I Doubt

“One of the paradoxes of the Christian life is that the more believers learn and grow, the more sensitive they become to how much they do not know.  Maturity brings humility-a better appreciation of God’s perfection and of our distance from it.  Faith becomes deeper, though not necessarily more solid.  It is less rigid than in its first days, often because believers have come to experience the unique power of doubt.

Those young in their faith often dismiss doubt as a shameful lack of faith.  But doubt is not unbelief; they are quite distinct.  Lewis (C.S.) and his fellow Oxford writers knew that.  They were men of impressive scholarship and faith, but they were also men who welcomed doubt and the work that it did in their lives.  Doubt recognizes the tensions and the ambiguities of life and, most important, our inability to grasp truth with the same timing and depth as God does.  Doubt can herald the perseverance of the desire to believe despite circumstances, mentalities, and feelings that work precisely against belief.  With the foundation of a commitment to Christ, doubt becomes the cry of belief in the dark and the starting point of new, deeper insight.

Learning is critical to this kind of faith-building doubt.  More study of God’s Word, more interactions with believers from other life experiences, more principles gained from other cultures can stretch our vision of God and the church and can leave us with more questions than before.  This should not be avoided but welcomed.  One cannot entrench oneself in pride when a doubt is pushing for further examination.  Doubt can motivate us to continually seek God’s perspective and guidance and to reaffirm our submission to his guidance, as doubt reminds us that none of us have perfect vision.

“Now our knowledge is partial and incomplete…Now we see things imperfectly, like puzzling reflections in a mirror, but then we will see everything with perfect clarity.  All that I now know is partial and incomplete, but then I will know everything completely, just as God now knows me completely.  I Corinthians 13:9,12””

The Soul of C.S. Lewis, Martindale, Root, Washington, pg. 283