Even before I preached my sermon, and definitely after I preached it, a couple of things came to mind. First, I just make an initial observation that the two 'major' sermons I've preached at St. Paul's have both made reference to doubt, questioning, disbelief, or my time outside of the church. My preaching in other places has not done this. I doubt all of my sermons at St. Paul's will make mention of these themes, but I have found it personally helpful to show that a healthy life of faith is also one that can admit to times of trouble and question; this does not show weakness. When properly done, an honest appraisal or openness of one's life of faith shows integrity.* There have been people for whom such integrity coming from the pulpit has been helpful. Second, preaching on the subject of doubt in the life of the community is difficult, and requires more than one sermon. It is always becoming clearer to me that preaching involves making choices and sometimes relying more on one's underlying theology than one may be comfortable with.
In some ways what follows is an exercise in laying bare my own underlying theology. And I will begin by asking why admitting doubt is a good thing in a Christian context. This will mean taking some educated guesses as to why people think doubt is a bad thing, and some replies. Then we need to look at doubt itself because the term means a few different things, not all of them bad. Third, I'll come back around to why the community matters.
I opened the sermon by saying that I have been haunted by the phrase "Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe (Jn 20:29)." I’ve always heard this phrase as a condemnation. This passage is easily used as a bludgeon; and a person can use this bludgeon on herself, or someone can use it on her. If one have doubts or questions, one may be left with the sense that Jesus is no longer talking to Thomas, but in one's mind's eye, Jesus turns points his finger, revokes his blessing, and one is no longer welcome or worthy to stand among those who believe. A person in doubt or with questions can then experience church as something of an exercise in endurance, abuse, and uselessness; where the obviously more righteous and believing people gather.
..."Or," thinks the doubter, "they are all wearing a facade of faith; the hypocrites."
Relationships corrode at this point. Since others may not admit doubt, the person with questions loses the sense that the community will understand them. The person in doubt can no longer be honest, which is unhealthy. One can only stay in that type of situation for so long.
The community can further make the person with questions uncomfortable. Pastors can take the story of Thomas as an opportunity to preach that the congregation needs to stay faithful with an implicit 'or else.' This creates a further sense of isolation for the person in doubt. "I'm on thin ice with God, if there is a God."
The community may go so far as to promote itself to an instrument of God's judgment, and pronounce the penalties of disbelief. The community by its actions or its preaching may, in effect, say to the doubter that God will no longer listen to them until their faith is increased.
Why would a community do this? The most charitable guess I can make is that the community thinks this is what faithful living means, and that complete submission to God is paramount and required for God to be gracious. When I am less charitable, I think some communities fear doubt and questions as "contamination." These communities cannot handle someone who disrupts the narrative. Sometimes it's just a spiritually immature snobbery.
There are biblical texts for this sort of exclusivism. The passage above may be one, but as I notice in my sermon, to pronounce a blessing does not automatically come with a curse. We still have to make sense of the fact that Thomas, in his disbelief, spends an entire week with the rest of the disciples. They do not make Thomas leave. They do not berate Thomas. They stay in relationship to Thomas and Thomas also stays with them. Then a week later, Jesus, who could have written Thomas off in his unbelief, returns.
Blessed may be the one who believes yet has not seen, but Jesus shows a grace by the personal encounter that demonstrates that he will go to great lengths to make himself—and God—known to all. And it is in this personal return of Jesus to Thomas that we see the point of the encounter. We start of see the nature of God in Jesus, who is the expression of God’s love in the flesh. A love that continues and is not simply bound to how much love the disciples can return to God. This is the love of a God who desires and yearns to be in relationship; and in relationship, to open the eyes of the disciples to the way the world should be. This is why the disciples, after having received the Holy Spirit, do not turn Thomas out of the community.This theological understanding should serve as a reminder to the community of their own proper role in the life of faith and doubt.
But what about those in the community who look down on those without faith, some of whom may even desire that there be an accounting that leaves some condemned? And what about those who think that the community is too easy on those who do not believe? There are a few replies. One reply that is biblically grounded is to look to the story of the prodigal son (Lk 15:11-32). The story might be familiar. A man has two sons, one gets his half of the inheritance early and squanders it, his father welcomes him back when he returns. A metaphor for God and us (and much, much more to be said about that at some point). What is less well known is the latter part of the story:
‘Now his elder son was in the field; and when he came and approached the house, he heard music and dancing. He called one of the slaves and asked what was going on. He replied, “Your brother has come, and your father has killed the fatted calf, because he has got him back safe and sound.” Then he became angry and refused to go in. His father came out and began to plead with him. But he answered his father, “Listen! For all these years I have been working like a slave for you, and I have never disobeyed your command; yet you have never given me even a young goat so that I might celebrate with my friends. But when this son of yours came back, who has devoured your property with prostitutes, you killed the fatted calf for him!” Then the father said to him, “Son, you are always with me, and all that is mine is yours. But we had to celebrate and rejoice, because this brother of yours was dead and has come to life; he was lost and has been found.” ’(Lk 15:25-32The other son feels slighted by his father's generosity. Have you ever experienced something like this? When someone you know was forgiven way too easily while you did everything right? It's a difficult thing to see. Yet, it is also how God works. When communities forget the lesson of God's abundant love and grace, and set themselves up as the older brother, we do a disservice to God and to those who experience doubt and questions.
To stay in the parable: imagine what would happen if the the older brother met the younger brother first, and said that 'the father' cares nothing for him. The younger brother turns around and leaves, with no moorings to what gave him meaning and hope in the past. So too, the church that does not seriously consider how best to stay in relationship to one who doubts or questions drives people away from God.
Finally, it is also probably common for churches to be gentle with people who question or doubt for a short time, but then the patience runs out. Personally, this seems like a symptom of an impatience with the lack of control one can exert over the will of the other when we should instead trust that God is doing work through us in God's good time [but this isn't to say that skillful pastoral care is important]. We are called to hold open the space for an experience of the holy and name it when we see it.
Suppose one finds a community in which it is safe to admit doubt, and one finds a community in which one can still experience love and belonging after admitting doubt, what does one do about the doubt? There are spiritual perils here; but there are bright sides to both of these experiences, and a mature community can help. Indeed communities need these experiences to mature. Doubt is often the crowbar God uses to pry through old ideas and comfortable ways of being to expose an entry into a deeper place in one's soul.**
Now, there are probably more than two classes of doubt/questionings of the faith, but I'm going to limit myself to two. The first is the questioning of tenets of the faith. In terms of questioning of the tenets of faith, it is always worth the community's time to ask whether the presentation of the faith is in a language that people can find intelligible. The immature community may say "why don't you get this? We will repeat it to you again and again until you can repeat it back to us." The immature community may then say, "we tried, but something is wrong with you." The mature community stops, and considers. Does our language even work here...in this time and place? The community of faith should be continually seeking to discover the proclamation of the Gospel in a way it needs to be heard by the context in which the community finds itself. This does not guarantee success in convincing people about the truth of the Christian Way, but the community should never forget that, as the faith passed on through the generations, each generation needs to find its own voice and way of expressing its experience of God. The mature community will also let people who wish to be in relationship stay in relationship.
The other form doubt and questioning can come in is the loss of the sense of God's presence. In mystical theology, saints and theologians have known since early times that the Christian walk means a time of 'spiritual dryness.' More liberating than the freedom to admit doubt is the knowledge that Christians have experienced doubt as a specific part of the life of faith for a long, long time. The loss of the historical memory and appreciation of tradition in American Christianity, and particularly the mystical tradition (especially in some parts of the mainline), means that the spiritual resources available to the community in times of doubt and questions are impoverished. I wonder how many people experience this stage of the development of their faith and cannot find a community or the resources to push through to the other side. But one needs a community that values the spiritual maturity and vulnerability to allow people to admit to questions before it can help people through the "dark nights of the soul."
I know this post is getting long, but bear with me as I take a quick detour through The Christian Way, in a very, very brief form.
Christian mystics have different numbers of stages to the pinnacle of Christian life, which mirrors Christ's life of loving regard for all. (See the Rule of Benedict, Chapter 7, the steps of humility in which one goes from the fear of God to a perfect love which casts out all fear; St. Bernard of Clairveaux's On Loving God, which details the Christian's move from loving one's self, to selfish love, to loving God as God, to finally loving one's self in God; and the Spiritual Exercises of Ignatius of Loyola). I'll mention three rough stages: the illuminative, the trying/dark night, and the unitive/contemplative/stable.
Christian mystics often speak of illumination or conversion as the awakening to God by which people come to experience the love of God. This can happen before or after a profession of faith. This is the part of the life of faith that feels like a honeymoon. Everything is roses, fervor, warmth, liveliness, and elation. In very traditional terms, this is the experience of God which awakens people to the gulf between God and themselves in terms of holiness and goodness. This stage may also jump-start the turn of the persons god-given gift of desire to the good, and the long process of growing into the fullness of Christ begins.
Then come the rough times; the fervor dies down, the warmth one experienced at doing good goes away. God may seem far away, hidden. Christians experience conflict and testing. In traditional terms, this is sometimes called purgation and purification. The true motives of our actions and beliefs are revealed--Do we seek heavenly reward or do we really love God and neighbor? God is leading a person to the latter. The paradox is that God is as close to the person in this stage as the first. A person may experience this process and label parts of it, particularly the second stage, as doubt and questioning, and the trouble is that immature Christian communities see this and get nervous. They think the conversion "didn't take." Communities can fail people in this stage. This is also precisely when community is so important.
Finally, there is the unitive/contemplative/stable stage, where the person gains a clarity about their life in God and continue in growing into the fullness God created him or her to be. Discernment and humility typically characterize this stage, and contemplation becomes action embodied as second nature. BUT, this is not a linear progression; folks sometimes cycle back through the dark night. This is where, as I said above, doubt and questions represent God's way of calling us deeper. The life we live is too small for the soul God is reworking.
Back to Communities. The Christian tradition has acknowledged that God is present to people even in their doubts and questions, or in the initial seeking of God. This is true even when Christians feel uncomfortable around people who do not believe the same way that they do (this is a sign of spiritual immaturity, which can be remedied by seeking God's face in the 'other'). But, the entire point of the church is to offer God’s welcome and to not hold back the good things of God from anyone. The Church acknowledges that all belong with God regardless of whether or not one believes, and the Church exists so it can be a place in which believers and nonbelievers can experience Christ together. And even if some Christians feel a bit funny about caring for people who are so different, God calls us into this experience of walking through life in the light of a radical love. We are called into relationship with God and the world, which is to be characterized by an indiscriminate loving regard-- for God, neighbor, and stranger. Doubter and Questioner.
If a community has a choice between entertaining a doubt/question or distancing itself from those who have doubts and questions, the greater sin is to distance people. When a community distances itself, the community forgets that a more profound fact about God can be found in a question, not an exclamation.
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*By 'properly done,' I mean that a pastor is not using the sermon as a moment of purely private reflection and personal pastoral care. Pastors encounter the Biblical text on behalf of the community, and the community should be reflected in that work. Also, the core of the Gospel is hope in the midst of trouble; if the pastor snuffs any sense of hope, the gospel is not being preached.
**I think I owe Hal Roark for this phrasing.
