The Struggle Between Faith and Doubt

After every service at our church, as you walk out of the sanctuary, you go through a line to greet the pastor as well as any lay leaders who helped with the service. So this past Sunday, as we were going through the line, our pastor stopped me to thank me for my comments at the church's administrative council meeting the previous week. (I have previously written about being on my Church's Administrative Council).

The issue came up about allowing some property that the church has (hoping that it gets used to build a new church on sometime soon) with a nice pavilion be used by non-members. The particular situation was that someone had requested to use the property for a wedding this fall. Naturally, as these things go, there was an agreement that was drafted to be used and it was simply supposed to be a matter to have the council approve the agreement.

Then the whole attorney side kicks in, the side that assumes the worst of human nature. My comment – that there was no provision in the agreement regarding liability and having the users of the property hold the church harmless should something happen, and it should have such to protect the church's interests. I was somewhat hesitant to raise the issue, chiefly because it feels somewhat odd in a discussion at church to raise concerns about the worst happening. Simply, when an accident happens, as lawyers, our assumption is that the person will sue, and usually they try to sue whoever has the deepest pockets. Again, to think about this happening, and to think about how you go about to preempt the issue, means you are thinking about the worst of human nature; thinking about the worst things that can happen. I have never been able to determine if people who naturally think this way are drawn to the legal profession or if the legal education and training draws it out of people.

In any event, I raised the issue, it was changed, and this past Sunday our pastor thanked me for raising it. I explained that I was nervous about doing so because it was such a focus on the negative that can happen, when church and the people in our church family are such positive people. Her response was very quick and very firm: the body takes and needs all types of people.

I have been thinking about that for the last day or so and just keep thinking about it. In part I have been thinking about it so much because as I have become more involved with various activities with our church, the more concerned I become with how honest, how authentic I am being with both myself and how I am representing myself to those in our church. I obviously would not seek to get involved, let alone attend a church if I did not have some faith. And while I know “intellectually” that faith inherently implies some doubt, I view myself (maybe incorrectly) as having too much doubt at times.

I have no issues with having faith in something beyond myself, in having faith in some “sort” of Divine Being existing, which we casually refer to as God. Yet, beyond that, there's much more doubt than any faith or belief. The nature of God? The veracity of the world's major religions? Particular Christian doctrines such as the Trinity? Divinity of Jesus? Resurrection? And the big one for me recently, the whole focus on atonement theology of Jesus's death within Christianity? As to all these things, I have no idea if I believe in them or not, and am unsure what it means if I do or do not believe in them, or rather, have more doubt about them than faith in them.

So back to my authenticity dilemma, if I am a person of such great doubt, but feel like I am representing myself to others as a person of faith – going to a church that implicitly and explicitly recognizes faith in various doctrines that I have doubt about and struggle with; being involved in that church, which tends to signal faith over doubt, when doubt tends to me more prevalent in my thoughts than faith. I continue to ask, am I being honest with myself and others in these matters? And is this issue only in my head?

But, then I think about what our pastor said to me, the body takes and needs all types of people. Obviously, she was referring to the body of the Church and the ubiquitous Christian concept of the Body of Christ, but it makes me wonder if included in those “all types of people” are those that want to believe, those that hope to have more faith than doubt in the future, but for right now, have much more doubt than faith. Because when I think and reflect seriously about this, that's where I am at. I honestly have much more doubt than faith, particular when looking at specific concepts and doctrines and dogmas and so on. Yet, I enjoy the fellowship of church, the being involved and the community and getting to know those around me. And as I like and wish to be a part of these people's lives, I don't want to feel like I am misrepresenting myself to them, that I am in any way being inauthentic. And the fact of the matter is, discussions about what one actually believes rarely occur, regardless of what arena one is in our society.

So...is there room in the body, whether that be the body of a church or the Body of Christ, for someone who has more doubt than faith, both in the general and specific context? And more importantly for me, does that body “need” people of all types, including us serious doubters? Is it inauthentic to represent yourself as something you are not, but as something you want to work towards and hope you become?