The opposite of faith is… doubt… or certainty?

What makes our faith strong? Can you have faith and still have doubts?

Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen. [Hebrews 11:1]

 Jesus said, “Come.” So Peter got out of the boat, started walking on the water, and came toward Jesus. But when he noticed the strong wind, he became frightened, and beginning to sink, he cried out, “Lord, save me!” Jesus immediately reached out his hand and caught him, saying to him, “You of little faith, why did you doubt?” [Matthew 14:29-31]

While the author of Hebrews uses “assurance” and “conviction” when describing faith, many more passages in the Bible suggest that even the most faithful of those called by God stepped out more tentatively than boldly and struggled with doubt just as Peter did. Abraham left his homeland to follow God, but he still struggled with God’s promise for an offspring because he and Sarah were so old. Jacob feared encountering Esau after so many years because he worried more about whether Esau held a grudge than about whether God had also blessed Esau. Moses made excuses to try to get out of leading the Israelites out of Egypt. The history of Israel in the Old Testament is filled with times of humility that often followed missteps and misplaced faith in things other than God. 

Even in the Gospels, the disciples struggled to understand the assurance and conviction that called them to Jesus. Their struggle to understand who Jesus was came not so much from a lack of faith but from a certainty that the messiah must be something that was much different than what Jesus was. When Jesus called his disciples, he didn't hand them a scroll filled with requirements for discipleship. He helped them wrestle with their questions, often using questions and parables that challenged what they thought they knew. 

Maybe the thing that holds us back isn't doubt but certainty – in particular, an insistence on holding on to our particular concepts with a stubborn conviction that dismisses the idea that we may not have everything right. Chaplain Mike at Internet Monk recently wrote about Mistakes We Make about Faith:

We mistakenly understand faith when we…

Confuse having faith with having certainty….

Fail to recognize how much our fears shape our faith.

Think that having a hearty or mature faith means I have strong opinions about lots of different issues.

Trust in our faith rather than in the One who is the object of our faith….

Imagine that having faith will give us “answers” to life’s perplexing questions.

Forget that Jesus helped the one who said, “I believe; help my unbelief.”

Fail to recognize how much our personalities, experiences, and relationships affect the way we think about faith and exercise it….

Think that faith is only an individual thing and that I cannot ever be carried by the faith of others….

Presume that faith can only grow in religious soil, through influences that are specifically pious or devotional in nature.

Doubt is often equated with losing faith, perhaps wrongly so. Scot McKnight, reviewing a book called The Skeptical Believer by Daniel Taylor, suggests that doubt may be an element of faith. 

The Skeptical Believer. No, it’s not a contradiction in terms. It’s a simple, everyday reality for many people of faith….  Doubt happens to faith and to believers, not so much to unbelievers. It’s struggling with faith and in the midst of faith, not denying faith. It’s seeking to make sense of faith…. Doubt is misgivings about truth claims, in this case about Christian truth claims. 

Doubt may not be a sign that we don’t believe in God, but that we are struggling with someone else’s claims about God, or with our current concept of God. Doubt may mean that we care enough about our faith to wrestle with it. In examining what we believe and stripping away the fluff from the heart, we can come away with a better understanding of God and a stronger faith. 

Samantha Field, who writes about surviving spiritual abuse on her blog Defeating the Dragons, describes the dangers of not asking questions in an interview on the her.meneutics blog.

[Spiritual abuse] also happens when people stop asking why. Being handed a list of “this is what you should believe” is so very easy, especially when that list is handed to you by someone you respect. But when we stop asking questions, when we even begin to accept that asking questions is in itself a problem, that's when we can surrender our faith into the hands of someone who could misuse it.

…We seem to confuse "having faith" with "being certain." I'm no longer comfortable with feeling certain about anything; certainty, I've found, is dangerous territory. It also bothers me when we frequently resort to statements like "the Bible is very clear on this issue," or that a specific interpretation of a passage is "plain" or "obvious." This type of language seems almost designed to shut down conversation, or to dismiss the speaker's opposition.

I think it's important for us to stay receptive to new and challenging ideas. To honestly engage with a concept we don't agree with, and see where it takes us. Instead of digging in even deeper when our faith system gets confronted, if we took a second to empathetically understand their perspective, we could have a change of heart and a change of mind.

I know people who mistake their understanding about God or Jesus or their denomination’s declarations for the word of God. They make emphatic proclamations and, when challenged, say, “You’re disagreeing with God.” Samantha Field is right – that becomes a conversation stopper. It often reflects more about the person making the statements than it does about God, and it stifles more than it illuminates. 

Do you agree with the writers mentioned above that we confuse faith with certainty? Does faith guarantee certainty or does certainty undermine faith? Is there room for doubt in a strong faith? Can you have a strong, vibrant faith without wrestling with doubt? Which do you think is more dangerous to our faith – doubt, complacency, or certainty?