It's 3 AM and you stare with bleary eyes into the darkness. You've tossed and turned half the night, desperately seeking the relief of sleep's blissful oblivion. Before bed, you nervously bit your fingernails to mangled little stubs. Earlier that day you may have lacked the appetite for dinner, feeling a dull despair, as though meaning were slowly bleeding out of your life.
Doubt is a five letter word, but in spiritual circles, it can feel and be perceived more like a four letter word! Anybody who has ever held convictions has surely been haunted at some point by belief's shadowy counterpart, skepticism. As metaphysical ills go, this can be nothing to sneeze at! Finding o褋褋邪sion to question whether one's cherished and guiding beliefs have any substance to them can be a disorienting and even frightening experience. For a religiously inclined person, seriously questioning a fundamental principle such as one's belief in God, for example, can be truly earthshaking. As one fumbles one's way through life, struggling to grasp how it ought to be lived, philosophical confusion can be like getting lost in space without a star-chart!
Happily, many spiritual doubts are merely a little embarrassing, like unflattering secrets one keeps. My terrible, lingering suspicion that Christianity's teachings about the Immaculate Conception may not be historically accurate falls in this second category of doubts. Not life threatening, but a bit disturbing nonetheless. It is certainly no topic to bring up at a dinner party. My hesitation to swallow reports of the effectiveness of repeating affirmations to bring about desired conditions in life is another 鈥渇orbidden鈥� sentiment I usually keep to myself. Amusingly enough, I have no trouble believing that Christ raised the dead, or that sweet minded individuals tend to attract sweet experiences!
While doubts can make one feel threatened, depressed, bewildered, isolated, and even "bad" somehow, rest assured, fellow doubters, that there is a silver lining to this dreary cloud that is so often part and parcel of the spiritual life. If I ever get upset enough about my misgivings concerning affirmations, all I聽have to do is take the trouble to experiment with them until I am satisfied that my reservations were either justified, or merely brought on by ignorance. My incredulity about the Virgin Birth is much more difficult to dispel through investigation, but it doesn't keep me up at night, so I'll probably just let that one slide. This may be one case where it wouldn't kill me to take the Bible's word for it.
I dealt with the most heinous, debilitating doubt I've ever entertained in much the same way. Although I am relieved to say I never wonder about God鈥檚 existence, I was once seized by what was probably an even worse doubt! Contemplating uneasily the abundance of nastiness apparently built right into our world, I was tortured for months by the recurring thought that maybe God wasn't good. Luckily, there was a satisfactory answer for my quandary: if God were evil, I told myself (after what seems now like much unnecessary agonizing), then all saints and holy people would be rotten by association. These days, no matter how awful the world makes our God look, I just haul out my piece of reasoning to the contrary (the way you haul out garlic when approached by Dracula!), and go on loving Him.
If, like me, you are occasionally prone to attacks of skepticism, and find yourself secretly questioning popular "sacred cows," don't beat yourself up, and sleep easy. While doubt is sometimes a tough customer, it can be richly profited by, providing one keeps it in its' rightful place as a kind of messenger: like the rumbling of an empty stomach, our uncertainties can indicate dissatisfaction as our souls crave the security of convincing evidence and direct experience of the truth to support our beliefs. It is up to us to determine when these messages warrant attention. Ultimately, even our darkest, most loathed and tormenting doubts can find a purpose as a wonderful gift to us, when they pique us to suspend our skepticism enough to make the effort to know. In our hard won spiritual understanding, we find the reward of peace.
Originally published in the March 2008 "Doubt" issue of Radix.
