Faith and Doubt

 This week's quote, by Austrian writer, Karl Heinrich Waggerl, is a very Unitarian one: "Faith moves mountains, doubt climbs them." 

Because Unitarians take very little on trust, or at least, on blind faith. We ask questions, apply our reason to our beliefs. I have blogged about this before, here.

We live in a very strange world. Bertrand Russell once wrote:  "In all affairs it's a healthy thing now and then to hang a question mark on the things you have long taken for granted." Which I wholeheartedly agree with. But in our world today, in both politics and mainstream religion, it seems to be certainty that is prized. To doubt or question is seen as somehow bad, or incorrect. I find this quite ironic, particularly in the religious sphere. Many mainstream religions, in both Christianity and (for example) Islam, insist that their followers believe X, Y and Z, otherwise they are not deemd to be "proper" Christians / Muslims / fill in the blank yourself. 

The reason why I find it odd is that the definition of faith always used to be "the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen", to quote the Epistle to the Hebrews. Frederick Buechner writes, "Faith is not being sure where you're going, but going anyway. A journey without maps. [And Paul] Tillich said that doubt isn't the opposit of faith, it is an element of faith."

We can never prove that God exists (or doesn't exist), but we can have faith that He (or She or They) does. And live our lives as though we believed it. Which includes a healthy dollop of doubt - not taking anything for granted, not accepting anything without questioning it first. I believe we should cherish our doubts, keep asking questions, for this is how we grow and mature in faith.

Forrest Church, late minister of All Souls Unitarian Church in New York City, summarises it very neatly in his book Born Again Unitarian Universalism: “We value one another’s thinking. We respect one another’s search. We honour it even when it differs from our own. We resist imposing our perception of truth upon one another. Embracing a kind of theological pluralism, we affirm the human importance of our joint quest for meaning in life without insisting upon the ultimacy of any single set of theological criteria … At our best, we move … to a fundamental trust in our own and one another’s  inherent ability to make life meaningful.” 

We share a devotion to spiritual freedom, and find that the insights of others can enrich our own beliefs. What could be better?

The Reverent Balance

Unitarians, like Quakers, have always been in the habit of questioning beliefs and cherishing doubts.  I would guess that many of us came to Unitarianism exactly by that path - by starting to question some of the beliefs that we grew up with. In my case, I realised that I could not accept the divinity of Jesus as the unique Son of God, and also struggled with the idea that his death on the cross somehow put me back into right relationship with God. When my father gave me Alfred Hall's Beliefs of a Unitarian to read, it was such a relief to learn about a denomination that "holds faith and doubt in reverent balance", to quote Jan Carlsson-Bull. 

www.inspirably.com

What does holding faith and doubt in reverent balance mean? I believe that it is a very delicate balancing act, which certainly needs to be undertaken with reverence. It means actively searching for and working out what gives your life meaning, putting your whole heart and mind and soul into it, and yet at the same time totally respecting the right of every other member of your Unitarian community to disagree with you. It can be a very tough call sometimes.

Because it is only human nature to feel passionately about religious and spiritual matters, about things that touch us deeply. And when we feel passionately about something, it can be difficult to remember that our fellow Unitarians are absolutely free to disagree with us. And that it is our job as Unitarians, as folk who are aiming to "live Unitarianly", to use Michael Dadson's wonderful phrase, to not only tolerate their different views but also to wholeheartedly accept and cherish them. And to not feel aggrieved because Reverend X or Mrs. Y has written something on Facebook with which we disagree. 

Holding faith and doubt in reverent balance also means being open to new ideas, from wherever they come. Unitarianism at its best is a wonderfully open way of approaching life and religion, based on an appeal to reason, conscience and your own life experience. And it is an ongoing process - you don't just experience a one-off conversion, and then rest on those fixed beliefs for the rest of your life; every Unitarian has a duty to approach all new ideas and concepts reverently and critically, and take from them what speaks to our own reason and conscience, and what makes sense in the context of our own life experience, in order to live out our lives in the best and truest way we can.