The Burden and Beauty of Doubt
Faith in God is never sure, which is precisely why it works so well
As a bishop, I would often meet with individuals weighed down with spiritual burdens so heavy that you could see the strain in their wearied expressions.
Each story was unique and deeply personal, yet there were two overriding themes in the majority of our difficult and heartfelt exchanges:
#1: We All Need Love
“God didn’t make a mistake when He made you. You need to see yourself as God sees you.” — Joel Osteen
Jesus, during his life, taught that there were two absolutes on the commandment nutritional chart:
“Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind.
“This is the first and great commandment.
“And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.” (Matt. 22:37–39)
All too often, individuals would come to me trapped in unhealthy relationships with people, with substances, or with online content.
In their stories, I could sense a deep yearning to feel loved — loved by God, loved by family, and most importantly loved by themselves.
When unable or unwilling to feel that love, we often choose the seemingly pleasant trailheads of least resistance, only to quickly discover that quicksand is hidden around the first bend.
Sure enough, almost everyone that came to see me was knee-deep in a muddy mess they had never anticipated.
The truth I learned is that we all need to feel loved and we each want to be heard. As a bishop, I often felt if I could only do three things well, it would be to shut up, listen, and love unconditionally.
Sure enough, it often was all that was needed.
God’s love would fill the room as we counseled together, and we both walked out of the office feeling better about ourselves and our ability to tackle life.
#2 The Necessity of Doubt
“Faith is not something to grasp, it is a state to grow into.” — Mahatma Gandhi
One of the most infuriating aspects of faith-based living is the clause stipulating that we can never know if what we believe in is undeniably true.
People would tell me often, “It seems like everyone but me knows that God lives, that Jesus is their Savior, and that the scriptures are true.”
Plagued by doubt, these individuals assumed they alone were decaying while everyone else in the congregation was planted firmly and thriving in plots of sure knowledge.
“Are you telling me that you’re not 100% sure whether God exists or the principles of the gospel are true?” I would ask them.
“Welcome to the club,” I would then say with a reassuring smile.
I would then go on to explain that none of us, save God’s perfect son, have a 100% sure knowledge of His existence and plan.
From the time Christians were newborns, the Apostle Paul was teaching that “we walk by faith, not by sight” and, as Ralph Waldo Emmerson reminds us, “the faith that stands on authority is not faith.”
As members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, we believe God’s primary role is that of a parent trying to help their children grow up to Godhood. If God exists, and I believe strongly that he does, then living by and acting on faith must be a core principle of his modus operandi.
And doubt, bless its heart, is our mandatory daily supplement in faith-based living.
Not seeing the trees for the orchard
Each first Sunday of the month, members of The Church spend their group meeting sharing their testimonies with one another.
Member after member will walk up to the podium and begin by saying “I’d like to bear my testimony.” They then go on to share all the things they “know” to be true about the gospel.
Hear that ten times every month, 120 times a year, 1200 times a decade and it’s easier to understand why individuals young and old come to their bishop, weighed down with doubts about “their testimony.”
“I don’t have a testimony,” I would often hear as a bishop, followed by, “How can I possibly participate in church when I don’t have one?”
In their minds, they pictured a testimony as singular, one lone tree that was either blossoming or dying. In reality, a testimony is not as a single tree, but rather a giant orchard with hundreds of testimonies of all shapes and sizes.
Some of our testimonies are thriving and well established, while others still need much nourishment and attention. Some are naturally reinforced by our environment while others are naturally challenged.
Perhaps, for example, you’ve had a lot of heartfelt prayers answered in your lifetime. If that’s the case your “God’s existence” and “power of prayer” trees are probably giants in your orchard, bearing fruit daily and providing much-needed shade when life heats up to beyond bearable.
In another part of your orchard, you might be struggling to know that the scriptures are inspired or that fasting really is a principle of power. Perhaps you question certain of your church’s policies or comments from leadership.
That doesn’t mean you plow down and torch the entire orchard just because a handful of your testimony trees are failing to thrive. It means your orchard is perfectly filled with weeds of doubt, just like the rest of ours. And, as any good farmer would recommend, a little faith fertilizer and a lot of love will do a lot more good than a torch.
After all, if weeds of doubt never cropped up, how could we ever truly act on faith? And if we never acted on faith, how would we ever grow into the strong orchards God knows we can become?
Doubt then, it seems, is not an infection of the soul but rather a primary vehicle on our road to divinity.
To accept it is to simultaneously accept our divine role and duty.
