It’s a lot to take in—the Trinity, the resurrection, the hymns, the history, the culture, the ritual. Seasoned churchgoers aren’t always certain about these things. And while they keep coming to church, they don’t always feel the permission to ask questions. To express their uncertainties. To doubt.
Doubt has become a dirty word in church. As if to say “I’m really not sure,” somehow derails the whole enterprise.
But doubt can be healthy; a way to think through everything we take for granted. More importantly, though, asking questions, naming our doubt, can bring us to greater understanding of our faith.
Tom Allen is a broadcaster and musician. He is a regular in the pews, with bona fide Presbyterian roots, including a sibling who is a Presbyterian minister. Still, he openly confesses he doesn’t understand everything that goes on in church.
Without resorting to any philosopher or theologian who may have framed the conversation, (for that you’ll have to wait a month) the Record’s Andrew Faiz met with Allen and Rev. Will Ingram, minister at St. Andrew’s King Street, Toronto, to talk about this thing we church people don’t like to talk about.
Tom Allen: A popular perception of church is that if you go to church then you’re convinced; you’re already sold on every aspect of what you’re hearing. You’re a complete believer. And if you say “I’m a Christian” in the modern context, you’re really being perceived as saying “I’m a fundamentalist and I believe that everything in the Bible is the word of God and there’s no room for any kind of doubt.” And I think that’s a real loss because I personally have tremendous doubts.
I think doubt is the key to intelligent discussion and to knowing ourselves better. And if we allow ourselves—that is, if the church allows itself to be pushed into this place of absolutes then it loses almost all thinking people.
There has to be doubt and if we are secure and confident in what the church is doing, then we needn’t be afraid of doubt. In fact we should welcome doubt because doubt is where the action is. Doubt is where people think. Doubt is where people discuss, where they challenge themselves. We need to have a community where people are allowed to be doubtful and not be shamed or drummed out of the church or however typified as something other than belonging.
Andrew Faiz: So what are we doubting here? Are we doubting the creed?
Tom Allen: Maybe.
Andrew Faiz: Are we doubting there is a God?
Tom Allen: I would challenge almost anyone to say that there’s no point in their life when they don’t wonder if there’s a God. At some point most of us go through something that has us asking, what’s happening here, how can this be?
Andrew Faiz: This subverts a lot of the structure of church.
Tom Allen: I don’t know about that.
Andrew Faiz: Well, it does because we come into church and church presents us with this packaged picture of belief and story, and then we have this liturgy with which we affirm all that stuff.
Tom Allen: All of that, that structure is imposed, right? We’ve decided that’s how it should work. It doesn’t have to work that way.
Andrew Faiz: We have 2,000 years of great history, man. Rev. Ingram, would you please defend your job?
Will Ingram: No. Because I actually agree with much of what Tom says. I think one of the problems in our culture is that we have come to a point where we equate faith with certainty. So we think that if you say, “I believe,” that means, “I know this for sure.” It’s against the entire structure of biblical faith.
The church, in its wisdom, came along and said, “No, you can’t know, you have to believe.” And in the [Apostles’] creed itself, we don’t start by saying, “I know that God is the Father almighty, creator of heaven.” We say, “I believe.” And belief is constantly an invitation.
I heard a great sermon years and years ago in which this great Baptist preacher said, “As the island of human knowledge expands, so too does the shoreline of mystery.” And I think that that’s very true of the last 150 years. The more we learn about science and psychology and the construction of biblical texts and history and archaeology and all the things that are putting the biggest questions to our supposed certainties about faith, that also exposes us to a greater line of mystery.
Tom Allen: Right. So it’s the evidence of things not seen. That’s exactly it. The creed of this church where we can talk about doubt probably would start with, “I want to believe.” I really would like to believe … but.
I want to reserve the right to come to a Christian church because that’s the culture into which I was born and the one that fits me most comfortably. I’m not telling you this is true for me, but let’s say every week I go to church I end up frustrated by something I hear or angry at some bit of dogma or uncomfortable that I don’t belong here; but still somehow there’s a reason that I’m coming back because I feel like there’s some place for me there. I think any structure that tells me I’m not allowed to come in is wrong.
I heard a minister once make reference in the middle of a prayer or sermon to the unnameable, unknown thing that we call God, that each of us calls God. But the idea was that whatever God is to each of us is an individual thing. We may have common beliefs on some level but in the end it’s an individual relationship.
Will Ingram: In the Jewish scriptures, the whole idea was that the name we transliterate as Yahweh or Jehovah was actually an unpronounceable name and you had to figure out what the vowels were that went with the consonants. I think there’s a profound spiritual wisdom in that.
We have been wrestling with these issues for hundreds of years. So, let’s do it in a way where our questions emerge out of these conversations and dialogue with the past as well as with ourselves and with each other. Rather than saying this is the litmus test and if you don’t believe this you have no place any longer in the church. Because as Tom says, it’s not only every life, it’s every day that you have questions about the existence of God and everything else like that.
When I have been involved in ecumenical or interfaith conversations and dialogues, it is vitally important that those who are engaged have to enter into it knowing where they, and their tradition, stand on issues and perspectives, even if questions and doubts arise. Before you can make a journey with another person, you have to know where you are starting from; you have to know where you stand.
My understanding of the nature of God and of human existence is mediated through some level of engagement. And the more I get thinking about it and study, somehow my understanding of that mystery, that unnameable, unknowable, is in some way tied in with Jesus.
I think it’s one of the reasons that I really value the Presbyterian tradition because we have a place here if you want to be here, no questions. And I think that’s far more grace-filled and Christ-like. Instead of saying you can only be at the table if you’re a card-carrying member and in agreement.
Andrew Faiz: Okay, then we’re running two strains here. One is the journey of an individual to try and understand their own spiritual longing and their own relationship. At the same time we’re talking about something institutional.
Will Ingram: We have to figure out individually: what is our goal, what is our purpose in some embrace of a spiritual path in our lives. Absolutely.
I don’t think that we’ve yet really wrestled with what is the goal, what is the purpose of the institution, and I think that’s a really important thing for us to wrestle with. Take St. Andrew’s context, for example. We’ve been wrestling with how to define the nature of community in a place like this where there are people here on Sunday morning, and also on Monday night helping with Out of the Cold.
Tom Allen: And not necessarily the same people.
Will Ingram: Absolutely not. And in actual fact there are many people here Monday night who have never darkened the doors and never will darken the doors on Sunday morning. There’s an Alcoholics Anonymous group that meets three times a week. There’s the lecture series. There’s all these other things. Can we say that they’re not part of our community? Take the Monday night Out of the Cold volunteers; those people are in fact participating in the mission and ministry of the church. But we would not be so presumptuous as to say they’re Presbyterian, or even that they’re Christian. But if a person is participating in the ministry and mission of a church community, the goal for which we exist, that being a place where the hungry can be fed, how can we say that they’re not part of the church community?
Tom Allen: Who may or may not identify themselves as believers at all but because they have this place to go to they can be part of something larger and something good.
Will Ingram: Can we be a community that actually creates opportunities of context for people to do that very human thing, which is to reach out in compassionate service to others? That really starts to break down the whole idea of who is the served and who is the server.
Tom Allen: Yes.
Will Ingram: Because in order for that program to happen, you have to have people eat the food. So those who come to eat are actually providing a service to those who have the need to serve.
Tom Allen: Is there one group which is the real church or that are more part of the church; the ones that go on Sunday and, you know, give money to the collection plate and say the creed? Are they somehow more churchy than the people who come just to serve Out of the Cold? If the larger church is going to actually survive and grow and expand they have to say, “No.” They have to say that people, humans, need this interaction. That the church is providing something really necessary.
Will Ingram: Absolutely. The Bible tells us, the toe can’t say to the eye, “I have no need of you.” In the worldwide church of Christ it is only together that we fulfill all of the dimensions.
If you have an idea of the call of the church to be involved in justice, there are a lot of times when those who are involved in that work get a little bit judgemental towards those in the more evangelical sides of things. Equally, there are those in the more evangelical sides of things who get kind of uppity about those who are just interested in justice and compassion and all that kind of stuff.
Andrew Faiz: Is there room in the church for the personal faith journey? Tom is saying he’s on this journey and has a lot of questions, which he doesn’t feel are being answered for him on Sunday morning. There are a lot of people like Tom, millions, who want to come in and say, “I sorta kinda like this experience but I’m really not sure what it means and I’m really not sure whether I connect to it.”
Will Ingram: What’s really odd and often forgotten is, there’s the complete array of human experience on any given Sunday. One person has just lost the love of their life; one person is feeling some uncertainty about her employment; another person is just on a completely spiritual high; this person over here is really wrestling with meaning and purpose; another person has just been diagnosed with cancer and is heading into a journey that they don’t know; the other person down there has just welcomed the birth of their first child. Somehow all these people are all together. There’s no Sunday morning that’s ever going to completely satisfy everybody. But there’s something about being together. There’s something about being together in this, walking the journey.
So to answer your question, is there a place for the personal journey of faith? Yes, as long as we don’t go overboard in the individual thing. “If it doesn’t completely satisfy me on this given Sunday, I’m giving up on it.” I don’t think that that’s what you’re saying but … if we’re going to be in community, we’ve got to be in community.
Tom Allen: They’re there and they’re sitting beside other people.
Will Ingram: Exactly. We need to have confidence, I think, in the church to say there’s a place for creed, there’s a place for doubt, there’s also a place to be and not to be. And if you don’t show up that’s your choice and that’s fine, that’s your freedom to do that, but don’t forget that your showing up may be a source of great consolation and hope to the person that’s sitting with you and if you only just come for yourself that’s maybe not even a good reason to come to church in the first place.
Tom Allen: We’ve grown up through a time when our political and our media figures, leaders, were infallible. You know, when Walter Cronkite said that’s the way it was, we believed that it really was the way it was. And since then we’ve come to a time where we think, “Nah, probably not.” There’s probably a lot more to it than that. And when we hear our political leaders saying something, I think most people that are adults in this age say, “Hmm, probably not.” There’s probably a lot more to it than that. We just know that.
So I think we are ready for church leaders that say, “This is what I understand and this is the part I’m not sure about and let’s talk about that.” I’m as far from a biblical scholar as I can be, but I’m a storyteller and I understand the value of stories. I understand how stories can have truth and an assertion of truth on one hand and at the same time convey questions that are unanswered; and that the greatest stories actually have both those things and we live in this balance. The church should just be confident about that and say, “Okay, well we don’t know necessarily. Some of these things are pretty weird, some of this stuff is pretty violent, some of this stuff is really questionable, but here it is, this is the story as we know it. Let’s live in that and explore it.”
Will Ingram: In the essence of the Presbyterian spirituality is a shared leadership so that the conversation can be open and shared.
