United in doubt
I’ve often written here about the relationship between faith and doubt: I believe that you can’t have one without the other. But Graham Greene puts his finger on another detail: that while faith (or, better, certainty) may put people at war with one another, the admission of doubt has the capacity to draw people together.
” ‘I try not to doubt,’ the Mayor said. ” ‘Oh, so do I. So do I. In that we are certainly alike.’ ”The Mayor put his hand for the moment on Father Quixote’s shoulder, and Father Quixote could feel the electricity of affection in the touch. It’s odd, he thought, as he steered [his car] with undue caution round a curve, how sharing a sense of doubt can bring men together perhaps even more than sharing a faith. The believer will fight another believer over a shade of difference; the doubter fights only with himself.”
Graham Greene, Monsignor Quixote
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Maggi has kept a blog since September 2003, writing about theology and faith, the arts and literature, and a little about life and random nonsense...
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So true. With certainty we have to defend our orthodoxy but in doubt we can journey together.
My Grandfather (who received a liberal Christian upbringing) used to argue with his RE colleagues about how much of the bible one could cut out and still call oneself a Christian… Their goal was a downward spiral.
Now he is a more certain Christian. It seems to me that doubters, just as those who have certainty, can be contentious if the spirit of the one who doubts is not humble.
is this why the law is an ass?
Folks I know in the States ran a series of dialogues about abortion between pro-life and pro-choice people. They started with 3 questions, that all participants had to answer without interruption.
1) What got you involved in the abortion debate?
2) What’s the key issue for discussion?
3) what’s your grey area?
three brilliant questions.. can you debate with a bigot or a child murderer? I doubt it…. but can you debate and care for someone with a personal story (usually of pain), a key issue they want to talk about and a doubt? Yep, I think I could talk with that person…
and they did!
I am not sure if I have posted this before, but it seems apposite. The journalist John Cornwell interviewed Greene shortly before his death and inquired into his religious beliefs. Having waspishly denied theism and the divinity of Jesus, Cornwell pressed him to articulate what he did believe. Greene apparently replied, “I sort of believe in the resurrection…I have doubted many things but I have begun to doubt my doubts.” It is precisely this capacity to doubt doubt that redounds to a more securely anchored faith. This is clearly out of the question if one hasn’t a capacity for doubt in the first place. This is something the “New Atheists” might wish to bear in mind.