In what amounted almost to an aside, a few days ago I described how I found a book on the history of doubt shelved in the atheism section of a major bookstore in New Haven, Connecticut (here). Not long after, I came across a posting entitled, "How abandoning belief rocked my world," by John Ptacek, which is about the value of doubt for discovering the limits of belief. He begins the posting by writing,What I believe isn’t important. The fact that I can put order to my thoughts, sort them into opinions and fan them into beliefs is hardly impressive. In fact, such thinking is unavoidable. It’s what our highly evolved human brains do. They compare and contrast and judge in an endless attempt to make sense of the world around us. Believing is as automatic as walking or talking or sneezing, and about as noteworthy.Pracek goes on to describe how he attempted to use a variety of beliefs to rise above his "animal nature," and claims that the rest of humanity is engaged in the same desperate attempt to save themselves with beliefs. Eventually, he realized that clinging to his belief systems actually kept him from asking truly difficult questions such as, "If a clash of beliefs can be found at the root of all the violence in the world, then shouldn’t we question their validity – not the validity of any particular belief, but belief itself?" Having then discarded all of his beliefs, he felt a sense of liberation, and he concludes,
However sacred or profound, a belief is nothing more than a thought, and thought is never the thing it describes. It can only hint at the wonders it attempts to touch. Sermons about love garble love’s ineffable beauty. Speeches about unity clank after the first syllable. Courting belief is a prescription for a virtual, not a virtuous life.Ptacek, working from another angle, is getting at something similar to what I was working on in my recent posting, "When Faith Becomes Ideology." Beliefs are something we must always keep an eye on because we have a nasty inclination to transform them into idols, that is human-made "things" that we give our reverence to in place of God. Buddhist thinkers, such as Thich Nhat Han, regularly warn about the dangers of beliefs. They insist that Buddhism is not a way of believing but a way of practicing that leads to liberation from suffering and self. Beliefs are a hinderance to that practice. The Judeo-Christian tradition is also painfully aware of the dangers of ideological idolatry. As best we can, we subordinate our beliefs to our faith, putting our trust in God in Christ rather than trusting what we believe about God in Christ. It's an admittedly difficult distinction but one we must wrestle with continually, and doubt plays an important role in helping us find a balance between what we believe and who we trust.
Those well-meaning preachers and churches that condemn doubt do our faith a disservice. Doubt is important and when exercised reasonably is an important aid to faith. Amen.
