Faith and Doubt

There has been quite some buzz lately about some prominent Evangelical leaders who have renounced their former teachings. A leader in the “Christian purity movement,” who had argued for years that abstaining from intimacy before marriage was the key to a successful marriage, announced his own impending divorce. Among other things, he had been a fierce critic of the LGBTQIA community, for which he has now apologized. Other leaders who had fought the good fight and had made resounding declarations about what one had to believe in order to be Christian over the years have recently announced that – according to the standards they had helped establish – they no longer could call themselves “Christian.”  

The responses to these renunciations have been fairly predictable. Some more progressive persons have gloated a bit. (When I see that, I am reminded of Proverbs 24:17, “Do not gloat when your enemy falls.”) Some evangelicals are wondering if this is actually a God thing – a test of sorts. (These arguments are reminiscent of the kinds of arguments I heard in my church growing up, when for a few years it seemed like one well-known televangelist after another was embroiled in a scandal.) And, of course, there are the Fighting Fundieswho have declared the persons who have renounced their former teachings to be “apostates,” using the same venom and self-certainty that those who now renounce their faith once employed themselves. 

Many – and I would guess most– people from all across the Christian spectrum who have heard about these renunciations have been much more sympathetic. Who among us is not guilty of having been over-zealous at times? Who among us has not confused ‘believing strongly in one thing’ with ‘utterly rejecting all other possibilities’ at times? Who among us has not encountered doubts – not just at a level where doubt can actually spark the imagination and lead to greater faith, but at a deep level where it seems that the entire house of cards will fall if this one supporting card should go? There is plenty of room for sympathy here, even while one wishes that these “Christian influencers” had showed much greater humility and moderation when they were busy casting aspersions on everyone else. 

I cannot speak to the personal dimensions in each of these cases. What I can say from my own experience is that many expressions of evangelical Christianity lend themselves to precisely this kind of dilemma. When “faith” is treated as “certainty,” there is little room for doubt, questions, or even wonder. One is either in or out, a “believer” or not. And “to believe” seems to mean to subscribe to a set of doctrines, which eliminates some of the more invigorating dynamics of faith, such as wondering “why” doctrines say what they say and whether there is something deeper to them than taking them literally.

Let me illustrate. A friend of mine – a writer who is incredibly active on Twitter – recently stated that it is possible to believe in the resurrection of Christ without necessarily believing in his literal bodily resurrection. She was arguing that it is wrong to declare that anyone who does not ascribe to the physical bodily resurrection is not Christian. I took her point to be that believers today can believe in the real living presence of Christ today, which is actually the point of those historic creeds about the resurrection. Wouldn’t believing in the real presence of Christ among us be a much more vivid way of speaking of resurrection, than to declare that one’s faith hinges on whether Jesus’ body was revivified for a short time in between the resurrection and the ascension? But, no. According to the comments that she has received, she is the devil in blue jeans for suggesting such a thing. And that’s the theological conundrum of some (not all) of evangelical Christianity. I think the danger that the Apostle Paul was describing when he talks about “the dead letter of the law” was precisely the danger of faith becoming a matter of subscribing to propositions, rather than trusting in a living reality that enlivens the life of faith.  

Here’s my take: It takes a lot of faith to doubt. Even in those times when we begin to question long-held beliefs and to ask forbidden questions; Even in those times when we wonder if we are simply participating in a historic, much-ballyhooed delusion; Even when we allow ourselves to ask whether anything like “God” really exists in our world; Even when someone who once proclaimed certainty is now renouncing that certainty – there is something at our core that enables us, maybe even compels us, to dare those questions, doubts, and wonderings. What if that willingness to dare such a thing is, itself, the seed of faith? 

Oh, great, now I’ve gone and given myself a lot more to think about today. Oh well.

Mark of St. Mark