doubt and faith

I really appreciate the man who is the minister of my church. He consistently gives us things to think about; he regularly states things in a way that make me see things in a new way.

He talked about doubt today - the Scripture passage was the one with Thomas, who had to feel the risen Christ's wounds to believe. Three things that he pointed out:

1. a story about a woman who proudly told a famous minister (Moody, maybe?) that she had been saved for 25 years and had "never doubted." And the minister responded tartly, "then, madam, I doubt you have been saved for 25 years."

And I like that. I like that admission that everyone doubts at times, that it is not sinful or a mark of someone being less than a "True Christian" to question: how can this be? How does this work?

I will admit that one of my frequent doubts (or perhaps, more correctly, questions) is one I've had since I was a child: won't there come a point where the "bad stuff" people do overwhelm Christ's forgiveness? Can something like what Hitler did even be forgiven?

Also, as a scientist, I wrestle with the whole, "how could this be real?" question of things. And also: what would it be like if it happened today? Would we find some way of explaining it away?

I will say a couple of things that assuage my doubts: first, reading things in mathematics and physics that are kind of at the outer limits of our understanding. Somehow - the fact that some of the weirder theories of quantum physics seem to be borne out by experimentation make me think that, well, if the world works in ways that are so non-obvious to our eyes...then can't there be other things that seem non-obvious, or contradictory, or inexplicable?

Another thing is reading or hearing about things that seem inexplicable...like some of the miraculous healings that have taken place (and yes, I think there are some that are documentably "miraculous.") Again, that makes me think: things do not always happen in the same way. There are laws to the universe but apparently there are some "loopholes" to those laws. And it's in those "loopholes" where God is.

2. A Scots minister (George Matheson), who came to realize that he had some serious doubts about his faith, suggested that he might be better off resigning from his church. His congregants refused to release him and told them they wanted him to stay, doubts and all. Throughout the process of remaining their minister - working with them, being a part of their "family" - he found he came to grow through those doubts.

His conclusion was that during the process of working with people who had faith - and doing work that was "God's work," serving the poor and such, he came to a less doubting place - somewhere he wouldn't have gotten to, he thought, with the best teachers or preachers arguing or explaining to him. That faith is something you "do" rather than exclusively something you "think."

And I can see how that's true. Since I've been more involved in working with the church - now that I teach Sunday School a couple times a month, and am in charge of the Youth Group and do other volunteer work. It's kind of forced me to examine my own beliefs, and also become more literate about the Bible and the tenets of faith. And working with it, having those ideas in my head every day, works on ME. And also spending time with people in the church works on me.

It makes me think - all of the people who speak of having a faith but not attending services - that must be harder. I think it would be harder to keep up one's faith in the absence of similar believers (I think it would be even MORE difficult were you part of a religious community that was low-grade hostile, or cold, or that promoted certain beliefs counter to your own).

But I know for me - working at stuff, doing stuff that's part of Christian service - that helps me. It brings me to a point where I'm less in my head and more in my heart, and my heart is not as prone to question things.

3. That being "born again*" means literally that - you're like a newborn baby. It's not a blinding flash of light where you understand everything. It's starting life anew and learning a new way of being - and so it takes time and requires patience and involves steps backwards.

(* I do not like the term "born again." I just don't. Part of it is that in my past, I knew more than a few people who used it as sort of a "member of the club" test - asking people if they were "born again" or claiming loudly to be "born again." And to me - raised in a church where the concept was not emphasized to that degree - it seemed awfully exclusive. Like, "Unless you belong to MY EXACT DENOMINATION and say things with the same wording, you're not really a Christian." I also knew someone who claimed born-againness while still being a difficult and unpleasant person, and that always seemed a bit of a bad advertisement for Jesus to me...)

But anyway. I had not thought of it in that manner before. I had always related "born again" with the people who claimed to know it all, to understand it all, and who were SO MUCH BETTER Christians than you.

But this new idea makes more sense to me: you're learning a new way of being. You're kind of a child again about certain things. And from watching the Youth Group - seeing how they have insights and backslides, how they can talk with great understanding of showing respect and trying to model God's love to your neighbors during the lesson, and then insulting each other during the game time (I had to "sideline" someone the other week for calling a fellow player a f*ggot), I can see that - how we're all really like children in the faith, how sometimes we understand and are loving and kind and are as much in line with Jesus' teachings as we're ever going to be, and then the next moment we're throwing a tantrum or cussing out our neighbor for mowing the lawn too early in the morning. And how we have to keep at work at it, how we have to not be too prone to beat ourselves up or give up on ourselves when we slip.

faith is something you do, more than something you think.