THE GIFT OF DOUBT . . .

and a resolve to keep doubt alive

(Note: This will be my last post. I will heed the advice of the writer of Ecclesiastes and enter a season of silence. Thanks.)

For five years, I was a campus minister with the Reformed Church in America on the campus of Grand Valley State University. Daily interactions with college-aged young adults was . . . fun (that’s the word I finally settled on). These young people were curious about almost everything, and they found in me a safe person with whom to test their questions and raise their doubts.

“Marlin, do you have to believe in the virgin birth to be a Christian?” She was a senior, super smart and one of my favorites as despite her ultra-conservative Protestant church and Christian school background (the whole nine yards), she was fearless in her pursuit of a tested faith.

“No,” I said, “of course not.”

“So what makes you a Christian if it is not what you believe?”

There you have it—the question I have been wrestling with ever since. What does make one a Christian? “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and you shall be saved, you and your household” (Acts 16:31). Yeahhhh . . . but what does that mean?

John the Baptist/Doubter

The writers of Matthew and Luke share a helpful story about an interchange between John the Baptist and Jesus (in Matthew 11 and Luke 7). While John is in prison, he seems to have some questions about Jesus and the business of Jesus being the Messiah. So John sends a group of his disciples on a fact-finding expedition. On John’s behalf, they ask Jesus: “Are you the one who is to come or are we to wait for another?” (The in-utero “leap for joy” seemed a long time ago I guess—Luke 1:44.) Still, I appreciate John’s question and the doubt behind it.

But I’m even more grateful for Jesus’ reply. He does not quote Isaiah, Jeremiah, or any of the prophets. He simply says, “Go and tell John what you have seen and heard: the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, the poor have good news brought to them. And blessed is anyone who takes no offense at me.” In other words, Jesus tells Cousin John, look at my life and then decide who I am by what I do.

So What Makes Someone a Christian?

The student and I talked for a long time around the matter of metrics for a Jesus person. Other students wondered in and out of the conversation. It was fun. However, we never came to any solid conclusion on the matter, maybe that’s because there isn’t one.

There is this though: questioning Jesus, even over the core matter of his status, is obviously acceptable. John is not condemned for it, and directly following this incident Jesus praises John, comparing him to Elijah.

The sad fact is that questioning the Bible is seen by many to be heretical. In contrast, I see challenging our sacred texts as an obligation that is to be done boldly and without fear. We know so much more than the men who wrote the Bible. We are aware, for example, that the earth is round, not flat, and that the sun is the center of our Solar System. Today this knowledge is universal, but in medieval days to believe this would have been heretical and punishable by death.

Along these lines, think about our information around sexuality and physiology, not to mention the work of psychologists like Skinner, Piaget and Freud. I could make similar lists of historians and theologians and medical miracle workers, and each of these lists would be exhaustive.

Simply put, we know more then Paul did about almost everything. This knowledge is a gift to us and the work of the Holy Spirit, and it is my opinion, that we are responsible to use these learnings to enhance our understanding of everything connected to our faith tradition, including and especially our sacred texts.

Hopeful New Year

To kinsfolk on the path, I offer this personal conviction: doubt does not exclude you from being a follower of Jesus. In fact, the questions you may have about matters like the virgin birth or the notion that God needed a human sacrifice in order to be gracious are fair questions to ask, maybe even evidence that the Spirit of Jesus has more to say.

Doubt, I believe, is as much a gift of God as faith. If I’m right, then you who are asking the questions and raising the doubts are the hope for Christianity in the days ahead. So don’t stop!

I’ll close with a challenging thought from a Ted Talk by Casey Gerald. He ends his moving speech with a shout-out for doubt:

This doubt, it fuels me, it gives me hope that when our troubles overwhelm us, when the paths laid out for us seem to lead to our demise, when our healers bring no comfort to our wounds, it will not be our blind faith — no, it will be our humble doubt that shines a little light into the darkness of our lives and of our world and lets us raise our voice to whisper or to shout or to say simply, very simply, “There must be another way.”

I invite you to share my New Year’s resolution: to create safe places where people can ask questions and raise doubt.

Thanks again for journeying with me over these last few months. It’s been interesting.