Doubt

Agnostic. Religious sampler. Spiritual but not religious. Atheist. Damned. Heretic. Yeah, all those terms have been applied to me within the last ten years, most within the last seven. I was working full time in ministry the first time I was called an atheist. I can't remember why that person called me an atheist, at least the first time. By their definition, though, I'm pretty I would be an atheist.

My love of encountering all religions is a topic for another day. I definitely embrace rather than deny it, though. It works. But, yeah, that's for another day.

 Lately, I've been pondering the converse of faith: doubt. Somehow, most Christians have learned to see doubt as a bad thing, as the thing we fear most of all. Confessing doubt leads to an onslaught of folks wanting to assure and offer answers--anything that means the doubt goes away. 

God help us for being so afraid of doubt.

Several years ago, I was at a retreat where we did an art exercise. Now, people think I'm artistic when they see me draw something quickly. What they don't realize is that they have seen the pinnacle of my artistic ability. Anything where I'm expected to create something visual that could be considered a work of art is a problem; I definitely wasn't excited about the stereotypical flowing dressed, spacey, love everyone, be your ultimate cheerleader, artsy lady who showed up to lead this particular exercise. 

But I played along--drawing, turning, seeing something new, drawing again. It was a constant revision of what I thought I was doing and no clear aim for what would emerge. I still have that drawing stashed into a closet in my home. Every once in a while I pull it out, remembering the transformation of one thing into something else that could probably be something else yet again.

At its best, doubt allows us to see anew, to transform, to think differently, to live differently. Doubt stretches and changes our faith; indeed, doubt is part of our faith. Doubt is part of faith as surely as death is part of life, and hate is part of love, and darkness is part of light. There's no clear division. The space in between matters.

On any given day, I'm not sure God intervenes in our daily lives, or that there's any sort of afterlife, or who Jesus was and is. I could actually write a very long list of doubts. And that's ok.

Because doubt is part of faith, too.