and shouts of Alleluia and never gets to the place of asking how can this be and what does this mean and show me some evidence that it is true.
Like Thomas does for us again today.

When I left the Seminary 35 years ago, I thought my task was to dispel all doubt and help people believe without a doubt that Jesus was the Son of God sent into our world to live and die and rise again and once people believed,  there would be no questions, no hesitation, no doubt again. And with this faith, we would overcome the world and all would be well.  How naive...and even dangerous such thinking is; for faith doesn’t work that way.

It isn’t that simple and it isn’t that clear cut.  For “Faith is the assurance of things hoped for, and the conviction of things not seen.”  (Heb.11:1); and it’s greatest cry may well be the cry of the unnamed father who said to Jesus, “Lord I believe; help mine unbelief!” (Mark 9:24)

Doubt is normal for us humans and the worst thing we can do is deny it.   To doubt is human and in fact, without doubt somehow mixed up in our believing we end up being either too naive or too cock-sure, and in either case our believing becomes either something less then a power and passion in authority among the powers and passions of our lives or a distorted and twisted power and passion in authority among the powers and passions of our lives which leads to terrible things, not good things, in the name of God.


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Have you ever noticed how those who think they are sure about everything there is to know about God and have no doubts about God’s will in their lives are often the most difficult to be around and the least sensitive to human suffering and need as well as God’s caring about the least and the lost?
Have you ever noticed that those who are sure they know what God’s Word has to say and it will always be as they know and believe it to be, and as they quote it and use it, often use God’s word to abuse people and treat them without mercy, rather then with mercy?

Without doubt, there can be no faith; for doubt is a part of faith.  Healthy wondering and uncertainty is a part of the life of faith.  For just as hate is not the opposite of love, indifference is; so doubt is not the opposite of faith, un-belief is.  And here the New RSV does a poor job of translating the words of Jesus to Thomas and uses doubt where it more clearly should be un-belief.  For that is the first meaning of the Greek - apistos - and in places where doubt is more clearly intended, the greek uses other words caring more of the note of anxious, unsettled in mind, perplexed, hesitate.  What Jesus is cautioning Thomas against and us is unbelief; not believing enough to even have any doubts, any uncertainty, any wondering.
Graham Green, a Catholic priest/author struggles with the role doubt plays in our faith in the story of an old monsignor he creates, who has been sent on a leave of absence by his Bishop, to get him out of the way for a while.  Father Quixote, a well chosen name for the monsignor, takes a friend along as his companion.  The friend is a communist, the ex-mayor of the little community where they both live.  They are fond of each other - the believer and the unbeliever.  As they set off on their journey in the priest’s old car, he muses on the fact that ‘sharing a sense of doubt can bring men together perhaps even more than sharing a faith.  The believer will fight another believer over a shade of difference; the doubter fights only with himself’.”

One day, during his siesta, Father Quixote has a dream.  It is of the crucifixion.  All the familiar figures are there-the Roman soldiers, the crowd, the Mother of Jesus.  But Jesus doesn’t die.  He appeals to a legion of angles and they save him.


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“So there was no final agony, no heavy stone which had to be rolled away...Father Quixote stood there watching on Golgotha as Christ stepped down from the cross triumphant and acclaimed.  The Roman soldiers...knelt in His honor, and the people of Jerusalem poured up the hill to worship Him.  The disciples clustered happily around.  His mother smiled through her tears of joy.  There was no ambiguity, no room for doubt and no room for faith at all...The whole would knew with certainty that Christ was the Son of God.
It was only a dream, of course it was only a dream, but nonetheless Father Quixote had felt on waking the chill of despair felt by a man who realizes that he has taken up a profession which is of use to no one, who must continue to live in a kind of Saharan desert without doubt or faith, where everyone is certain that the same belief is true.  He ...found himself whispering, ‘God save me from such a belief.’”

Commenting on this story in his book Soul Making, Alan Jones says,
“In a world where there is no room for doubt, ambiguity, or questioning, there is no room for genuine faith.”  (p.116)  Which is akin to what Fredrick Buechner says as he struggles with a publisher who somehow wants him to be more sure of himself and he comes to the conclusion that what ever a “genuine, self-authenticating religious experience would be” it could not be if there were no room for doubt, for “If there were no room for doubt, there would be no room for me.”  (Listening to Your Life, p.91)

Without doubt we cannot believe!  Without doubt we end up being too sure of ourselves and too unreal to be any earthly good and our passion becomes dangerous.  It even becomes fanatical, and as Ellie Wiesel, who lived through the fanaticism of the Holocaust born of the blind belief in the superiority of the Arian race says, “I turn away from persons who declare that they know better than anyone else the only true road to God....My experience is that the fanatic hides from true debate...He is afraid of pluralism and diversity; he abhors learning.  He knows how to speak in monologues only...The fanatic never rests and never quits; the more he conquers, the more he seeks new conquests....A fanatic has answers, not questions; certainties, not hesitations,(and ) as the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche expressed it, (it’s) ‘Madness is the result not of uncertainty but certainty’.”
                                               Parade Magazine, April 19,1992
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Doubt keeps us from going mad in our believing and becoming fanatical in our living, which is a far cry from what it is we are called to when we are called to walk as those who  believe in the Resurrection and to be about the business of loving God and obeying God’s commandments, which are not burdensome because a burden is never burdensome when it is carried in love.  Is this not the power of the theme often seen and quoted for Boy’s Town - “He ain’t heavy father; he’s my brother.”
I don’t understand the resurrection; but I do know something about love; and when the Bible tells me that God loves me, that is enough!  The rest is all gravy.  I can doubt the virgin birth; that is, wonder how could that happen?  I can doubt the resurrection; that is, wonder how can that be?  I can have more questions then answers about both and that’s okay.  All I really need to dare believe with all the power of faith within me is that God loves me and God loves all God’s children.  God will take care of the rest!

And is this not what Thomas gets in touch with when Jesus appears to him?
His words, “My Lord and My God!”  are an intimate cry of one who now knows that the love he knew has not ended; that this Jesus who died is somehow alive again and that means that love has triumphant over hate, light over darkness, and life over death.  And that means that doubt can give way to believing and make way for that which is beyond our imagining or comprehending to be a part of our living.  

I would guess Thomas came out from that room shaking his head and saying over and over and over again, “I can’t believe I saw the whole thing?”  I can’t believe it is true, but I do!  And I’ll never figure it out, but I will cling to it with all the passion I have, for someone I love and whom I know loves me has told me it is true.  And that is enough!”


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Doubt is a part of faith; a very important part which serves to keep us alive and awake in our believing, again as Frederick Buechner says:

  “Whether your faith is that there is a God, or that there is not a God,
if you don’t have any doubts you are either kidding yourself or asleep.
Doubts are the ants in the pants of faith.  They keep it awake and moving.”

Perhaps this is why doubting Thomas is always our companion on the Sunday following Easter.  We need a good dose of skepticism lest our exuberance last Sunday carry us off into unreal places and cause us to be unreal about our believing and causes us to be so sure of ourselves that we overstep our bounds and play god with the lives of people rather then live as those who have a hope in our hearts, and love on our minds, in spite of all things to the contrary.  And that hope is that life is eternal just as God is eternal, just as love is eternal and no matter what we are able to understand about it, it is God’s good pleasure to give us the gift of life both now and eternally.  And that love is the courage to act with forgiveness and grace, over and over and over again, even when it doesn’t seem to do any good,  even when it seems to be weak and ineffective, even when it seems to be taken advantage of, even when we wonder and doubt its effectiveness; for this is “life in his name”,  loving as we have been loved, and risking that this love can make the difference and even make all things new.

It is God’s command that we live in love even as we have been loved and let the rest fall where it may.

We are not to be so sure of ourselves we are no longer able to forgive  We are not to be so doubtless that we never hesitate to say we know God’s will and are ready to lay it on any and all who come our way.  We are not to be so believing that we never “wonder as we wander out under the stars how Jesus our Savior didst come forth to die for poor ornery sinners like you and like I”, and we are never to be so sure of ourselves we become blinded by our believing and our believing becomes a curse, not a blessing.


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 For the terrible truth we are saved from by doubt is, as Alan Jones says,  “the persecuting personality (which) is marked by clarity and precision.  (In which) there is no room for indecision... no room for guilt... no room for doubt.  Such are the marks of a totalitarian state or totalitarian church.  (It is ) the divided mind, the uneasy conscience, and the sense of personal failure (that is, our own uneasiness and doubt) which brings us... to the place of faith” where we become not blind believers but “one of God’s spies trying to make room for hope” and love in a world of hopelessness and despair.  (Soulmaking,pp.117,119)
“One of God’s spies trying to make room for hope”...this is what the life of faith is all about, individually and together.  For we all doubt and we all need the faith and hope of others to carry us through our doubts even as we carry others through their doubts.  This is a place where sinners come to be forgiven and doubters come to make room for faith and hope and love,  and together we come to keep on confessing that Jesus is our Lord and our God!; even though we can never say it without also wondering about it, and sometimes even doubting it.

Following the death of his wife,  Dr. Smitts, Professor at Luther Seminary came to the President in deep grief and disillusionment and said, “I cannot teach anymore; I don’t believe anymore.”  To which the President wisely replied, “Dr. Smitts, you keep on teaching; we’ll believe for you!” And they did.  And he did!  And faith returned to carry him to his final peace.

I’m glad Thomas was one of the 12.  Without him we probably would not have permission to doubt, and in so doing, not have permission to be human.  for to doubt is human.  And as Martin Luther has said, “There is more honest faith in doubt than in all the creeds of Christendom.”

Faith that is which dares to believe that there is more to God then meets the eye...then can be understood by the mind...then can be captured by reason.  This faith which is not our doing but is the stirring of God’s love within which causes us to stick our necks out and say “My Lord and My God”, and then spend the rest of our lives trying to figure out what it is we have said and who it is we are following.  This faith which is a risk and a power and passion in authority among the powers and passions of our lives not because we understand it fully but because it grips us and will not let us go, and will not let us down, and will not let us off, ever.