When Life Causes Us to Doubt, Then What?
As our country approaches its birthday this Wednesday we are in the midst of a presidential election campaign year while a host of issues confront us as a nation that collectively we as a people and government have not been able to resolve well or come together to face. Some of what I see in the world reminds me of the words of the poet William Butler Yeats in his poem, “The Second Coming”:
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.”
July 1, 2012
Lamentations 3:21-33, When Life Causes Us to Doubt, Then What?
Doug Scalise, Brewster Baptist Church
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Yeats’s poem reflects the situation in post-World War I Europe, but it seems to apply equally well today and perhaps also in the time of the Babylonian conquest of Jerusalem reflected in the book of Lamentations which we heard earlier in the service. The passage from Lamentations 3 is at the center of that book, and we hear a kind of measured hope in the midst of great destruction, can the center hold? The prophet confesses the belief: “The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases, his mercies never come to an end,” but it seems that, given the terror of the siege of Jerusalem, he’s had to remind himself of that. Many situations in life can cause us to doubt, including war such as the people were facing in Lamentations, or illness, struggles, grief, and a host of issues.
In today’s Gospel reading we encounter two more situations which might cause someone to doubt: a twelve year old girl who is dying and a woman with a chronic physical condition that she’s had for twelve years. . Mark 5:21-43:
21 When Jesus had crossed again in the boat to the other side, a great crowd gathered around him; and he was by the sea. 22 Then one of the leaders of the synagogue named Jairus came and, when he saw him, fell at his feet 23 and begged him repeatedly, “My little daughter is at the point of death. Come and lay your hands on her, so that she may be made well, and live.” 24 So he went with him.
And a large crowd followed him and pressed in on him. 25 Now there was a woman who had been suffering from hemorrhages for twelve years. 26 She had endured much under many physicians, and had spent all that she had; and she was no better, but rather grew worse. 27 She had heard about Jesus, and came up behind him in the crowd and touched his cloak, 28 for she said, “If I but touch his clothes, I will be made well.” 29 Immediately her hemorrhage stopped; and she felt in her body that she was healed of her disease. 30 Immediately aware that power had gone forth from him, Jesus turned about in the crowd and said, “Who touched my clothes?” 31 And his disciples said to him, “You see the crowd pressing in on you; how can you say, “Who touched me?’ ” 32 He looked all around to see who had done it. 33 But the woman, knowing what had happened to her, came in fear and trembling, fell down before him, and told him the whole truth. 34 He said to her, “Daughter, your faith has made you well; go in peace, and be healed of your disease.”
35 While he was still speaking, some people came from the leader’s house to say, “Your daughter is dead. Why trouble the teacher any further?” 36 But overhearing what they said, Jesus said to the leader of the synagogue, “Do not fear, only believe.” 37 He allowed no one to follow him except Peter, James, and John, the brother of James. 38 When they came to the house of the leader of the synagogue, he saw a commotion, people weeping and wailing loudly. 39 When he had entered, he said to them, “Why do you make a commotion and weep? The child is not dead but sleeping.” 40 And they laughed at him. Then he put them all outside, and took the child’s father and mother and those who were with him, and went in where the child was. 41 He took her by the hand and said to her, “Talitha cum,” which means, “Little girl, get up!” 42 And immediately the girl got up and began to walk about (she was twelve years of age). At this they were overcome with amazement. 43 He strictly ordered them that no one should know this, and told them to give her something to eat.”
If you can picture this scripture like a movie from the perspective of Jairus, the leader of the synagogue, you get a better feel for the tension and drama. The scene would open with Jairus, the father of the girl, bowing on the ground before Jesus, begging him with urgent desperation, to come immediately and heal his daughter who is at the point of death. There is no time to lose, and our first reaction is supposed to be, “I hope Jesus can get there in time to save the girl.” But as Jesus and Jairus are on the way, their progress is slowed by a crowd of people pressing in on them, as many want to see Jesus and be healed. Among them is an unnamed woman who has been dealing with an issue for twelve years and there is the whole exchange with her and she is healed and it’s amazing, but put yourself in Jairus’s sandals. He has to be thinking to himself, “We’re losing precious time; my daughter is at death’s door, we have to hurry.” His worst fears are confirmed when messengers arrive with the sad news, that they are too late, his daughter is dead. Jesus challenges Jairus to hold on to his faith even when life and the messengers might cause him to doubt. “Do not fear, only believe.” And amazingly Jesus restores the girl to life and to her parents.
There are many different situations we may have to deal with or face in life that can cause us to doubt God’s compassion, love, mercy, faithfulness or even God’s existence. The scriptures we’ve used in this service offer examples of such times. Psalm 30 which we used as the Call to Worship is a prayer of someone who is seriously ill or coping with some physical problem. Lamentations speaks especially to those who are grieving and coping with loss and even devastation.
The two stories in one from the Gospel of Mark are also about illness and death. All these circumstances in life and others as well can cause us to doubt God and question the value of faith, when that happens, what do we do?
There are also situations when life causes us to doubt that are more subtle, private, or invisible to some extent at least to other people; an illness that isn’t life threatening, but difficult; family situations, strains in relationships, or even the need to feel needed or of value. There are visible, obvious crisis situations – ones that we often see on our prayer list or in the news, such as the situation in Syria or the wildfires in Colorado, but there is another layer of situations that are powerful and impact us too… that are more personal, perhaps some things we don’t even feel comfortable saying aloud that can cause us to doubt.
I think there are two kinds of doubt. There is doubt that is negative, corrosive, and leads to fear and mistrust and the inability to act or decide. This type of doubt is related to fear and worry not something we want to cultivate or encourage. This is the kind of doubt referred to in James 1, “ask in faith, never doubting, for the one who doubts is like a wave of the sea, driven and tossed by the wind; 7, 8 for the doubter, being double-minded and unstable in every way, must not expect to receive anything from the Lord.” When we’re in situations that cause us to start to drift in that direction, then doing what Lamentations does is helpful – reminding ourselves of God’s promises and God’s character when circumstances make it harder to believe. When we are being pushed to negative doubting doing what Jairus and the woman in the Gospel do – seeking out and trusting Jesus– can help to overcome our doubt and fear.
There is also a positive form of doubt that doesn’t eat away at us, but rather leads us to search and question, wrestle and reflect and often produces deeper faith. An English cleric wrote at the beginning of the nineteenth century, “Truth lies within the Holy of Holies, in the temple of knowledge, but doubt is the vestibule that leads unto it. Luther began by having his doubts, as to the assumed infallibility of the Pope, and he finished by making himself the corner stone of the reformation. Copernicus, and Newton, doubted the truth of the false systems of others, before they established a true one of their own; Columbus differed in opinion with all the old world, before he discovered a new one; and Galileo’s terrestrial body was confined in a dungeon, for having asserted the motion of those bodies that were celestial. In fact, we owe almost all our knowledge, not to those who have agreed, but to those who have differed; and those who have finished by making all others think with them, have usually been those who began by daring to think with themselves; as he that leads a crowd, must begin by separating himself some little distance from it.” – Charles Caleb Colton, Lacon
Doubt is not a bad thing if it leads us to think, search, question, reflect, and even wrestle with God. “Christ never failed to distinguish between doubt and unbelief. Doubt is can’t believe; unbelief is won’t believe. Doubt is honesty; unbelief is obstinacy. Doubt is looking for light; unbelief is content with darkness.” Henry Drummond, How to Learn How
Author Philip Yancey who has written many excellent books on the Christian life wrote, “Doubt is something almost every person experiences at some point, yet something that the church does not always handle well. I’m an advocate of doubt, because that’s why I became a Christian in the first place.
I’m also impressed that the Bible includes so many examples of doubt. Evidently God has more tolerance of doubt than most churches. I want to encourage those who doubt, and also encourage the church to be a place that rewards rather than punishes honesty.”
“When I speak to college students, I challenge them to find a single argument against God in the older agnostics (Bertrand Russell, Voltaire, David Hume) or the newer ones (Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, Sam Harris) that is not already included in books like Psalms, Job, Habakkuk, and Lamentations. I have respect for a God who not only gives us the freedom to reject him, but also includes the arguments we can use in the Bible. God seems rather doubt-tolerant, actually.”
“As a child I attended a church that had little room for inquisitiveness. If you doubted or questioned, you sinned. I learned to conform, as you must in a church like that. Meanwhile those deep doubts, those deep questions, didn’t get answered in a satisfactory way. The danger of such a church like that—and there are many—is that by saying, “Don’t doubt, just believe,” you don’t really resolve the doubts. They tend to resurface in a more toxic form. Inquisitiveness and questioning are inevitable parts of the life of faith. Where there is certainty there is no room for faith. I encourage people not to doubt alone, rather to find some people who are safe “doubt companions,” and also to doubt their doubts as much as their faith. But it doesn’t help simply to deny doubts or to feel guilty about them. Many people, after all, have been down that path before and have emerged with a strong faith.”
Jon M. Sweeney, author of Verily, Verily: The KJV — 400 Years of Influence and Beauty (Zondervan), wrote eloquently about how doubt is essential to faith. “Even people who share faith increasingly have doubts. Sometimes they admit it. Sometimes they don’t. Sometimes they push doubt away and other times they embrace it, even deepen it. There are more of us than ever who not only accept doubt, but see it as essential to faith. Doubt invigorates faith, demands more of it, and causes us to ask more of each other. Doubt connects us to each other. Doubt binds my faith to yours. It makes me reach out. Discover. Explore. Question. Challenge. Learn. A person who doubts is one still on a journey.
If doubt defines you, too, check out Graham Greene’s novel, Monsignor Quixote (1982). The story follows Father Quixote, an aging parish priest in a little town in La Mancha, Spain (yes, that La Mancha) as he vacations with his best friend, Sancho. Sancho is the retired, ex-mayor of the town and a committed communist. Both characters are men of very different but deep faith. But what ultimately binds them together are the ways in which they share doubt.
At one point, Father Quixote and Sancho have this conversation:
“I hope — friend — that you sometimes doubt too. It’s human to doubt.”
“I try not to doubt,” the Mayor said.
“Oh, so do I. So do I. In that we are certainly alike.” And then Greene’s narrator explains: “It’s odd … how sharing a sense of doubt can bring men together perhaps even more than sharing a faith. The believer will fight another believer over a shade of difference: the doubter fights only with himself.” The rest of the novel shows these two characters embracing their doubts, and their doubts causing them to re-imagine their beliefs.
It was Graham Greene who said about himself late in life: “The trouble is, I don’t believe my unbelief.” He confused a lot of people by saying that, but I get it. Doubt shows a person wrestling God. What could be more important than that?
I also embrace doubt because the older I become, the less interested I am in belief and the more interested I am in practice. A spiritual life endures even when I doubt, misbelieve, or refuse to believe. Doubt engenders practice. I may not know for certain what I believe, but at least I can pray. I can give. I can love. I live in hope. I observe what is holy. More than belief ever could, these practices structure my life, and as Ludwig Wittgenstein once said, “You can’t argue with the form of a life.”
We all have situations when life causes us to doubt, it is important to stay out of the grip of doubt that is negative, corrosive, and leads to fear and mistrust and the inability to act or decide. The answer to that is what we see in Lamentations 3 where the prophet reminds himself and the people of God’s character and promises. It is what we see with Job who says, “Though he slay me, yet I will trust him.” It is seeking Jesus like Jairus and the unnamed woman in Mark 5 who both believe regardless of their circumstances that Christ has the power to help us.
Doubt is not a bad thing if it leads us to think, search, question, reflect, and even wrestle with God. The poet Alfred Tennyson wrote,
“There lives more faith in honest doubt,
Believe me, than in half the creeds.” In Memoriam
Lamentations 3:21-33, “But this I call to mind, and therefore I have hope:
22 The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases, his mercies never come to an end; 23 they are new every morning; great is your faithfulness. 24 “The Lord is my portion,” says my soul, “therefore I will hope in him.” 25 The Lord is good to those who wait for him, to the soul that seeks him. 26 It is good that one should wait quietly for the salvation of the Lord. 27 It is good for one to bear the yoke in youth, 28 to sit alone in silence when the Lord has imposed it, 29 to put one’s mouth to the dust (there may yet be hope), 30 to give one’s cheek to the smiter, and be filled with insults. 31 For the Lord will not reject forever. 32 Although he causes grief, he will have compassion according to the abundance of his steadfast love; 33 for he does not willingly afflict or grieve anyone.”