faith v. doubt

Jon Birch on walking hand in hand with faith and doubt.



Jonathan Brink refines that a bit. Rather than faith versus doubt, Brink sees it as certainty versus doubt. Both Birch and Brink have done a good job getting me to think (never easy).

My thoughts ... first in regard to certainty. I don't think certainty (or conviction) in and of itself is wrong, in fact I think it is required (He 11.1). But the drive for attaining it can lead to perversion. Brink writes:

Certainty drives us to an unattainable state to an extent. The endless search for certainty is always focused on what is not there, or the problem. It’s religion. When we spend all of our time removing doubt, we’re always looking for the missing piece rather than living in faith and enjoying what we already have, the love of God. And I’m not suggesting abandoning the journey. I’m just saying that the search for truth for the sake of certainty is not the point.

The perversion of certainty aside, we need to be very careful with this. Some have taught (I suspect mostly as a reaction to abuses of certainty) that we cannot or need not be certain. They may even celebrate or encourage doubt.

As I think of it this seems wrong. We need to be honest in that we have doubt. We need to sure that we don't create false certainty or hold in contempt those that are working through their doubt. But as teachers, we must proclaim truth as knowable and we must do so with confidence and boldness.

Brink states, "the problem is that the Gospel doesn’t call me to certainty. It calls me to faith." I think he does a good job explaining what he means by that but I do not agree. Faith is built on confidence or certainty. He quotes Keith Green.

You know I can’t really explain to you really how he does it. But he proved himself to me in such a holy way, such a complete way, that I would die for that faith.

The emphasis is on the idea that it was proved to us rather than we proved it to ourselves. As with Brink, I really like that but notice the thing was proven none-the-less. I'm nervous about what I reason as truth and hold that in tension. The one thing I know is that all that I used to know is no longer what I now know (did you follow that?). But all that the Father has revealed - that's different. I hold that in absolute certainty.