Religious Doubt is Imminent, But It Can Be Navigated

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It begins at a young age. We are trained to hide our doubts. As we grow, this is reinforced by the adoption of labels- Christian, agnostic, atheist, for example. Comfort can be found on both sides of the religious fence. We’re told to keep things simple for ourselves. We’re told to not peek through the hole in the fence at our neighbor’s party, lest we catch a glimpse of his opposing views and be overcome like the incredible melting Nazis in Raiders of the Lost Ark. But doubts persist. Whether as the result of cruelty that crashes into life changing everything in unwelcome ways, questions and desires unanswered, the wear and tear of painful relationships, or consequences from personal mistakes, we doubt ourselves, we doubt God, or spend years trying to figure out who is to blame; questions that float on the rising tide of resentment. While religious doubt varies by the individual, it is a transformative and often grueling process that cannot be solved with a formula, but all is not lost. There is a way through it; a path that can even be nourishing.

Stay Distracted, Inc.

Doubt gains an advantage when our attention is diverted, and that’s easier than ever in this vending machine culture. The amount of options are exhausting. If it’s not chronic purchasing, there’s always chronic masturbation. If it’s not pornography, there’s always a  holy fight with plenty of theological disputes to obsess over, and too many books to support every position. If it’s not personal pampering, one can chase stability, toys, tech, travel, or tune into the 24 hour cable news cycle. Distraction is the new street drug, allowing us to be addicted to the act of doing while still maintaining the appearing of being fully present. These doubts of ours fester when they are ignored, quieted for a time before they come raging back, and we’re forced to turn up the volume again so that the doubts will be drowned out, hopefully. It’s not a very effective ritual.

Doubt is an Infection When It Is The All or Never

Portions of popular religion have made a science out of avoiding the reality of religious doubt. What astonishes me is the way pastors often dance around the vulnerable texts in the Bible, which contain harrowing accounts of confusion, desperation, and doubt, or try to explain away the passages by demanding that the congregation be perfect. They suggest that the characters of the Bible were God’s crash test dummies, with primitive understanding and willpower. “The good news for contemporary Christians is that we’ve found the user’s manual and we don’t have to suffer like they did. We have God’s blessing and know-how instead. Now don the cape and go save the world,” they very nearly preach.

It is a symptom of our vending machine culture that so much of Christianity is included or excluded, black and white, saved or unsaved theology, bogged down with firm, process-oriented doctrine. If you doubt, you must be doing it wrong, or you just need more data. Come back next Sunday. Other’s burdens are justifiably dismissed. “I’m sorry that he’s going through that, but I know he just needs to 1) get Jesus 2) tythe and 3) stand up in front of the church congregation and make vows to his family, and all will be well.” If all of the mysteries of life, even the very point of life itself, can be reduced and manipulated with some turnkey morality, then I’m not interested in the God behind it all.

The Christian faith is often just a seminar. In such a setting, it’s no wonder doubt is feared. Uncertainty can bring down the whole house when the only beam holding it together is fashioned out of self-certainty. But when faith is relational, experiential, a call and response shared between us and God, then doubt, although troubling, is far less of a threat. Like all relationships, there are periods of discontent, and the discontent can drive us to change, and propel us into new phases of intimacy and growth.

I love the way Peter Rollins explains the dismissal of doubt in the church. It’s well worth five minutes of your time, regardless of your faith or non-faith affiliation.

So while the church often struggles to allow a place for doubt, those outside the church often struggle to allow for anything but doubt. Of those who identify themselves as agnostic and atheist, one can still look reputable by treating doubt as a landing pad, a place of arrival, paying lip service to open-mindedness. The problem is that doubt is just as much of a position as faith. When doubt is the thing that comforts, it stunts not just intellectual progress, but promptings of the heart. In both cases: the faith expression that can’t bear the sight of doubt, or the skeptic who can’t live without it, exploration has been snuffed out.

Doubt itself does no permanent damage to the soul so long as a search is still taking place.” -Rev. Earl F. Palmer

Acknowledging Pain is the First Part of Treatment

We want to hear the doctor’s words. “This looks bad, but I can help you.” We’re never going to hear those words unless we first acknowledge the pain. It’s the pain that gets us to drive to the doctor’s office. In this case, it means starting by facing our doubts.

Some (in my experience the older generations) will frown at all of this. They’ll say “young people have tried to make doubt fashionable. It’s your identity to wear your heart on your sleeve and walk around being morose all of the time. You’ve lost the taste for hope and for gratitude.” They have a point. Yes, doubt and skepticism have become almost posh. Okay, doubt can become our new normal, and we can grow to need it. Sure, we can turn life’s trauma into a competition and marvel at whoever has it the worst and cares the least. But burying doubt is not the answer, and I think we younger people know a thing or two after witnessing older generations do just that.

What frustrates about doubt, and I’ve felt this too, is we don’t like to be powerless, and almost always doubt is a thing too complicated to solve in another person. We really like fixing things, because we care and don’t want to see people struggling, but also at times because it puts us in the linchpin position. We become an authority, an agent of change. That’s power, whereas doubt in others reflects back at us our own inability to mend people. Which is a good reminder if you think about it, because for the Christian, making disciples is not about changing others to our standards, unless we have forgotten what God has said about his saving grace, and the imagery of the body of Christ.

There is more hope and faith in the person who recognizes personal doubt, and stares into it, seeing it as an essential tool on the road to growth, than in the person who triumphantly shouts it down.

The poet must not avert his eyes. You have to take a bold look at what is environment; what is around you. Even the ugly things. Even the decadent things.” -Werner Herzog

To be human is to feel everything, and that’s not an endorsement of hedonism, it’s just admitting to the dark seasons that will surely come. Instead of the American tendency to escape as quickly as possible, or numb out, maybe there’s a point to the pain. Maybe there’s a bigger reason for the discontent that we experience in all relationships, including the one with God. We can avoid it entirely, or let doubt consume us, or as a third option we can listen to it, feel it, and use it to seek new answers.

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It’s no surprise if you’ve read my writing here that I’m a Christian, but I’d like to share some of my own personal religious doubts in my next post. In the meantime I invite you to read my previous short story ‘Notes from a Blizzard’ which may be of interest to you after you’ve read this. It was the first in a three-part series on doubt that I’ll conclude in the next post by looking for common ground between atheists and Christians (and again, sharing some of my personal doubts).