Recently, a friend of mine handed in a project teaching young adults about doubt. "How do you teach doubt?," I thought to myself. Apparently, an article called, "The Benefit of Doubt" posted on Peter Enns's website, BioLogos.org, is what got him started. After reading through his lesson, and learning something new, yet hearing many resonations, I was reminded of my own doubt, my own history of letting go of a God that held me up only to let me down, a god that I had created. I am convinced that notions of God that are not true are made available to us to get us through stuff, but does that mean that those notions were not allowing us to encounter Him, the Eternal Being, our Father? I don't think so, so what if He allows us to fabricate him and is so doing, he invades our fabrication to encounter us, or he embodies our self-deceit in order to draw us out of it?
Psychologists will tell you that in order to help the mentally ill, you have to enter their world of "truth" in order to validate them and only then can you draw them back to reality. The film, Shutter Island, is a fantastic example of this. At the end of the film, the main character, Teddy, relapses back into his fictitious world because the pain of the what he did in the real world was too much to handle. He closes with this telling statement, "a place like this can make you wonder: is it better to live as a monster or die a good man?" Truth in all its glory is too much for broken humanity, for us - we need lies to make it through the day, mostly lies we tell ourselves but we don't mind the ones we hear from others also - as long as it makes life a little easier and more manageable.
But doubt - what about doubt? We aren't allowed to drink mother's milk forever. The more I experience doubt myself, I keep coming to the point that it has more to do with a transitional time than a stage of life. more recently a book was written that might help with this. Jason Boyett's book, O Me of Little Faith: True Confessions of a Spiritual Weakling, brings this discussion to a contemporary audience but earlier in this decade, which is about to end, Kester Brewin introduced his take on doubt. It seems he understands it more as a stage but I've come to think of it as more of a transition rather than a stage, or maybe it's just a transitional stage. Regardless, what are we transitioning into?
Brewin in his book, Signs of Emergence , writes about James Fowler's stages of Faith in his book, Stages of Faith: The Psychology of Human Development and the Quest for Meaning "He identifies six stages and the first two, Intuitive-Projective and Mythical-Literal, are the stages that define the more childlike understanding of God. Stage 3, the Synthetic-Conventional, is what Brewin calls a local maximum - it's the stage that many Christians and churches find themselves at and the process for transformation usually doesn't address more than one's own 'holiness.'" While Individuals have been told that the answer to the question, 'How can we effect transformation?' lies in personal holiness, the systematic faults that are actually the root of the problem have remained unchanged." (pg. 27 - Signs of Emergence)
Brewin writes regarding Fowler's understanding of this third stage, "'for many adults it becomes a permanent place of equilibrium'" where people fall into the trap of thinking that any further change is unnecessary. At this stage being part of a tribe of community is very significant. Reflecting on Fowler's work, Alan Jamieson identifies people at this stage as being 'loyalists who hold deep convictions' but that while their beliefs and values are often deeply held they are typically not examined critically and are therefore tacitly held to. That is, they know what they know but are generally unable to tell you how they know something is true except by referring to an external authority outside of themselves. The most common example of this are 'the Bible says so,' or 'my pastor teaches this.'" (pg. 28 - Signs of Emergence)
The fourth stage is a tricky one - it requires removing oneself from the group and questioning long held assumptions, conventionally laid wisdom, and the authority that speaks. "They raise doubts and call things into question. Their identity does not need to be bolstered by being part of a tribe, and they tend to widen their frame of reference beyond the perceived small world of Stage three...Churches that are stuck around stage three become intolerant of those in stage 4, who in turn become intolerant of an unchanging church, and many, many Christians give up and leave the church altogether." (pg. 29 - Signs of Emergence)
Brewin reminds us that there are still two more stages described but to outline that would take a lot more text so I'll save that for later but for now I'll finish with a long quote from page 33.
"It is important to note that one can never force individuals from stage to stage. It is no good egging someone on to Stage four; what is important is that the path is clear for them to travel when they find their way there in their own time. In fact, it would be criminal to force people on before they were ready, for Fowler suggest that is is usually difficulties or suffering that prompt movement, and to wish that someone would just suffer a bit so that they could see the truth better is unthinkable. The problems come when people are either so enmeshed in their infantilism and disconnected from wiser sources that they never find out that other paths exist, or are spiritually unconscious and unable to process the changes they are experiencing. If people are forced to experience life from a Stage 3 perspective in a Stage 3 church when they are actually at Stage 4 (but have no idea that anything could be different), they they are likely to become damaged. Two things tend to happen at this point: either they opt out altogether or, like infants...[they] blindly focus all their energies on making the only model they know work as best it can, not realizing that any other is possible." (pg. 33 - Signs of Emergence)
As G.K. Chesterton once wrote, "Life is not a illogicality, yet it is a trap for logicians; its inexactitude lies hidden; its wildness lies in wait." (pg. 28)
The fourth stage is a tricky one - it requires removing oneself from the group and questioning long held assumptions, conventionally laid wisdom, and the authority that speaks. "They raise doubts and call things into question. Their identity does not need to be bolstered by being part of a tribe, and they tend to widen their frame of reference beyond the perceived small world of Stage three...Churches that are stuck around stage three become intolerant of those in stage 4, who in turn become intolerant of an unchanging church, and many, many Christians give up and leave the church altogether." (pg. 29 - Signs of Emergence)
Brewin reminds us that there are still two more stages described but to outline that would take a lot more text so I'll save that for later but for now I'll finish with a long quote from page 33.
"It is important to note that one can never force individuals from stage to stage. It is no good egging someone on to Stage four; what is important is that the path is clear for them to travel when they find their way there in their own time. In fact, it would be criminal to force people on before they were ready, for Fowler suggest that is is usually difficulties or suffering that prompt movement, and to wish that someone would just suffer a bit so that they could see the truth better is unthinkable. The problems come when people are either so enmeshed in their infantilism and disconnected from wiser sources that they never find out that other paths exist, or are spiritually unconscious and unable to process the changes they are experiencing. If people are forced to experience life from a Stage 3 perspective in a Stage 3 church when they are actually at Stage 4 (but have no idea that anything could be different), they they are likely to become damaged. Two things tend to happen at this point: either they opt out altogether or, like infants...[they] blindly focus all their energies on making the only model they know work as best it can, not realizing that any other is possible." (pg. 33 - Signs of Emergence)
As G.K. Chesterton once wrote, "Life is not a illogicality, yet it is a trap for logicians; its inexactitude lies hidden; its wildness lies in wait." (pg. 28)
In closing out this decade and reflecting upon the birth of Christ, it seems appropriate to ask the question "What would Jesus doubt?" Would he have, should he have? If he were a human being as much as our tradition teaches us, and doubt is not a sin, and we confess that Jesus never sinned, then did Jesus doubt? He must have; yet if that's true what did he doubt and how did he and whom did he doubt?
I'm somewhat comforted by the fact that Jesus doubted, but not so comforted to not know what he doubted. If he did, in what what way do you think it happened? Merry Christmas to all the doubters who celebrate Jesus' birth in spite of our doubt. Blessings!
-Nathan Smith
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