Doubt

[Akita Suggagaki]

How well do you tolerate doubt, uncertainty, unknowing and what do they do for your faith.

Jesus tells us:

Matthew 21:21
Jesus replied, “Truly I tell you, if you have faith and do not doubt, not only can you do what was done to the fig tree, but also you can say to this mountain, ‘Go, throw yourself into the sea,’ and it will be done.

And yet who among us can move a mountain into he sea?

Is the opposite of doubt faith?

Is it a character of the will or of the intellect.

Many of us pray for more faith. As if we want to believe but cannot.

And in our culture we must be skeptical. So many are out to deceive us, to scam us and toe persuade us with half truths.

Even when it comes to scripture we do well to exercise caution when it comes to literal versus figurative language.

I think for me there is a fundamental assurance that at least there is a personal God.
After that, so much is inexpressible. I don't rely on any particular interpretation of scripture.
I don't rely on any historical event other than the birth and death of Jesus.
I read it all with an openness to possibility.

I thin there may be a spectrum of our response to doubt:

1. Some people cannot tolerate it at all and then opt for a literal interpretation of scripture with black and white definite answers to any question.
2. Others, like myself, can tolerate some doubt and think there is a greater need for informed discernment on all matters.
3. Then there are the skeptics who doubt anything that does not have string objective evidence.

Naturally these three and the many in between do not agree on much of anything and it comes into every aspect from our lives from how we educate "groom" our children to who we let across our borders.

One guy who has done some research on all this is James Fowler who came up with 7 stages of faith.

The idea that we go through stages seems natural. But this relation ship between faith and doubt intrigues me because I do think doubt purifies faith so that we do not believe all sorts of crazy things.

 

[2PhiloVoid]

How well do you tolerate doubt, uncertainty, unknowing and what do they do for your faith.

Jesus tells us:

Matthew 21:21
Jesus replied, “Truly I tell you, if you have faith and do not doubt, not only can you do what was done to the fig tree, but also you can say to this mountain, ‘Go, throw yourself into the sea,’ and it will be done.

And yet who among us can move a mountain into he sea?

Is the opposite of doubt faith?

Is it a character of the will or of the intellect.

Many of us pray for more faith. As if we want to believe but cannot.

And in our culture we must be skeptical. So many are out to deceive us, to scam us and toe persuade us with half truths.

Even when it comes to scripture we do well to exercise caution when it comes to literal versus figurative language.

I think for me there is a fundamental assurance that at least there is a personal God.
After that, so much is inexpressible. I don't rely on any particular interpretation of scripture.
I don't rely on any historical event other than the birth and death of Jesus.
I read it all with an openness to possibility.

I thin there may be a spectrum of our response to doubt:

1. Some people cannot tolerate it at all and then opt for a literal interpretation of scripture with black and white definite answers to any question.
2. Others, like myself, can tolerate some doubt and think there is a greater need for informed discernment on all matters.
3. Then there are the skeptics who doubt anything that does not have string objective evidence.

Naturally these three and the many in between do not agree on much of anything and it comes into every aspect from our lives from how we educate "groom" our children to who we let across our borders.

One guy who has done some research on all this is James Fowler who came up with 7 stages of faith.

View attachment 350428

The idea that we go through stages seems natural. But this relation ship between faith and doubt intrigues me because I do think doubt purifies faith so that we do not believe all sorts of crazy things.

You always bring about the most salient issues, Akita, and I appreciate your lines of thought being that they often seem to reflect my own experiences and perceptions of the Christian Faith.

I don't have anything to add to what you've said, although I'm questioning the extent to which I've gone through any sequential stages of religious belief, even laid out in seven modes. Maybe I have and I'm just not seeing how my life and views have permutated in the way Fowler lays out. On the other hand, I've encountered quite a few people who do seem to more or less describe their faith as going through successive stages.

So, I'm not sure at the moment. How about you? Do you perceive that Fowler's Stages reflect your own experiences?

Anyway, I'll take a longer look at Fowler's Stages. Maybe I'll see something in my own progression in life and faith.

 

[Akita Suggagaki]

You always bring about the most salient issues, Akita, and I appreciate your lines of thought being that they often seem to reflect my own experiences and perceptions of the Christian Faith.

I don't have anything to add to what you've said, although I'm questioning the extent to which I've gone through any sequential stages of religious belief, even laid out in seven modes. Maybe I have and I'm just not seeing how my life and views have permutated in the way Fowler lays out. On the other hand, I've encountered quite a few people who do seem to more or less describe their faith as going through successive stages.

So, I'm not sure at the moment. How about you? Do you perceive that Fowler's Stages reflect your own experiences?

Anyway, I'll take a longer look at Fowler's Stages. Maybe I'll see something in my own progression in life and faith.

Thank you.

His book is a good read. They interviewed thousands of people an this was the result. But it is kind of confusing.

M. Scott Peck boiled it down to 4 stages
.

I think I started out out believing what I was told, accepting the Bible literally and saw things black and white/right and wrong with no grey.
So let's blame college for introducing doubt and skepticism, questioning and searching for deeper meaning. I understand why some people think education is a threat to faith. It is. It is a threat to a rigid no nuance faith.

But again, this is where I think doubt purifies faith. I think life is a dynamic journey of honestly negotiating our personal doubt and faith. We must be honest with ourselves. Some of us question more than others. So now we get into psychology. Why are some people more skeptical? Why do some require more certainty? It brings us to politics as well: Conservatives and Liberals. This is why my latest interest is Public theology, presenting the Christian position in a way that can be publicly understood and thereby open to public debate and critical enquiry.

Theology actually permeates our social reality and yet we tend not to acknowledge it, except for the right wing Christian Nationalist sorts.

 

[d taylor]

-​

All doubt is actually doubt in God. If a person doubts they are saved, then they are doubting God's promise. That all who believe in Jesus has crossed over from death to life and will not come into judgment.

 

[Akita Suggagaki]

-​

All doubt is actually doubt in God. If a person doubts they are saved, then they are doubting God's promise. That all who believe in Jesus has crossed over from death to life and will not come into judgment.

There are many kinds and degrees of doubt. For example, I doubt a Muslim understanding of God but embrace a Christian understanding. And yet even there, we all probably have individual understandings while doubting others.

 

[d taylor]

There are many kinds and degrees of doubt. For example, I doubt a Muslim understanding of God but embrace a Christian understanding. And yet even there, we all probably have individual understandings while doubting others.

-
​

Sure there is different doubt people have toward different areas. But i thought this thread was focusing on doubt in Christianity among Christians.

 

[Akita Suggagaki]

-
​

Sure there is different doubt people have toward different areas. But i thought this thread was focusing on doubt in Christianity among Christians.

Yes, well even here within Christianity. We have a great deal of diversity of opinion.

But I intended to focus on our own individual coping and tolerance of doubt. As I said earlier, I think life is a dynamic journey of honestly negotiating our personal doubt and faith.

 

[2PhiloVoid]

Thank you.

His book is a good read. They interviewed thousands of people an this was the result. But it is kind of confusing.

M. Scott Peck boiled it down to 4 stages
.View attachment 350432

I think I started out out believing what I was told, accepting the Bible literally and saw things black and white/right and wrong with no grey.
So let's blame college for introducing doubt and skepticism, questioning and searching for deeper meaning. I understand why some people think education is a threat to faith. It is. It is a threat to a rigid no nuance faith.

I know many people have had a pattern of upbringing more akin to your own, one where the Bible is firmly presented in Black and White tones. That can definitely set a person up for doubt later on.

I've faced lots of doubt in my life about Christianity, too, but in comparison, while my early upbringing wasn't irreligious, it was for the most part only nominally Christian, very generic and paltry in providing any solid biblical content or any clear focus upon Jesus or the Bible as a whole. My thought environment for inquiry was always seemingly "open" to nearly anything typically American in nature, much of which wasn't quite copacetic to the Christian Faith. It didn't cause me to be especially skeptical as a child because that idea wasn't talked about, but the liberty I was allowed to have enabled me to focus on other things and displace any understanding I might have had early on in my life that Jesus was important.

So, for me, I started from a standpoint of Planet of the Apes, Kung Fu, Super-Friends, Dinosaur books and my dad's interest in the Space Race versus a Bible Stories Book for Children, a few vacation Bible school sessions and about a dozen trips to the the local Baptist church where Jesus was only presented to me as a 'good man' and the Son of God, who loves people of all kinds. I didn't know anything about sin or that He died for us and rose again. All of that only was learned later in my upbringing and too late after I was even more ingrafted to various forms of Americana.

But again, this is where I think doubt purifies faith. I think life is a dynamic journey of honestly negotiating our personal doubt and faith. We must be honest with ourselves. Some of us question more than others. So now we get into psychology. Why are some people more skeptical? Why do some require more certainty? It brings us to politics as well: Conservatives and Liberals. This is why my latest interest is Public theology, presenting the Christian position in a way that can be publicly understood and thereby open to public debate and critical enquiry.

You've hit the nail on the head with that. We both know there's a lot of psychology that goes into sorting out all of these things, theologically and politically....

On the note of Public Theology, that term is new to me but from what you've cited, it sounds like a another form of Philosophical Hermeneutics applied to Christian Theology. So, in a way, it feels kind of familiar.

Theology actually permeates our social reality and yet we tend not to acknowledge it, except for the right wing Christian Nationalist sorts.

That's for sure.

 

[Akita Suggagaki]

On the note of Public Theology, that term is new to me but from what you've cited, it sounds like a another form of Philosophical Hermeneutics applied to Christian Theology. So, in a way, it feels kind of familiar.

New to me also. I saw it here:

Steven P. Millies | Catholic Theological Union

Steve Millies’s scholarship explores the Catholic church’s relationship to politics in a perspective that embraces history, theology, ...

ctu.edu

 

[2PhiloVoid]

New to me also. I saw it here:

Steven P. Millies | Catholic Theological Union

Steve Millies’s scholarship explores the Catholic church’s relationship to politics in a perspective that embraces history, theology, ...

ctu.edu

From first looks, he seems interesting. Thank you for citing him. I'll have to add his name to my list of scholars.

 

[2PhiloVoid]

How well do you tolerate doubt, uncertainty, unknowing and what do they do for your faith.

Jesus tells us:

Matthew 21:21
Jesus replied, “Truly I tell you, if you have faith and do not doubt, not only can you do what was done to the fig tree, but also you can say to this mountain, ‘Go, throw yourself into the sea,’ and it will be done.

And yet who among us can move a mountain into he sea?

Is the opposite of doubt faith?

Is it a character of the will or of the intellect.

Many of us pray for more faith. As if we want to believe but cannot.

And in our culture we must be skeptical. So many are out to deceive us, to scam us and toe persuade us with half truths.

Even when it comes to scripture we do well to exercise caution when it comes to literal versus figurative language.

I think for me there is a fundamental assurance that at least there is a personal God.
After that, so much is inexpressible. I don't rely on any particular interpretation of scripture.
I don't rely on any historical event other than the birth and death of Jesus.
I read it all with an openness to possibility.

I thin there may be a spectrum of our response to doubt:

1. Some people cannot tolerate it at all and then opt for a literal interpretation of scripture with black and white definite answers to any question.
2. Others, like myself, can tolerate some doubt and think there is a greater need for informed discernment on all matters.
3. Then there are the skeptics who doubt anything that does not have string objective evidence.

Naturally these three and the many in between do not agree on much of anything and it comes into every aspect from our lives from how we educate "groom" our children to who we let across our borders.

One guy who has done some research on all this is James Fowler who came up with 7 stages of faith.

View attachment 350428

The idea that we go through stages seems natural. But this relation ship between faith and doubt intrigues me because I do think doubt purifies faith so that we do not believe all sorts of crazy things.

Going back to Fowler for the sake of discussion, I'm looking at his stages and they seem to me to a synthesis of the usual stages of mental development with notions about "progress" in faith. I'm kind of questioning this synthesis.

Let's see here, Stage 1. Did I have a merely intuitive understanding in early childhood where fantasy and reality are the same. Y'know, even in my early childhood, I can't say that between the ages of 3 to 5 I couldn't tell the difference. I think I knew Under-dog and Kung Fu weren't real as far as fictional characters go, but that one was based on things from fantasy and the other, though fiction, was someone borrowed from some sort of real life.

Stage 2--God is like a parent figure? Hmmm. Maybe. But between the ages of 5 and 7, I wasn't under the idea that my generic idea of God or Jesus would ever give me a spanking for misbehaving. Mom and Dad, however, in grand American style, would.

So, I don't know. I'm mulling Stage 3 over right now.

 

[Akita Suggagaki]

Going back to Fowler for the sake of discussion, I'm looking at his stages and they seem to me to a synthesis of the usual stages of mental development with notions about "progress" in faith. I'm kind of questioning this synthesis.

Let's see here, Stage 1. Did I have a merely intuitive understanding in early childhood where fantasy and reality are the same. Y'know, even in my early childhood, I can't say that between the ages of 3 to 5 I couldn't tell the difference. I think I knew Under-dog and Kung Fu weren't real as far as fictional characters go, but that one was based on things from fantasy and the other, though fiction, was someone borrowed from some sort of real life.

Stage 2--God is like a parent figure? Hmmm. Maybe. But between the ages of 5 and 7, I wasn't under the idea that my generic idea of God or Jesus would ever give me a spanking for misbehaving. Mom and Dad, however, in grand American style, would.

So, I don't know. I'm mulling Stage 3 over right now.

Reviewing early life and comparing to Fowlers stages can be interesting.
I must have been 3-5 when I saw a picture of Jesus in my Grandmother's bedroom. I asked where he was and she told me "everywhere". Blew my little mind a bit.

I think stages 4 and 5 can be biggest changes. They involve questioning.

As I recall my earliest memories it is as if I did not have an intellectual clue about God but was more attuned to some kind of presence, especially outside in nature.

 

[Bobber]

Jesus tells us:

Matthew 21:21
Jesus replied, “Truly I tell you, if you have faith and do not doubt, not only can you do what was done to the fig tree, but also you can say to this mountain, ‘Go, throw yourself into the sea,’ and it will be done.

And yet who among us can move a mountain into he sea?

We all can in Jesus name but the mountain is meant as a metaphor for a big problem in your life. It's not meant to be thought of as a real physical mountain. But we speak, and declare and decree God's word and God is the power NOT US we just declare the word that God watches over.

 

[Bobber]

Many of us pray for more faith. As if we want to believe but cannot.

I find it amazing many will quote this where the disciples asked for more FAITH, the stop....identify with it and say yeah just like me.....but they don't go to the next verses and see how Jesus answered this. That's where Jesus said,

“If you have faith as a mustard seed, you can say to this mulberry tree, ‘Be pulled up by the roots and be planted in the sea,’ and it would obey you. Lk 17:5

Jesus listened to them.....it was THEY who said they needed MORE faith. If you say you need MORE it's the same as saying your faith is small. Jesus said OK if you're saying your faith is small let me tell you something even if you have small faith I'll call it like a mustard seed, then just take the small faith you've got and put it into motion. How do you do that....you speak and declare and decree you speak your faith and things will move and change.

 

[Minister Monardo]

Is the opposite of doubt faith?

Romans 14:
21 It is good neither to eat meat nor drink wine nor do anything
by which your brother stumbles or is offended or is made weak.
22 Do you have faith? Have it to yourself before God.
Happy is he who does not condemn himself in what he approves.
23 But he who doubts is condemned if he eats, because he does not
eat from faith; for whatever is not from faith is sin.

Faith is not something to experiment with, faith is acting up on receiving
from the Lord. Paul has just stated in chapter 12:
2 And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing
of your mind, that you may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God.

Faith is believing that God speaks to those who diligently seek Him,
and rewards obedience.

Hebrews 11:6 But without faith it is impossible to please Him,
for he who comes to God must believe that He is, and that
He is a rewarder of those who diligently seek Him.

Faith redefines sin from violating a law code, to ignoring
the leading of the Spirit to act on behalf of others, as in Romans 14,
even in something as mundane but necessary as eating and drinking.
James 4:17 Therefore, to him who knows to do good
and does not do it, to him it is sin.

Faith is only effectual for those with a sincere desire to do God's Will.
James 1:6 But let him ask in faith, with no doubting, for he who doubts
is like a wave of the sea driven and tossed by the wind.
7 For let not that man suppose that he will receive anything from the Lord;
8 he is a double-minded man, unstable in all his ways.

Real faith requires knowing sound doctrine as received from the Spirit.
John 7:
16 Jesus answered them and said, “My doctrine is not Mine, but His who sent Me.
17 If anyone wills to do His will, he shall know concerning the doctrine, whether
it is from God or whether I speak on My own authority.
18 He who speaks from himself seeks his own glory; but He who seeks the glory
of the One who sent Him is true, and no unrighteousness is in Him.

Hebrews 11:
1 Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.
2 For by it the elders obtained a good testimony.

If individuals chosen by God were able to walk by faith, how much more so
those of like precious faith work together in edification of the Spirit
obtain a good report.

 

[2PhiloVoid]

Reviewing early life and comparing to Fowlers stages can be interesting.
I must have been 3-5 when I saw a picture of Jesus in my Grandmother's bedroom. I asked where he was and she told me "everywhere". Blew my little mind a bit.

I think stages 4 and 5 can be biggest changes. They involve questioning.

As I recall my earliest memories it is as if I did not have an intellectual clue about God but was more attuned to some kind of presence, especially outside in nature.

That must have been helpful to feel at such a young age. I can't say I ever had that sort of mystical feelings as a kid. Somehow, my feelings about the meaning of the larger world were always more or less shades of an overcast, Fall day in a Winnie the Pooh cartoon.

 

[Akita Suggagaki]

That must have been helpful to feel at such a young age. I can't say I ever had that sort of mystical feelings as a kid. Somehow, my feelings about the meaning of the larger world were always more or less shades of an overcast, Fall day in a Winnie the Pooh cartoon.

So I went to a Catholic school starting at 1st grade. It made a lasting impression. But of course the religion and spirituality I learned there were very different from attending seminary decades later. It was like seeing another side or another level that most people in the pews do not know about. Deeper dives into scripture study and forms of criticism, different aspects of theology and questions about them, eye opening aspects of history. Most people work, have families and get a bit of something on Sunday mornings. Maybe a few do more undirected reading on their own.

For me sculpture study was amazing. Especially historical and form criticisms. You mean I don't have to take all this literally? These days I am into hermeneutics and pluralism. Who can I talk to about that? Not even the local priests are much about that. Fortunately I have two awesome friends into this stuff and we talk twice each week with coffee. I wish you could join us.

 

[Akita Suggagaki]

then just take the small faith you've got and put it into motion. How do you do that....you speak and declare and decree you speak your faith and things will move and change.

Beautiful!

 

[2PhiloVoid]

So I went to a Catholic school starting at 1st grade. It made a lasting impression. But of course the religion and spirituality I learned there were very different from attending seminary decades later. It was like seeing another side or another level that most people in the pews do not know about. Deeper dives into scripture study and forms of criticism, different aspects of theology and questions about them, eye opening aspects of history. Most people work, have families and get a bit of something on Sunday mornings. Maybe a few do more undirected reading on their own.

For me sculpture study was amazing. Especially historical and form criticisms. You mean I don't have to take all this literally? These days I am into hermeneutics and pluralism. Who can I talk to about that? Not even the local priests are much about that. Fortunately I have two awesome friends into this stuff and we talk twice each week with coffee. I wish you could join us.

I can imagine you have some interesting conversations in that small group. Is it a group that you connect with here on CF through PM?

 

[Akita Suggagaki]

I can imagine you have some interesting conversations in that small group. Is it a group that you connect with here on CF through PM?

No, actually in person. Retired philosophy professor, retired Communications professor and retired surgeon with interest in theology.