Doubt

I have always struggled with doubt.  Some people accept that while others are disturbed and want to "fix me".  I have tried to explain it to my mom by saying that "faith for me is the fact that I believe in the face of all of my doubts."  I love the passage of scripture that says, "I believe, help me in my unbelief.".

This morning while running I listened to Krista Tippett's 2007 interview with Jennifer Michael Hecht (author of Doubt:  A History) on the topic of doubt.  I found the interview fascinating, affirming, and thought provoking.  Of course, for me...doubt doesn't end in disbelief.  It simply means that I have many unanswered questions.  While Hecht does not believe in a higher being or even an intelligence behind the universe, she values this tension between faith and doubt.

Ms. Tippett: Jennifer Michael Hecht's book is Doubt: A History. As an example of doubt integrated into faith, she quotes the church father Saint Augustine from his fifth-century treatise The City of God. He wrote, "Nobody surely doubts that he lives and remembers and understands and wills and thinks and knows and judges. At least, even if he doubts, he lives. If he doubts, he remembers why he's doubting. If he doubts, he has a will to be certain. If he doubts, he thinks. If he doubts, he knows he does not know. If he doubts, he judges he ought not to give a hasty assent. I love this being and this knowing. Where these truths are concerned, I need not quail before the academicians when they say, 'What if you should be mistaken?' Well, if I am mistaken, I exist." From Saint Augustine's City of God. 

I find that I need to believe that there is a Creator who loves me, listens to me, and has a purpose for my life.  I question much but the essentials are essential to my existence.