Whose God is it?, III: The Fear of Doubt

Note: Over time I will continue to come back to this topic, The Fear of Doubt, because I consider becoming comfortable with asking questions about our basic beliefs is the beginning of enlightenment. I know what a struggle it is to overcome the fear of doubt instilled in us as children. This crippling of rational inquiry is indigenous to fundamentalist religious sects … hopefully that rings a bell!

She is 78, a devout Catholic all her life who has almost as many pictures of Jesus and Mary and the pope in her home as she does of her children and grandchildren.

Last week, she voted for John Kerry and then went to confession to tell the priest what she had done.

"I didn't want to go to hell," she said, "for committing a sin.”

She wasn't kidding. She was afraid she might.

Bob Braun
Putting the fear of God in voters
The Star-Ledger
Monday, November 08, 2004

… whatsoever is not of faith is sin.

Romans 14:23
The New Testament
King James Version of The Bible

If ye have faith as a grain of mustard seed, ye shall say unto this mountain, Remove hence to yonder place; and it shall remove; and nothing shall be impossible unto you.

Matthew 17:20
Ibid.

The conscious act of doubting or disobeying religious authority—from God on down—is is a fearsome endeavor for a person of faith. The problem with disobeying is easily understood, but what’s the big deal about doubting? Isn’t that what we are supposed to do in this, the age of Enlightenment: Question the hypothesis?

Doubting is a big deal for the Fundamentalist Christian (FC). I know. I was one as a child. I firmly believed that doubters were doomed to hell. I had to be rock-hard solid in my belief that Jesus was the Only Begotten Son of God and in The Bible (King James or parallel versions) as the literal Word of God … because The Bible proved that Jesus was the Son of God … so if I doubted The Bible, I would doubt that Jesus was the Son of God … and I would go to Hell. I consciously did not want that to happen. Period.

One of the first stories I learned drilling in the shame of doubting rather than believing was of Jesus’ disciple, Thomas, who doubted the resurrection of the Christ. He is known as Doubting Thomas to Sunday School children everywhere.

I remember when as a teenager I first began to question whether The Bible (the King James and parallel versions) really was the literal Word of God and Jesus was the physical Son of God. It started because I first wondered where the Christians were. If Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount was the blueprint for the Christian way of life, then I asked my minister (who was also my uncle) why didn’t anyone live like Jesus taught us to live?

That was a nonstarter for discussion.

Trying to come to grips with those questions emotionally is best described as trying to touch like poles of magnets together. It can be done, but--depending on the force of the magnets--it is difficult … and the resistance doesn’t go away.

I know how the devout Catholic woman in Braun's column was feeling. To question authority for a person of faith is an awesome undertaking … proportional to the strength of one’s faith.

When the questions lead to doubting one’s heretofore bedrock faith, it can be personally shattering. The journey from that first inkling in my early teens of something not quite matching up to reality, to my current view that The Bible is a compilation of myths with the common, evolving multi-strand thread of a people’s understanding of the cosmos … well, that journey has been arduous if nothing else.

One of the first snippets of poetry that I wrote as a youth was:

Must I because I am afraid
Condemn myself to ages passed
And there in the wisdom of long ago
Lie down and sleep amidst my doubts?

My mother—who was a devout Evangelical Christian, as most of my relatives on her side of the family tree still are—found the poem. I was still in high school at the time. Her reading of it triggered an effort on her part to bring me back into the fold of True Believers for the rest of her life … An effort since taken up by my siblings. Now THAT is heavy emotional lifting.

From early teenage to late middle age I was on a roller coaster of doubt versus faith. In the beginning the periods of doubt were the lows and the periods of faith were the highs … very low and very high. This slowly and tumultuously reversed over my adult years until now I am elated by my rejection of the mind-numbing Fundamentalism of True Belief and regretful when I think of the time I spent in its wasteland—but only mildly depressed because I think of it as part of my becoming a unique person struggling with rational choice and other fruits of the Enlightenment.

The struggle has been worth it. The outcome fits the overworked phrase:

There is a light at the end of the tunnel.