Faith is Better than Doubt

There was considerable interest in and comments/questions about my March 8 blog post titled “Doubt is Better than Certainty.” This post is also about doubt, but it is mainly about faith in God rather than certainty or doubt about beliefs. 

“The Shock of Faith” is the title of David Brooks’s opinion column published by the New York Times last December 19. It is a long, thoughtful, heartfelt article that is well worth reading and contemplating. (You can access it here [with a different title]).

Brooks (b. 1961) is a nationally known newspaper journalist and author as well as a regular on PBS NewsHour every Friday evening. He was raised Jewish, but he attended an Episcopal grade school as a boy. He says in his Dec. 19 post, he grew up “religious but not spiritual.”

When I first began to hear about Brooks, I thought he was too politically conservative and paid little attention to him. But his new book, The Road to Character, was the subject of a study meeting at Central Baptist Seminary in Kansas City in September 2015. It was led by then-president Molly Marshall.

Attending that discussion gave me new appreciation for Brooks, and his political views, which continued to move toward a center-left position. The point of this article, though, is about Brooks’s ideas about faith, not politics.

Faith is “like falling in love.” This is one of Brooks’s thought-provoking statements. While there are problems with the widespread claim that people fall in love, that expression implies that romantic love is usually far more a matter of the heart (emotional) rather than of the head (cerebral).

Brooks’s article begins with his acknowledgement that he long “thought faith was primarily about belief.” But when faith finally “tiptoed into” his life, as he put it, it was “through numinous “experiences,” that is, through “scattered moments of awe and wonder” which hit him “with the force of joy.”

That’s what caused him to fall in faith. Even though he had been religious without being spiritual, Brooks says that position “felt empty” to him. On the other hand, he also found that being spiritual without being religious didn’t work for him. Religions, he says, “enmesh your life in a sacred story.”*¹

In that regard, Brooks cites important, instructive words of Rabbi David Wolpe: “Spirituality is an emotion. Religion is an obligation. Spirituality soothes. Religion mobilizes. Spirituality is satisfied with itself. Religion is dissatisfied with the world.”*²

“Have mercy on those who doubt” (CEB) are words in the New Testament book of Jude, verse 22. The issue there is not about doubt rather than certainty regarding beliefs, but doubt about one’s foundational faith.

If people who have fallen in love begin to have serious doubts about that love being “real” and reciprocal, the relationship has become precarious. That is what causes couples to “break up” or spouses to divorce. Just as doubt about love is a serious matter, so is doubt about faith.

Doubt is better than certainty concerning ideas or beliefs, for that doubt nudges the doubter to seek to learn more and to examine his/her beliefs. But faith in God (by whatever name is used for the Ultimate) is not basically about ideas or beliefs. It is about a relationship that can be destroyed by doubt.

Rachel Held Evans, the widely respected Christian author whose untimely death is still mourned by many, once said, “I recognize that faith is always a risk. No matter what we believe, there is always a chance we might be wrong. But the story of Jesus is just the story I’m willing to risk being wrong about.”*³

Evans’s faith was not primarily in the veracity of Christian beliefs. Rather, her faith was heartfelt commitment to Jesus Christ. She had doubts about many traditional Christian doctrines, but her faith/trust in Christ was stronger, and better, than her doubts about the certainty of those stated beliefs.

Since robust Christian faith is commitment to Christ, that faith becomes apparent not by what we say or give intellectual assent to. Rather, faith is expressed by how we live and what we do.

As Bill Tammeus says on the last page of his book on doubt, faith keeps “us focused on the goal of demonstrating what a world of peace, harmony, mercy, justice, and love might look like.”

Doubt can’t do that, so clearly (undoubtedly?), faith is better than doubt.

_____

*¹ Two of the short “chapters” in Bill Tammeus’s book The Value of Doubt (2016) are about whether one can be spiritual but not religious or religious but not spiritual. In the Comment section of my 3/8 blog post, Bill (who is on my Thinking Friends mailing list) referred to his book, and I had to admit that I knew about it but had not yet read it. Since then, I have been able to check out a copy of it from the local (MCPL) library, and I have been profiting from reading that delightful book. I highly recommend it.

*² David J. Wolpe (b. 1958) is a Conservative Jewish rabbi and now Emeritus Rabbi of the prestigious Sinai Temple in Los Angeles. In 2012, Newsweek magazine named him the most influential rabbi in America.

*³ Rachel Held Evans was born in 1981 and died a few weeks before her 39^th birthday. My June 5, 2021, blog article was about her (see here). The words cited above were part of her discussion about faith with a pastor in 2014. It can be found on YouTube (here); that video has had more than 17,000 views. 

Remembering Rachel

Some of you know the name Rachel Held Evans well; others, not so much. Regardless, it seems appropriate to take some time to remember Rachel now, just before the 40^th anniversary of her birth on June 8. I'm greatly saddened that she didn’t live to celebrate the big 4-0, as she died on May 4, 2019.

Who Was Rachel Held Evans?

Rachel Grace Held was born in Alabama but moved with her birth family to Dayton, Tennessee, when she was 14. Dayton, you may remember, is where the (in)famous Scopes Trial was held in 1925.

Five years later, Bryan College, named for William Jennings Bryan, the prosecutor at the 1925 trial, was founded in that small city. Rachel’s family moved to Dayton because her father got a job at the college there.

Rachel graduated from Bryan College in 2003 and married Dan Evans, her college boyfriend, that year. Rachel and Dan’s two children were three and one when Rachel died.

During her much-too-brief life, Rachel Held Evans (RHE) became a prominent Christian blogger, author, and speaker. But because of her faith in Jesus, she regularly rejected the biblicism, patriarchalism, and homophobic ideas of the conservative Christianity of her youth.

What Did Rachel Write?

RHE wrote four books published between 2010 and 2018, the year before her untimely death. The first was Evolving in Monkey Town: How a Girl Who Knew All the Answers Learned to Ask the Questions. Four years later it was republished as Faith Unraveled with the same subtitle.

Her 2012 book, A Year of Biblical Womanhood, became a New York Times bestseller in e-book non-fiction, and her Searching for Sunday: Loving, Leaving, and Finding the Church (2015) also became a New York Times bestseller nonfiction paperback.

Rachel’s only book I have read is her last one, Inspired: Slaying Giants, Walking on Water, and Loving the Bible Again, published less than a year before her death. I was much impressed by it.

Here is just one of the many statements I liked in that book: “The apostles remembered what many modern Christians tend to forget—that what makes the gospel offensive isn’t who it keeps out but who it lets in” (Kindle ed., p. 186). 

Those words embody her central emphasis. 

Goodreads.com has nearly 700 quotes from Rachel’s books that have been placed on their website by her readers (see here). There have also been over 10,500 ratings of Inspired posted on Goodreads—which is far fewer than those for her previous two books!

Why Remember Rachel?

One main reason I remember Rachel and encourage you readers to do the same is because her central emphasis, as indicated above, expresses the truth of one of my favorite old Christian hymns, “There’s a Wideness in God’s mercy.”**

Here is what others said about her shortly after her death.

Writing for Religious News Service on May 4, 2019, journalist Kately Beaty lauded RHE for preaching “the wildly expansive love of God.”

Two days later, Eliza Griswold’s article in The New Yorker was titled, “The Radically Inclusive Christianity of Rachel Held Evans.” (Griswold was a Pulitzer Prize winner in 2019.)

Also on May 6, Emma Green’s article in The Atlantic referred to RHE as a “hero to Christian misfits.”

Elizabeth Eisenstadt Evans’s piece about RHE in the June 5, 2019, issue of Christian Century was titled “Apostle to outsiders.” Journalist Evans (no relation to Dan) wrote in the last paragraph, “Christianity in America is more lively, loving, generous, and honest because of Rachel Held Evans.”

Journalist Green concluded her May 6 article with these words: “Evans spent her life trying to follow an itinerant preacher and carpenter, who also hung out with rejects and oddballs. In death, as that preacher once promised, she will be known by her fruits.”

Yes, let’s fondly remember Rachel now and give thanks for the many fruits her much-too-short life is still producing.

_______

** There’s a Wideness in God’s Mercy (1862) by F. W. Faber

1 There’s a wideness in God’s mercy,
like the wideness of the sea.
There’s a kindness in God’s justice,
which is more than liberty.

3 But we make God’s love too narrow
by false limits of our own,
and we magnify its strictness
with a zeal God will not own.

4 For the love of God is broader
than the measures of the mind,
and the heart of the Eternal
is most wonderfully kind.

(From Voices Together, 2020)

Do Preachers Promise Too Much?

In the last few years, Fred Heeren has become a good friend of mine, although we don’t spend a lot of time together. When we do have time to talk, though--as we did during lunch after church on April 28--we always have interesting, meaningful talks. This article was sparked by a comment Fred made during that 4/28 lunchtime chat.

Introducing Fred

Fred grew up in and initially embraced the theology of conservative evangelical churches--just as I did. Perhaps he was in that camp for a little longer than I was, but he and I have both grown into a much broader understanding of God and of what it means to be a Christian in the contemporary world.

Fred is especially interested in the relationship between belief in God and science. On his website, he introduces himself as a science journalist. He is currently working hard on another book about science and religion. The revised edition of his Show Me God: What the Message from Space Is Telling Us About God was published in 2004.

Fred is the president of Day Star Ministries (see here), whose first purpose is “Breaking down barriers — especially those that keep un-churched people and the gospel message apart.”

That clear concern for Christian apologetics is one reason Fred and I have enjoyed having deep discussions, for that has been a life-long concern of mine.

Quoting Fred

As we were talking on April 28, Fred said, “You know, I think sometimes we promise too much.”

When I wrote him an email asking about that comment, Fred responded, “Seems to me there’s a great gap between what most preachers (and Sunday School teachers) lead us to expect and what the Christian life actually entails. Some of my friends became atheists when their prayers seemed ineffective.”

Fred’s statement is an accurate one, I think.  

The main promise is of eternal life, of course--and that is surely a legitimate promise. But what about the promise of “health and wealth” in the world now? What about the “name it and claim it” emphasis of some churches, which has spawned the growth of “prosperity gospel” churches in this country and especially in Africa and South America?

Sharing Fred’s Concerns 

Promising health, wealth, and happiness is, quite surely, one reason for the flourishing of many conservative evangelical and/or Pentecostal churches. But those promises have also caused many people to leave not just those churches but Christianity altogether.

It is easy to measure the attendance or membership of large, thriving churches. It is not so easy to ascertain the number of people who have ceased attending and who have no connection to those churches even though their names may still be on the church membership rolls.

Fred is the main leader of a “Meetup” group known as “Provocateurs and Peacemakers.” The vast majority of those who attend their regular meetings are now agnostics or atheists. Many of them, though, grew up attending church services and hearing sermons regularly.

Many of them, also, likely felt a problem when heartfelt prayers were not answered. Some were likely told they didn’t have enough faith. For various reasons they experienced doubt and disillusionment--and then departure from the church.

In this connection, I recommend reading “If you’re sad about Rachel Held Evans (and other un-answered prayers),” a recent article by Mike Morrell (and found here).

Mike quotes a friend, who wrote after Rachel’s death: “. . . whatever faith I had left in prayer is gone. She had so many people praying for her. What’s the f#$%ing [sic] point?”

Mike’s friend, as well as many of Fred’s friends, likely heard preachers, and other Christians, who promised too much.