“Some days I am not sure if my faith is riddled with doubt, or whether, graciously, my doubt is riddled with faith. And yet I continue to live in a world the way a religious person lives in the world; I keep living in a world that I know to be enchanted, and not left alone. I doubt; I am uncertain; I am restless, prone to wander. And yet glimmers of holy keep interrupting my gaze.” - Lauren Winner
Back in college, I remember having a conversation with a friend who had just been talking with someone about Jesus. The person she had been talking with found Jesus hard to believe and didn’t have much interest in the Christian faith.
“Can you believe that?” She asked me.
I mean...yeah, of course, I could believe it. Take an honest look at the tenets of the Christian faith and the words of Jesus—are they easy to take in and palatable for most people? Is it easy to believe that the all-powerful Creator of the universe cares deeply about each of us and came to earth personally to die a horrible death and take on the weight of all our misery and guilt and shame, then rose from the dead, now lives in us invisibly, and will one day re-create this world and we will live forever in it?
I don’t find that easy to believe. I believe it more often than not, but I don’t find it easy.
I’m like the disciples. I say over and over again, “This is a hard teaching, who can accept it?”
I’m like the man with the sick daughter saying to Jesus “I believe, help my unbelief.”
I’m like John the Baptist, saying “Are you the one we expected, or should we wait for someone else?”
I’ve always struggled with doubt. The other day as I wrestled once again with this faith that seems way too good to be true, I prayed for an end to the wrestling and to the doubts. I asked for it to be easy to believe.
Then a phrase popped into my head. It’s a phrase that I don’t believe would have popped into my head otherwise, so I have to believe the impossible—that the all-powerful Creator of the universe cares deeply about me, lives inside me, and actually talks to me.
Doubt is the flipside of wonder.
Do I want to find this faith easy to believe? Do I want to look at the idea that an all-knowing, all-powerful, Creator of the whole universe can personally care for me and say, “Okay, sure, that makes total sense.” Or do I want to look at it and say “If that’s true, it is incredible news!”
Doubt is the flipside of wonder.
Doubt is saying “How can that be true?” Wonder is saying “How can THAT be true?”
In the moments when I believe, the Good News of Jesus is the most incredible news in the world. In the moments I don’t, I hear the words of Jesus to Thomas. “You have believed because you have seen. Blessed are those who have not seen and yet believe.”
If you are a doubter like me, I think we’re closer than we realize. We are thinking. We are aware. We are taking this faith seriously. We are not taking God’s claims for granted. We are not half-hearted when it comes to Jesus’ audacious words about resurrection and eternity.
And that’s not an easy thing to do. But doubt isn’t the opposite of faith. I believe doubt is taking faith seriously. And in those moments where our “doubt is riddled by faith,” we get to experience true wonder.