St. Margaret's Sermon Archive
Easter II - Robert W. Carlson 04/23/06
DOUBT AND FAITH
Our Gospel for today includes the story of St. Thomas, of how he doubted the Lord's Resurrection until he saw him with his own eyes. St, Thomas does not come off well in the story, but remember that Thomas had missed Jesus' first appearance to the disciples, and that they hadn't believed the witness of the women at the tomb until they themselves saw Jesus. Despite Thomas' doubts there has never been any doubt about his being a saint. He is "put down" in this story primarily as a way of "putting up" those who have not seen or touched the risen Lord, but still believe. Doubting may be a source of pain to the doubter, but it does not exclude the doubter from the Church, or even from saintliness! I had an interesting experience in which I played the "doubter." I was stopped in my car by a traffic light and a young man approached me. He seemed respectable enough, so I rolled down my window and he handed me a tract with the title, "How Jesus Can Break the Power of Satan Over Your Life Once and For All." He asked me if I wouldn't like to give something to help in Christian work among young people. It turned out that he belonged to a group about which I had heard, a "sect." I believe in being honest with people and so I answered, "No, I don't agree with their approach. I prefer to support my own church's work." He looked a little confused, as if he had not been coached to answer that response, so he waved and said "God bless you," as if he really would have preferred to wish me something else. I was slightly embarrassed too, so I responded stupidly, "We each have to do our own thing." He answered, "No, I have to do Jesus' thing!" A great put down!
The light changed and I didn't have a chance to carry the discussion any further. I ended up as the doubter, the one who did not believe the claims put before me ‑ that this group was doing great things for young people, and that God "saves" people this way. Of course it was not the first time this happened, to me nor the only time that I showed up as a skeptic. Whether my reaction to the young man’s request for funds resulted from doubt or skepticism I'm not sure. I wondered about skepticism, since it comes off as a bad thing in most of our minds. I looked it up in the dictionary and was pleased to find that it comes from a Greek work meaning "thoughtful" or "reflective." Next time you are accused of being a skeptic remember that. The word skepticism, in English, though, has come to be a "bad" word, a word meaning not inclined to believe anything, always putting down the inclination to believe or to have faith. As such, I agree that skepticism is not a very happy or hopeful approach to life.
I may sometimes tend to be skeptical, but I prefer to consider my attitude as "doubt," the attitude illustrated by Thomas' desire to see and feel and touch before he could wholly believe. Whenever Christians talk about Thomas and his doubt I have the feeling that we divide ourselves up into two groups, the believers and the doubters, the believers saying, "Why couldn't Thomas be like the other disciples?" and the doubters saying, "Yes, Thomas is just like me!" But I do not feel that the distinctions are along fixed lines. Any Sunday morning they could change, with those who were doubters last week being believers this week and vice versa. All of us, though, have been trained to doubt by our education. We have been t rained to question, to not accept any claim someone makes about truth. In that way, Thomas is a 20th century saint, way ahead of his time! He had learned the "test of experience." He had learned not to jump at the first claim to truth that comes along. He had learned to test it out, to trust his senses, his touch and sight, before he would believe. Sometimes we, like Thomas, go at life very tentatively, doubting, while other times we can accept things almost too easily, gullibly. There are moments for each of us when it is easy to believe, and moments when it is hard to believe. A good deal of the time we find ourselves in the tension between doubt, on the one side, and belief or faith on the other.
It is this tension between doubt and faith which I see as the very essence of the Christian life. I do not believe it is possible to have perfect faith, or perfect belief, at least not in this life. But I see two sets of tensions in which doubt plays a part. The first is the thinking area of life where the tension is between believing and not believing that something is true. My fundamentalist friends catch me up by asking if I believe that the Bible is true or infallible, and I have to answer in a way which is unsatisfactory to both of us, "Yes and no." Belief is always in tension with doubt. People who do not accept this, who are always certain they are right, are causing terrible grief in our world, beginning with the Nazis who believed they had the right to kill all Jews, and including in the 1990s, Christians in Ireland who felt that they had a right to kill other Christians because they were Protestants or Catholics, militant Moslems who feel they have a right to blow up innocent people because they don’t believe as they do, and many others who have no place for doubt. St. Paul put it well when he wrote, "Our knowledge is in part." Of course as a Christian I live informed by the truth of the Bible and the history of Christian experience, but it does not give me infallible truth, but only truth in tension with doubt.
The second set of tensions in which doubt plays a part is even more important for me. It is the tension between doubt and faith or trust. This is the area of relationship with others. The question here is not whether or not God exists or where he exists, but whether or not I can trust him with my life. It is like our relationship with one another. When I say that I trust you, I do not mean that I believe you exist as your identification card or your resume describes you. When I say I trust you it means that I would put some part of my life or belongings in your hands and expect that you would be worthy of that trust. I might ride in your car or eat your cooking, but I might not! No one has "perfect" trust in another person. There is always some tension between faith and doubt. Indeed, I do not believe that we were meant to have such absolute faith in other human beings. People fail. People die. It is idolatry to act as if they did not. The faith that we learn to have in others, though, points us to the one in whom we are meant to have perfect faith. But even here, the claim to perfect faith is almost never possible. My faith in God is always in tension with doubt. One man, reflecting on Dachau and Buchenwald and 9/11, and on natural disasters in Africa and other places in the world, said, "I have to doubt either that God is all powerful or that he is all good!" And who can deny the basis of his doubt? It is distressing for me to hear people make great claims to faith in God and then be re ready to toss him over at the merest hint of personal discomfort. ("How could God let me have an accident or be sick?") Our faith is always in tension with doubt, and in fact a deeper understanding of faith for me is that faith is the capacity to live within the tension without throwing in the sponge, without yielding to cynicism on the one hand or to childish faith on the other.
St. Thomas is not in danger of being removed from our list of saints. Doubt is not inconsistent with faith. We can not believe everything, nor should we. We live as the "company of all faithful people," but that faithfulness is a strange tension between doubt and belief, between doubt and trust. It is only in living in that tension that we may hope one day to come to belief and trust that are not conditioned by unbelief and mistrust, but which are caught up and transformed in the fullness of God's loving presence, where we may indeed "be still and know that I am God."
Our Gospel for today includes the story of St. Thomas, of how he doubted the Lord's Resurrection until he saw him with his own eyes. St, Thomas does not come off well in the story, but remember that Thomas had missed Jesus' first appearance to the disciples, and that they hadn't believed the witness of the women at the tomb until they themselves saw Jesus. Despite Thomas' doubts there has never been any doubt about his being a saint. He is "put down" in this story primarily as a way of "putting up" those who have not seen or touched the risen Lord, but still believe. Doubting may be a source of pain to the doubter, but it does not exclude the doubter from the Church, or even from saintliness! I had an interesting experience in which I played the "doubter." I was stopped in my car by a traffic light and a young man approached me. He seemed respectable enough, so I rolled down my window and he handed me a tract with the title, "How Jesus Can Break the Power of Satan Over Your Life Once and For All." He asked me if I wouldn't like to give something to help in Christian work among young people. It turned out that he belonged to a group about which I had heard, a "sect." I believe in being honest with people and so I answered, "No, I don't agree with their approach. I prefer to support my own church's work." He looked a little confused, as if he had not been coached to answer that response, so he waved and said "God bless you," as if he really would have preferred to wish me something else. I was slightly embarrassed too, so I responded stupidly, "We each have to do our own thing." He answered, "No, I have to do Jesus' thing!" A great put down!
The light changed and I didn't have a chance to carry the discussion any further. I ended up as the doubter, the one who did not believe the claims put before me ‑ that this group was doing great things for young people, and that God "saves" people this way. Of course it was not the first time this happened, to me nor the only time that I showed up as a skeptic. Whether my reaction to the young man’s request for funds resulted from doubt or skepticism I'm not sure. I wondered about skepticism, since it comes off as a bad thing in most of our minds. I looked it up in the dictionary and was pleased to find that it comes from a Greek work meaning "thoughtful" or "reflective." Next time you are accused of being a skeptic remember that. The word skepticism, in English, though, has come to be a "bad" word, a word meaning not inclined to believe anything, always putting down the inclination to believe or to have faith. As such, I agree that skepticism is not a very happy or hopeful approach to life.
I may sometimes tend to be skeptical, but I prefer to consider my attitude as "doubt," the attitude illustrated by Thomas' desire to see and feel and touch before he could wholly believe. Whenever Christians talk about Thomas and his doubt I have the feeling that we divide ourselves up into two groups, the believers and the doubters, the believers saying, "Why couldn't Thomas be like the other disciples?" and the doubters saying, "Yes, Thomas is just like me!" But I do not feel that the distinctions are along fixed lines. Any Sunday morning they could change, with those who were doubters last week being believers this week and vice versa. All of us, though, have been trained to doubt by our education. We have been t rained to question, to not accept any claim someone makes about truth. In that way, Thomas is a 20th century saint, way ahead of his time! He had learned the "test of experience." He had learned not to jump at the first claim to truth that comes along. He had learned to test it out, to trust his senses, his touch and sight, before he would believe. Sometimes we, like Thomas, go at life very tentatively, doubting, while other times we can accept things almost too easily, gullibly. There are moments for each of us when it is easy to believe, and moments when it is hard to believe. A good deal of the time we find ourselves in the tension between doubt, on the one side, and belief or faith on the other.
It is this tension between doubt and faith which I see as the very essence of the Christian life. I do not believe it is possible to have perfect faith, or perfect belief, at least not in this life. But I see two sets of tensions in which doubt plays a part. The first is the thinking area of life where the tension is between believing and not believing that something is true. My fundamentalist friends catch me up by asking if I believe that the Bible is true or infallible, and I have to answer in a way which is unsatisfactory to both of us, "Yes and no." Belief is always in tension with doubt. People who do not accept this, who are always certain they are right, are causing terrible grief in our world, beginning with the Nazis who believed they had the right to kill all Jews, and including in the 1990s, Christians in Ireland who felt that they had a right to kill other Christians because they were Protestants or Catholics, militant Moslems who feel they have a right to blow up innocent people because they don’t believe as they do, and many others who have no place for doubt. St. Paul put it well when he wrote, "Our knowledge is in part." Of course as a Christian I live informed by the truth of the Bible and the history of Christian experience, but it does not give me infallible truth, but only truth in tension with doubt.
The second set of tensions in which doubt plays a part is even more important for me. It is the tension between doubt and faith or trust. This is the area of relationship with others. The question here is not whether or not God exists or where he exists, but whether or not I can trust him with my life. It is like our relationship with one another. When I say that I trust you, I do not mean that I believe you exist as your identification card or your resume describes you. When I say I trust you it means that I would put some part of my life or belongings in your hands and expect that you would be worthy of that trust. I might ride in your car or eat your cooking, but I might not! No one has "perfect" trust in another person. There is always some tension between faith and doubt. Indeed, I do not believe that we were meant to have such absolute faith in other human beings. People fail. People die. It is idolatry to act as if they did not. The faith that we learn to have in others, though, points us to the one in whom we are meant to have perfect faith. But even here, the claim to perfect faith is almost never possible. My faith in God is always in tension with doubt. One man, reflecting on Dachau and Buchenwald and 9/11, and on natural disasters in Africa and other places in the world, said, "I have to doubt either that God is all powerful or that he is all good!" And who can deny the basis of his doubt? It is distressing for me to hear people make great claims to faith in God and then be re ready to toss him over at the merest hint of personal discomfort. ("How could God let me have an accident or be sick?") Our faith is always in tension with doubt, and in fact a deeper understanding of faith for me is that faith is the capacity to live within the tension without throwing in the sponge, without yielding to cynicism on the one hand or to childish faith on the other.
St. Thomas is not in danger of being removed from our list of saints. Doubt is not inconsistent with faith. We can not believe everything, nor should we. We live as the "company of all faithful people," but that faithfulness is a strange tension between doubt and belief, between doubt and trust. It is only in living in that tension that we may hope one day to come to belief and trust that are not conditioned by unbelief and mistrust, but which are caught up and transformed in the fullness of God's loving presence, where we may indeed "be still and know that I am God."