It’s been too long since I’ve had an explicitly Christian post up.

Camassia links to and comments on an interesting trio of posts about doubt. Is doubt a virtue? Is it a sin? Is it neither virtue nor sin, but simply a universal obstacle to be overcome? All of the discussions — and let me add in that Lynn Gazis-Sax also has a fine post on the subject — take slightly different (though often complementary) stances.

When I was actively involved in parish life at All Saints Church here in Pasadena, I often joked that we Episcopalians had raised tortured ambivalence to the status of a cardinal virtue. Anglicans are famous for their great love of “on the one hand x and on the other, y” arguments, and, particularly among the more liberal factions of the communion, the denigration of too much passion and certainty as somehow vulgar. God is to be approached with a sense of awe, a sense of mystery, but also a keen sense that to claim to “know” rather than simply to “hope” for His will and His blessing is to presume too much. Camassia nails this:

Where I come from, if anything, the social pressure runs the other way: the desire for certitude is seen as a somewhat primitive emotion that needs to be overcome on the way to a more sophisticated, mature comfort with uncertainty.

It’s at this point I feel compelled to offer my Uncle Stanley’s favorite quote from Francis Bacon (the philosopher, not the artist):

If we begin with certainties, we shall end in doubts but if we begin with doubts, and we are patient in them, we shall end in certainties.

That remark, true enough as it is, does indeed suggest that a premature (or even childish) certainty, of the sort that has never known setback or despair or contrary evidence, is indeed an early developmental stage through which a believer ought to be expected to move. But it also suggests that developmentally, doubt is a middle period — a point at which previous certainties have been abandoned, while new certainties have not yet been discovered. Doubt is thus necessary, even essential; it’s like adolescence. Small children rightly revere their parents; teens rightly rebel against their parents in one form or another (not necessarily with any destructive consequence); adults come to see their parents as they really were — imperfect and yet, one hopes, loveable and worthy of gratitude if not always of emulation. In that sense, an ideal never rejected (or at least doubted) is an ideal never fully understood.

Reading through these other posts, it occurs to me that the destructiveness of doubt lies not in the lack of trust in God it reveals but rather in its capacity to paralyse us and prevent us from acting. Episcopalians joke a lot about getting stuck in “analysis paralysis”, where we endlessly debate and study the same issues, always seeing multiple possible actions as having multiple possible consequences, good and bad, and as a consequence, nothing gets done. More immediately, doubt at its worst acts as a brake on our boldest and bravest impulses, the sort which allow us to do what as Christians we are called to do, which is to follow Christ. We need impulsiveness as well as caution on the journey of faith; too much of the former and we get into heaps of trouble — too much of the latter, and nothing much gets done. In the Gospels, Peter is the most impulsive of the Apostles: think of his habit of saying whatever comes into his mind, like his refusal to let Jesus wash his feet or his cocky insistence that he will never deny Christ. Thomas is the doubter — and we know the one on which Jesus chose to build His church. (But Thomas is my confirmation name, though my ENFP Gemini personality leaves me with much more in common with Peter.) Continue reading →