Today's students of life want answers. We want something real. We are cynical, jaded, and ready to transcend the touchy-feely nonsense of supposed western “faith” that tells us to be good, upstanding citizens that sit quietly in our pews on Sunday behind our smiling masks and neatly ironed church clothes, ask no questions and drop our nickels on the plate as it passes.
With this distaste of the conventional comes a drawing toward dissonance. We stir up discontentment in hopes of inciting change and getting more than just a shrug of the shoulders and a pat on the head. This search for truth is, by design, a rocky and formidable path, marked not by clear and obvious road signs but by subtle hints in the least likely places. It is for this reason that doubt is an integral part of true understanding. Because if there is no mystery to the direction of the pursuit, then what is the purpose of faith? In fact, faith without a shadow of a doubt is not faith at all. Doubt is the very foundation of faith.
However this is not what the church teaches. Or at least not the attitude it conveys. We are convinced that if we are not certain of God and his purpose in our life that there is something wrong with us, that we are not faithful. That if we do not feel God moving, there must be something amiss. Take, for example, the uproar that ensued with the revealing of Mother Teresa's struggle with feeling God's presence. "[But] as for me,” she wrote to her confidant three months prior to accepting the Nobel Peace Prize, “the silence and the emptiness is so great, that I look and do not see, - Listen and do not hear.” The news media and world at large questioned her sainthood. If she was having doubts about God despite her seeming closeness to him in the public eye, how could she possibly be truly serving him?
But the opposite is true. It is when we are least sure of our direction and yet continue to follow the way of righteousness that we are most faithful. It is when we do not see God that he shows himself to us. For how can something which is apparent be uncovered? How can something which is unhidden be revealed? Such plain things are taken for granted. Not so with God. Our uncertainty of him is the very thing which makes his glory so awesome in our humble understanding of him.
And even when he persists in choosing to not reveal himself, should we refuse to serve him, as if we deserve validation for our service? Of course not. We should worship God for who he is, because he is worthy regardless of human emotional experience. Mother Teresa doubted God's presence in her life until her dying day, yet continued in the service to which he had called her. This is the demonstration of a great faith, not a lack thereof.
The disciple Thomas is famous for his doubt of the resurrection. In John chapter 20, he refuses to believe that Jesus was raised unless he sees him in person. And just as promised in Matthew 7:7 (“Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find”), Jesus appears to Thomas, and the doubter is the first and only of the disciples in the Gospels to declare the divinity of Christ. That is, the one who was most uncertain became the one with the greatest conviction. This clearly shows that questioning is not a taboo to be shunned, but rather a beneficial growth experience that should be encouraged. For it is only through the active pursuit of truth that we will find it, not by the passive, complacent spoon-feeding of dogma.
