Readings: Habbakuk 2: 1 – 4; Psalm 31: 1 – 6; Ephesians 2: 19 – end; John 20: 24 – 29
“The sea is calm tonight,
The tide is full, the moon lies fair
Upon the strait;
The Sea of Faith
Was once, too, at the full, and round earth’s shore
Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furled.
But now I only hear
Its melancholy, long withdrawing roar,
Retreating to the breath
Of the night-wind, down the vast edges drear
And naked shingles of the world.
Ah, love, let us be true
To one another! for the world, which seems
To lie before us like a land of dreams,
So various, so beautiful, so new,
Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,
Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;
And we are here as on a darkling plain
Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,
Where ignorant armies clash by night.”
Those words come from Matthew Arnold’s well-known poem ‘Dover Beach’, written when Arnold was on honeymoon in the year 1867. This was a time when advances in science and technology and in particular the development of the theory of evolution were causing people to question their faith. The last stanza of the poem gives a picture of a world where all the old certainties have gone and where doubt now reigns supreme. Arnold could probably never have imagined that faith which seemed to him to be in retreat could still be so important to the world in the 21st century.
On this day when we remember Thomas, I want to think about ‘doubt’. I started out by looking up some dictionary definitions of doubt. Doubt is “a feeling of uncertainty or lack of conviction”. Among its synonyms are uncertainty, indecision, hesitation, suspicion and confusion. Some of those words echo the end of Arnold’s poem. Doubt’s antonyms, or opposites, include certainty, conviction, confidence and trust. Faith is not included in the list of antonyms, presumably because faith is not the opposite of doubt. Indeed faith itself implies doubt. Faith is not certainty – although it may of course include confidence, conviction and trust. As far as doubt in religious beliefs was concerned, my dictionary included the following synonyms – undecided, irresolute, hesitant, tentative, ambivalent, divided, unsure, in two minds, shilly-shally, waver, falter, vacillate, dither, demursit on the fence.
Rather a vivid and interesting selection of words I thought. I wonder if any of them strike a particular chord with you? If so perhaps it’s worth bearing in mind as we reflect this morning on our own experience of doubt.
I once – a long time ago – read a whole book about doubt. A book about doubt is also, of course, about faith! Because there has to be at least something there to feel doubtful about. And facing our doubt rather than ignoring it and letting it niggle away in the background can be a way of helping our faith to grow. It takes a bit of courage, but it’s likely to be worthwhile in the long run.
This was a very thorough book. The author identified seven different causes of doubt. The first he called ingratitude – or the kind of self-sufficiency typified by the nine lepers who did not return to thank Jesus for their healing. They were anxious to get on with their lives and quickly forgot how much they owed to Jesus. The second form of doubt stemmed from an incomplete view of God. Our understanding of God needs to grow up and develop as we do. In particular we all have to wrestle with the problem of suffering – our own or other peoples’. How do we reconcile this with a loving God? Some suffering we may be able to explain, but the real answer may be the same for us as it was for Job. God is very far beyond our understanding, and ultimately we must simply trust in His goodness.
Doubt can also be caused by a lack of understanding about our faith. We need to know and have thought through a certain amount about the Christian faith. If we don’t have enough basic knowledge we’re likely to feel uncertain. It can also be due to lack of commitment. If we have never made a firm decision to follow our faith then it is all the easier to wander off if it begins to seem hard work. It’s also been said that faith is like a muscle. If we don’t use our muscles they waste away. Listen to this quotation from a novel by Georges Bernanos. The protagonist is a young country priest:
“No, I have not lost my faith. The expression ‘to lose one’s faith’, as one might a purse or a ring of keys has always seemed to me rather foolish. ……Faith is not a thing which one ‘loses’, we merely cease to shape our lives by it. ……An educated man may come by degrees to tuck away his faith in some back corner of his brain, where he can find it again, on reflection, by an effort of memory: yet even if he feels a tender regret for what no longer exists and might have been, the term ‘faith’ would nevertheless be inapplicable to such an abstraction.”
What presents as doubt can also have its cause in our unruly emotions. Our faith and feelings do not always go together. Emotions can be fickle. This is particularly the case with depression. The poet Cowper wrote movingly about this state in his poem ‘The Contrite Heart’. In its final stanza he asks:
“O make this heart rejoice, or ache;
Decide this doubt for me;
And if it be not broken, break, –
And heal it if it be.”
And finally, old wounds can make it difficult for us to trust. If we have been let down by someone we loved – perhaps a parent or a spouse, how can we be sure that God will not also let us down?
That was something of a whistlestop tour. My point is that doubt can stem from different causes; recognizing this may help us to take steps to working it through and even seeing it positively as a means of growing our faith. Different personalities also find nourishment for faith in different places. Some people need to get to grips with philosophical and theological arguments; others need in-depth study of the Bible. Still others seek experience of God through prayer, through service or through seeing Him at work in the lives of others. For all of us being part of a Christian community is an important means of sustaining our faith.
So – at last – moving on to our Gospel. What does Thomas teach us about this? Thomas felt able to share his doubts with the other disciples. The community was a safe enough place for this. Thomas also understood the root of his doubt. Others had had a first hand experience of the risen Lord that he had not shared. So he was able to articulate clearly what he needed to his friends. We could perhaps presume that he also prayed about his doubt. He was rewarded with a dramatic answer which directly addressed his need and which certainly strengthened his faith.
Let us be encouraged by the apostle Thomas to befriend our doubts to see what they can teach us and how they can help us to grow our faith. And let us then ask God for what we need. He will surely answer our prayer.
Amen