The Joy of Doubts

There is an L.A. religious reporter who has written a book about how his experiences with religion have caused him to lose his faith. He now calls himself a “reluctant atheist.” There is a movie called “Doubt” about a nun who was so arrogant and sure of her own righteousness that she ruins a whole parish and school. The power of the movie is at the end she cracks into tears and acknowledges that she too has doubts. There is a scholar at UNC who is one of the foremost authorities on Biblical manuscripts and early church documents who was once an fanatical evangelical who has become a bitter revengeful scholar because he discovered that the church he was a part of lied to him about the authority of scripture. The church told him the Bible was infallible, with no errors, and in his scholarship he discovered that they could not make that claim stick.

History shows a very depressing and sad story of the destruction and death that has been caused by those who were absolutely sure they were right. The pain and suffering that has been caused by leaders and groups who claimed to have the absolute truth and refused to entertain any questions or admit any mysteries is enough to make many people reject the whole idea of faith and religion.

There is no denying that the faith groups, which make those kinds of claim, attract a lot of people. The insecurity and fears of the human soul desperately want and hunger for that kind of certainty. To trust one’s immortality to an ambiguous creed that says “perhaps” or “maybe” just is not good enough for some people.

And yet there are Biblical stories that suggest that lots of the Biblical characters had to live with uncertainty, with unanswered questions, with something less than full absolute confidence. Abraham had to live a long time on the basis of a promise that had not been fulfilled. Moses led the people of Israel out of Egypt for more than forty years and the people of Israel were never convinced completely that Moses knew what he was doing.

But in the middle of this Lenten season we are reminded that Peter and the rest of the disciples were caught in a great conflict between claiming that Jesus looked to them like the Messiah, but that Jesus talked to them about a death and a sacrifice that raised all kinds of questions for the disciples. They were not sure, and when the moment of arrest came, they fled.

But there are two moments in this Lenten journey that gives us a powerful example of the faith that is never completely, one hundred percent sure all of the time. One is in the garden where Jesus is not sure he wants to go through with this, and asks if there isn’t some other way. And the second is the cry of Jesus on the Cross, “My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?” Sounds like Jesus is not sure where God is or what God is doing. There is a moment of doubt and uncertainty in the heart and mind of Jesus.

A living and dynamic faith is living in the tension of trust and obey in the midst of wonder, doubt, mystery and hope. There is an energy and a power in a faith that is full of curiosity, asking questions to which it does not have the answers, trusting oneself to a mystery and love that one cannot prove and cannot describe. How else can one be surprised by joy if one always knows what is right?