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Tuesday, 27 June 2006 15:13 |
 | | Marc Mullinax |
?®If you would be a real seeker after truth, it is necessary that at least once in your life you doubt, as far as possible, all things.?∆ ?± Rene Descartes
?ÿ
SEOUL, South Korea ?± The next six or seven columns will originate from here, where I am teaching a summer course. My students are from around the world, have traveled it, and religiously represent its diversity. They are conservative, liberal and every point in between. Some don??t care what their perspective is. To a person, they are open to all points of view.
I
may be wrong ?± I??ve only been here a week ?± but it seems that my new
students have a virtue to which I am rarely exposed in the USA. This
virtue is doubt.
Too much of anything ?± water, for example ?± is bad for you. A healthy
dose of many things are good for you. Too much nitroglycerine can blow
up a bridge, but just a little can ease heart pain.
Correct me if I
am wrong, but we are taught in our American versions of religions that
doubt is a bad thing. We regard doubt as the ?®gateway drug?∆ that leads
believers into all manner of worse spiritual conditions.
?®The Da Vinci Code?∆ is our current example. It leads the ignorant, we
are told, into error because it stimulates doubt about truth. And we
can??t have that, can we? Get folks believing things other than some
pre-packaged truth and no telling where they??ll end up!
As the British say, ?®Bollocks!?∆ Only in modern times has doubt been so
narrowly associated with bad faith. Doubt has been one of the major
tools to make spiritual and religious advancements. Socrates?? dictum
that he ?®knew nothing?∆ was the very point at which his wisdom became
strength for himself and the billions who have benefited from his
thought.
Doubt is one of the first tools I use in everyday faith and religious
discernment. As we all know, there is so much spiritual B.S. to assay.
Virtue doubt tells me that only fools rush to believe something ...
things that most of the time turn out to be spiritual versions of urban
legends.
Doubt is the tool that helps us pare down the giant monster of doctrine
we are asked to believe. We are truly asked to believe so much, as if
such massive belief systems were essential to our soul??s safety. Doubt
is thus my holy exercise, a spiritual discipline.
?®Doubt is the ants in the pants of faith,?∆ wrote Frederick Buechner. ?®It keeps it alive and moving.?∆
I doubt that people of religious certainty are correct. Usually the
problem is that they doubt themselves, and so proclaim even more loudly
that of which they wish to convince themselves. (I know this because I
used to be this way.) Voltaire is right: ?®Doubt is not a pleasant
condition, but certainty is absurd.?∆
I think it better to live with a few nagging doubts and questions than
to settle a great question once and for all. Show me someone
complacent, who questions nothing, and I show you a dead person. To
modify Descartes: I doubt, therefore, I am.
Doubt is not the great sin we hear it is. Certainty is. Certainty is
the great lie. Doubt is a virtue to cultivate and celebrate. We are not
to align ourselves to anything without reason, or else we may find
ourselves believing anything. ?®Believe anything?∆ long enough and Reason
drowns. Once it does, it??s hard to resuscitate.
Is faith possible after doubt? I believe that faith is possible only after doubt. I doubt, therefore, I can believe.
Let believers in certainty be happy. Happiness is not our calling.
Wisdom beckons, and the first arrow she hands us is named ?®doubt.?∆
?ÿ
Dr. Marc S.
Mullinax, chairman of the philosophy and religion departments at Mars
Hill College, can be reached at mmullinax-at-mhc.edu.
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