{"id":384,"date":"2020-12-31T10:00:03","date_gmt":"2020-12-31T15:00:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/js1cd06kre.onrocket.site\/?p=384"},"modified":"2020-12-31T10:00:03","modified_gmt":"2020-12-31T15:00:03","slug":"faith-and-doubt","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/2020\/12\/31\/faith-and-doubt\/","title":{"rendered":"Faith and Doubt"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Bertrand Russell, the celebrated 20th<\/sup> century British philosopher, wasn\u2019t shy about his atheism. 

As he looked across the cosmos, he doubted the existence of a transcendent Being. 

In his book Why I Am Not a Christian<\/em>, Russell didn\u2019t pretend that such a conviction provided humanity with any grounds for a feel-good assurance that life has ultimate meaning:

That Man is the product of causes which had no prevision of the end they were achieving; that his origin, his growth, his hopes and fears, his loves and beliefs, are but the outcome of accidental collocations of atoms; that no fire, no heroism, no intensity of thought and feeling, can preserve an individual life beyond the grave; that all the labors of the ages, all the devotion, all the inspiration, all the noonday brightness of human genius, are destined to extinction in the vast death of the solar system, and that the whole temple of Man\u2019s achievement must inevitably be buried beneath the debris of a universe in ruins \u2013 all these things, if not quite beyond dispute, are yet so nearly certain that no philosophy which rejects them can hope to stand. <\/em>

Only within the scaffolding of these truths, only on the firm foundation of unyielding despair, can the soul\u2019s habitation henceforth be safely built. <\/em>

As you might guess, there\u2019s no such thing as a Bertrand Russell line of Hallmark greeting cards. 

Russell might be regarded as the patron saint of 2020 \u2013 a year in which more than a few people began to imagine their lives as being built on \u201cthe firm foundation of unyielding despair.\u201d

Religious people don\u2019t often talk about it, but they have their doubts, too. 

Doubt, in some quarters, is treated as a kind of unforgiveable sin.  \u201cDon\u2019t ask questions, just believe\u201d is the mantra of all too many spiritual communities.  After all, how can you describe yourself as a \u201cperson of faith\u201d if you don\u2019t have faith?  Therefore questioning is squelched.  Second thoughts are dismissed.  What remains is Archie Bunker\u2019s caricature of religion from an episode of All in the Family<\/em>: \u201cFaith is believing what you know can\u2019t possibly be true except that it\u2019s in the Bible.\u201d 

We need a healthier understanding of doubt \u2013 one that honors our freedom to ask questions, search for truth, and embrace our God-provided rationality.   

Doubt (as evidenced by its etymological cousin \u201cdouble\u201d) means to be in two minds \u2013 to be torn between two convictions.

Doubt is not necessarily sin or disobedience.  Some of the Bible\u2019s most celebrated heroes \u2013 Abraham, Jacob, Moses, David, Jeremiah, Job, Thomas, and John the Baptist \u2013 were world-class doubters.

Most importantly, doubt is not the opposite of faith.  The opposite of faith is unbelief \u2013 the stark refusal<\/em> to believe.  Similarly, the opposite of bravery is not fear.  The opposite of bravery is cowardice.  Just as fear is \u201cbravery under pressure\u201d (something firefighters know all too well, even as they plunge into burning buildings), doubt is \u201cfaith under pressure.\u201d 

No one who has spent much time in the fog of doubt, however, would say it\u2019s a fun place to be. 

The issue is what happens next.  Are our doubts condemning us to run in place, or taking<\/em> us somewhere?

In his book Hidden Christmas<\/em>, pastor Tim Keller observes that all doubts are not created equal.  \u201cThere is a kind of doubt that is the sign of a closed mind, and there is a kind of doubt that is the sign of an open mind.  Some doubt seeks answers, and some doubt is a defense against the possibility of answers.\u201d 

It\u2019s clear that Bertrand Russell fell into the second category.  Having once concluded that God could not possibly exist, he only acknowledged \u201cevidence\u201d that backed up his prior convictions.    

On this, the final day of a year like no other, some of us are plagued by doubts.  We find ourselves in two minds.

What should we think about 2021?  We\u2019re torn between trust and fear; expectation and dread; cynicism and hope.  Is there anything we can know for sure?

We can know for sure that Hebrews 13:5 will still be in our Bibles at midnight:  \u201cGod has said, \u2018Never will I leave you; never will I forsake you.\u2019\u201d 

Will that promise make a difference in the lives of real people over the next 24 hours?

No doubt about it.<\/em>
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Bertrand Russell, the celebrated 20th century British philosopher, wasn\u2019t shy about his atheism.  As he looked across the cosmos, he doubted the existence of a transcendent Being.  In his book Why I Am Not a Christian, Russell didn\u2019t pretend that such a conviction provided humanity with any grounds for a feel-good assurance that life has ultimate meaning: That Man is… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":385,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[126,127],"class_list":["post-384","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-doubt","tag-faith"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/384","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=384"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/384\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":386,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/384\/revisions\/386"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/385"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=384"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=384"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=384"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}