Doubt is Better than Certainty

Last Sunday, the 97^th Academy Awards presentations were made at Dolby Theater in Hollywood. I didn’t watch the award ceremony, but early Monday morning, I read the results with interest. I was especially eager to know the results for Conclave, the only one of the Best Picture nominees I had seen. 

Conclave did not win the Best Picture Oscar, and Ralph Fiennes (pictured above) was not awarded the Best Actor Oscar for which he was nominated.*¹ Still, please think with me about the striking words of Cardinal Lawrence, who was in charge of the conclave to elect a new pope.

Lawrence, the Dean of the College of Cardinals so admirably played by Fiennes, speaks these striking words near the beginning of the film:

… over the course of many years, in the service of our mother the Church, let me tell you, there is one sin which I have come to fear above all others. Certainty. Certainty is the great enemy of unity. Certainty is the deadly enemy of tolerance.

He goes on to say,

Our faith is a living thing precisely because it walks hand in hand with doubt. If there was only certainty and no doubt, there would be no mystery. And therefore no need for faith. Let us pray that God will grant us a pope who doubts.

These were perplexing words to most of the Cardinals gathered for the conclave—and they are likely perplexing to many of you also, especially those of you who have grown up as (and still are) “traditional” Christians.

“The Appeal of Certainty” is a short subsection in my book Fed Up with Fundamentalism (2007, 2020). In the first paragraph, I write that “the claim to certainty is one of fundamentalism’s primary attractions.” That same claim is true for many, if not most, conservative evangelicals today.

Nearly 100 years ago, Reinhold Niebuhr, the eminent neo-orthodox theologian, declared, “Frantic orthodoxy [=fundamentalism] is a method for obscuring doubt.” The foundation of that method was an emphasis upon belief in the Bible, believed to be God’s infallible or inerrant Word.

In 1969, W.A. Criswell, the prominent pastor of the First Baptist Church of Dallas, stressed that the Bible is the literal, infallible Word of God, and then averred, ”If the Bible is the Word of God we have an absolutely trustworthy guide for all the answers our souls desire to know.”

That position is appealing to so many who desire the comforting presence of certainty.

God After Deconstruction by Thomas Jay Oord and Tripp Fuller is a new (2024) book, and one that I highly recommend. The second of the twelve chapters is titled “Certainty Crumbles.” At the end of a sub-section called “The Benefit of Doubt,” the authors write,

Rather than being an enemy of belief, we think doubt is essential. Believers aren’t ‘certainers,’ to coin a word. To believe means to be uncertain. The wise ones among us learn to resist the impulse to seek certain foundations of knowledge (31).*²

Then, in “Bible Conundrums,” their fifth chapter, Oord and Fuller deal directly with how many people leave Christianity when they realize that there are many problems related to belief in an infallible Bible as a sure foundation. They give much good advice on how to take the Bible seriously but not literally.

Throughout their insightful book, the authors insist that doubt is more conducive to a life of faith than certainty.

This is similar to what Anne Lamott (whom I plan to highlight in a blog article next month) wrote in her book Plan B: Further Thoughts on Faith (2005). One of her religious mentors is a Jesuit priest, whom she refers to as Father Tom. Near the end of her book, she writes,

I remembered something Father Tom had told me—that the opposite of faith is not doubt, but certainty. Certainty is missing the point entirely. (p. 256).

Retired pastor Martin Thielen recently wrote about the benefit of doubt. He said, “Religious doubt can lead to a more authentic and mature faith, including the embrace of divine mystery ….”*³

Yes, when carefully considered, doubt is better than certainty.

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*¹ This was in contrast to the British Academy of Film and Television Arts presentation ceremony held on February 16. Conclave and Fiennes both won the BAFTA awards. 

*² While they didn’t cite him, perhaps the authors had read the eminent agnostic Bertrand Russell, who in 1935 wrote, “The fundamental cause of the trouble in the modern world today is that the stupid are cocksure while the intelligent are full of doubt.”

*³ In April 2014, I posted a blog article (see here) in which I introduced Thielen, who at that time was a Methodist pastor in Tennessee. After making that post, I found out that he had graduated with an M.Div. degree from The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in 1982 but left the Southern Baptists Convention in 1994. He now publishes articles regularly on his website that he calls “Doubter’s Parish.” The words cited above are from his March 1 post, “Faith, Doubt, and ‘Conclave’,” which I encourage you to read (here).

 

Obesity, Overeating, and Overspending

For the third time in recent weeks, I am beginning this post by referring to an Oscar winner. Early this month, June and I watched The Whale. Brendan Fraser won the Academy Award for the best male actor of the year for his portrayal of Charlie, the obese central character in that engaging film. 

The Whale deals with several issues, but morbidly obese Charlie was the focus of the film, which was made in consultation with the Obesity Action Coalition (OAC). The mission of the OAC is “to elevate and empower those affected by obesity through education, advocacy and support.”

The OAC website states that their organization, formed in 2005, wants to help create a society where all individuals “are treated with respect and without discrimination or bias regardless of their size or weight.”

That is a good and important mission statement, and I wholeheartedly affirm it. That doesn’t mean, however, that obesity is not a serious problem for most obese people themselves and for society as a whole. According to a 2019 report, the annual medical cost of obesity in the U.S. was $147 billion.

Another organization, the Obesity Society, was formed in 1982, and its webpage states,

Obesity is a highly prevalent chronic disease characterized by excessive fat accumulation or distribution that presents a risk to health and requires lifelong care.

People such as Charlie, and those who are far less obese or just markedly overweight, need understanding and support. No one deserves “fat shaming” or belittling because of their weight.

Not all obesity is caused by overeating, and not all overeating results in obesity. Still, most obese people do eat too much and too much of the wrong foods, and most people who eat too much and too much of the wrong foods are overweight, if not obese.

Regardless of the cause, all people with health problems need medical (including, sometimes, psychological) help with those problems. That is true for all those who have health issues because of “addiction” to food or whatever might cause them to be overweight.

Such problems need to be addressed, for they impact both the quality and length of life for such individuals. Certainly, not all people who maintain a healthy eating and drinking lifestyle live to the age of 90 or more, but very few people who do not practice such a lifestyle live to an advanced age.

How do/should we eat when so many don’t have enough to eat? Now I am addressing all of us, not just those who are overweight or may be obese.

This is a matter I have been concerned about for decades. As I mentioned in my 9/20/22 blog post about Ron Sider (1939~2022), his most widely-read book was Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger.  

That book was hailed by Christianity Today as one of the one hundred most influential books in religion in the 20^th century. Originally published in 1977, a revised, expanded, and updated edition was issued in 2015.

The first of the four parts of that powerful book is titled “Poor Lazarus and Rich Christians.” The reference, of course, is to the story Jesus told about a poor man named Lazarus, and an unnamed “rich man who clothed himself in purple and fine linen, and who feasted luxuriously every day” (Luke 16:19).

There is no indication that the rich man was obese or even overweight, but Jesus told this story in criticism of the Pharisees, “who were money-lovers” (v. 14)—and also likely lovers of expensive fine food.

Sider’s first chapter is “A Billion Hungry Neighbors.” Maybe there are not as many now as in 2017, still, I can’t help but wonder how many of us, regardless of how much we weigh, spend too much for fine food to eat at home and in pricey restaurants and give too little to help our “neighbors.”

Those who are obese or overweight because of metabolism issues or food addiction may not be able to choose to do/be different from what they are at present.

Most of us can, though, choose to eat less expensive food and spend less on restaurant meals. But will we do that in order to share more generously with our hungry neighbors? 

Remembering Rachmaninoff

On March 15, I posted a blog article about this year’s Oscar winners. Today’s post is related to Geoffrey Rush, who won the best actor Oscar for his role as pianist David Helfgott in the 1996 movie Shine.

Seeing that movie was my first real awareness of Rachmaninoff's Piano Concerto No. 3, which was composed in the summer of 1909. Popularly known as Rach 3, it has been called one of the most difficult piano pieces ever composed. 

A small part of the score for Rach 3

Many of you know the importance of bifocals. I wore bifocal eyeglasses for many years and was happy for the ability they gave me to see things both close at hand and in the distance clearly.

It is perhaps even more important to have bifocal vision/understanding of life/reality. Over the last fifteen months, I have read and written much about what some call TEOTWAWKI (the end of the world as we know it). That is an extremely sad and depressing topic.

It is not necessary or healthy, though, to think only about the inevitable future. Daily we need to use the near vision “lenses” to see and enjoy the present. There are many ways to do that, and classical music has long been meaningful to me, regularly bringing joy to my life.

This week I have been enjoying the splendid musical compositions of Rachmaninoff, particularly his piano concertos and his captivating choral music.

Sergei Rachmaninoff was born 150 years ago today (on April 1, 1873) in Russia, and he died on March 28, 1943, (80 years ago) in California. It is fitting to remember him and his productive life, which lasted four days short of seventy years.

For decades I have considered Tchaikovsky (1840~93) to be in the top three of my favorite classical composers. More recently I have increasingly come to appreciate the music of Rachmaninoff, who was a great admirer of Tchaikovsky.*¹

Tchaikovsky, in fact, was a father figure and a mentor for Rachmaninoff when he was a student, and the older composer cheered for his young mentee from his box seat at the younger man’s concerts.

There are 45 numbered “works” of Rachmaninoff (according to this website), and 39 of those were composed in Russia before he permanently left his birth country in 1917 because of the Bolshevik revolution and the confiscation of his relative’s summer estate in Ivanovka that he loved so much.*²

Early in 1915, not long before the end of the world as he knew it in Russia, Rachmaninoff composed All-Night Vigil (or Vespers), Op. 37, a beautiful choral a cappella work. According to Chat GPT, that composition, part of which Rachmaninoff requested to be sung at his funeral, is

one of the greatest achievements of Russian sacred music. In fact, Rachmaninoff once said, "I have never written anything more religious, more Russian, or more honest than the Vespers."

(I learned about this choral work in my research for this blog article, and I have greatly enjoyed hearing/seeing it sung on YouTube.)

This year there have been several memorial concerts in appreciative remembrance of Rachmaninoff. One of the most amazing concerts was performed by Yuja Wang at Carnegie Hall on January 28. (Here is the link to a news article about that concert that lasted 3½ hours.)

Several weeks ago, June and I happened upon a YouTube video of Wang (born in Beijing in 1987) and were impressed with her skill at the piano. It was truly amazing that she could play everything Rachmaninoff wrote for piano and orchestra, including Rach 3, in that Jan. 28 concert.

Last year, Yunchan Lim, an 18-year-old South Korean man, won the 2022 Van Cliburn International Piano Competition, and next month he makes his New York Philharmonic debut, playing Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 3, which the promotional flyer says is “considered the Everest for pianists.”*³

Enjoying great music is just one of many ways to savor the present and to experience joy/peace now in spite of the dire predictions of what will likely happen this century because of the current ecological crisis.

Let’s keep making good use of our bifocal lenses!

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*¹ I found it interesting that on a list of “the best Russian composers of all time” (see here), Tchaikovsky was number one, followed by Rachmaninoff as number two.

*² In 2016, BBC produced “The Joy of Rachmaninoff,” and it includes a rather lengthy segment about Rachmaninoff at Ivanovka. If you have the time and interest, you may want to watch that engaging documentary here on YouTube.

*³ Here and here are links to Wang’s and Lim’s performing Rach 3, the latter at the Van Cliburn competition last year. 

What Matters?

The 95^th Academy Awards ceremony was held this past Sunday night, and perhaps many of you watched at least some of it. I saw hardly any of it, but early Monday morning I was eager to see what/who received the Oscars. 

Of the ten movies nominated for an Oscar, I have seen only The Banshees of Inisherin, Everything Everywhere All at Once, Tár, and Women Talking. It is interesting to consider what matters, or matters most, to the characters in each of these movies.

On the (fictional) Irish island of Inisherin, Pádraic thought that friendship matters. But his (former) friend Colm thought that legacy matters more than friendship with his “dull” friend Pádraic. This is an interesting question: is leaving a legacy rather than maintaining a friendship what matters most?

Lydia Tár thought primarily that power matters. Brilliantly played by Australian actress Cate Blanchett, the talented but rather unlikeable Tár is a brilliant classical music conductor. Her focus, though, is on gaining, maintaining, and exerting power. Is having power what matters most?

The Mennonite women in Women Talking conclude that the combination of safety, faith, and thinking is what matters most. This is a powerful movie about strong women who had been betrayed by the deplorably deviant men of their community who apparently thought that sex matters most.

What matters is a major part of the quirky film Everything Everywhere All at Once (EEAAO), which won the best picture Oscar as well as six others, including the best actress award for Michelle Yeoh, the impressive Malaysian Chinese actress.

EEAAO pits the idea that everything matters against the claim that nothing matters. Evelyn, the mother played by Yeoh, realizes everything matters, especially reconciliation with her daughter. The daughter Joy, though, mutters near the end of the lengthy movie, Nothing matters.

Even though chosen as the best picture of the year, I found EEAAO hard to watch. Based on the view that there are multiple universes which exist simultaneously, it moved too fast from one universe to another. It was also filled with silliness, much of which I found unenjoyable.

Nevertheless, EEAAO was filled with thought-provoking content as well, including consideration of what matters. In the second article linked to below is this assertion:

In a split-second decision at the end of the movie, Evelyn beckons Joy to stay with her instead of pushing the world toward destruction. Evelyn tells us … that even if this world will eventually end with failure and nothingness, it is worthwhile to spend every fleeting moment doing laundry, filing taxes and working toward small steps of reconciliation.

In the third link below, posted in March 2022, the author explains that EEAAO "doesn't reject nihilism as a philosophy. Rather, it promotes a more optimistic, humanist nihilism. Instead of ‘nothing matters, so why bother?’ it says ‘Nothing matters, unless you decide that it does.’"

We can, in fact, decide that the life we have now is precious and it is something that truly matters.

In The Shack (remember that bestselling 2007 book?) Wm. Paul Young wrote, “If anything matters then everything matters.” In commenting later on that statement, he wrote, 

Either nothing matters and we’re all caught in this bind of despair, or everything matters and life has value and meaning, and what we do with our lives is important.

But, if all (or most) life will possibly be annihilated, maybe even in this century, does anything really matter? Perhaps that “nihilistic” idea was lurking in Joy’s mind in EEAAO, and it seems to be common among many present-day twentysomethings and older teens.

Regardless of how long we or the world as we know it may last, however, if we live now in a relationship of harmony with God, with other people, and with the world of nature, that is something splendid and it does indeed matter, and matters immensely.

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Here are links to some thoughtful articles about EEAAO:

** In 'Everything Everywhere All at Once,' a multiverse of absurdity meets intergenerational healing (3/11)

** ‘Everything Everywhere All at Once’ and the Paradox of Achieving ‘Nothing’ (3/12)

** The Ending Of Everything Everywhere All At Once Explained (3/2022)