On Doubt

". . . doubt is as old as faith. As Kierkegaard suggested in one of his journals, "doubt comes into the world through faith." As I've suggested elsewhere, some of our greatest saints have been our greatest doubters, too. Some of our exemplary believers have also been masters of suspicion. The new kind of doubters have nothing on the likes of Graham Greene or Mother Teresa or Bernanos' country priest or Endo's Jesuit missionaries.

But there is also an important difference between emergent skeptics and catholic doubters: The new kind of skeptics want the faith to be cut down to the size of their doubt, to conform to their suspicions. Doubt is taken to be sufficient warrant for jettisoning what occasions our disbelief and discomfort, cutting a scandalizing God down to the size of our believing. For the new doubters, if I can't believe it, it can't be true. If orthodoxy is unbelievable, then let's come up with a rendition we can believe in.

But for catholic doubters, God is not subject to my doubts. Rather, like the movements of a lament psalm, all of the scandalizing, unbelievable aspects of an inscrutable God are the target of my doubts--but the catholic doubter would never dream that this is occasion for revising the faith, cutting it down to the measure of what I can live with. It's not a matter of coming up with a Gospel I can live with; it's a matter of learning to live with all of the scandal of the Gospel--and that can take a lifetime. Graham Greene's "whiskey priest" doesn't for a moment think that the church should revise its doctrine and standards in order to make him feel comfortable about his fornication--even if he might lament what seems to be a denial of some feature of his humanness. All of his doubts and suspicion and resistance are not skeptical gambits that set him off in search of a liberal Christianity he can live with; they are, instead, features of a life of sanctification, or lack thereof. And no one is surprised by that. The prayer of the doubter is not, "Lord I believe, conform to the measure of my unbelief," but rather: "Lord I believe, help thou my unbelief."

For just this reason orthodox, catholic faith has always been able to absorb doubt as a feature of discipleship: indeed, the church is full of doubters. It is the grace of our scandalous God that welcomes them."

--James Smith via Wesley Hill's Tumblr (go figure)

I've thought a bit about why I choose to be Side B.  Honestly, a large part of it is because of what I grew up with.  I learned the read the Bible's passages on homosexuality this way, and while I've looked into alternative readings, those interpretive arguments just aren't as convincing.  Whether that is because my upbringing has lodged itself into my brain, or because I truly think the Side B arguments are much more compelling, I'm not sure.  I'd like to say it's the latter--after all I can defend Side B pretty well--but I cannot deny the influence of the former. 

In some ways, it is easier to be Side B.  I have the support of the Church and my Christian friends.  My view is the orthodox, the conservative, the historical one.

On the other hand, it is naturally a more lonely, difficult road.  But like the excerpt says, right now, I just can't seem to bring myself to cut that out and take Side A.

". . . all of the scandalizing, unbelievable aspects of an inscrutable God are the target of my doubts--but the catholic doubter would never dream that this is occasion for revising the faith, cutting it down to the measure of what I can live with. It's not a matter of coming up with a Gospel I can live with; it's a matter of learning to live with all of the scandal of the Gospel--and that can take a lifetime."

And what is that scandal?  The scandal that the one who created everything, who is so far above, so much greater and better than anything we could possibly imagine... that that one would seek to love us.  Us, in all our disgusting, nasty brokenness and ugliness.  That he would want to be with us, and he died and resurrected for that purpose.  "but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us."  Romans 5:8.  A verse that has been on my mind quite a bit these last few weeks, applicable to what we're teaching in Sunday School, and it is also one of Kevin's favorite verses.