Conviction, Humility, and a Doubting Faith

"If a man will begin with certainties, he shall end in doubts; but if he will be content to begin with doubts he shall end in certainties." Sir Francis Bacon

"If you would be a real seeker after truth, it is necessary that at least once in your life you doubt, as far as possible, all things." Rene Descartes

"Believe those who are seeking the truth. Doubt those who find it." Andre Gide

I am addicted to conviction. My mind has a chemical dependency on it. In my search for truth I am constantly tempted to form opinions before I understand issues. I am drawn to people who have simple and strongly-held beliefs. I want so very badly to be right. Much of this desire is pride, but some of it is fear. Not knowing what to believe, not being sure, has an instability to it which scares me.

By the grace of God, I am better now than I once was. I have learned a life-changing lesson that being right is not a virtue. I have learned more about the world and the people in it, and the more I learn the more I realize Edison was right, we don't know a millionth of one percent about anything. I am less likely than I once was to place my opinion above others', less likely to exclude others for opinions I disagree with.

I have a friend who despises overconfidence. She says, "The more sure you are you're right, the less I want to hear about it." I understand what she means now.

As this transformation occurs, I am perplexed by the inter-working of conviction, doubt, and humility, particularly regarding faith. As my dear friend Winn Collier explored in his first book, Restless Faith, there is no question that God is able to handle our doubt. The Bible is full of folks who doubted God in all sorts of ways, and God still loved them, cared for them, and used them mightily. I doubt God often. I do not condemn others for their doubt. I believe freedom to doubt is a part of the Christian life.

But I can't help admire conviction. I can't help long for it. Here is a passage from a blog post a friend shared with me last week:

When you yourselves struggle with what you believe, it makes you no less people of faith. About nine months after this church got going, someone asked if I would go for a walk because there was something they wanted to talk to me about. We circled City Park as they proceeded to tell me with some hesitation that they didn't have the same theology of baptism than I did. They had different beliefs. After cautiously and painstakingly informing me of this fact, I looked at them and said "I'm so glad you told me because now I know you better. But please don't take it personally when I say … I don’t actually care."  I don’t really care what you believe. I care what you hear. Beliefs are fluid and go up and go down. People in this church believe all sorts of stuff. Trust me on that. But we aren't responsible for making sure we have pure doctrine and right belief about everything … we're just responsible for hearing the story and telling the story. That’s what we do as the church.

I felt deeply conflicted when I read this. I still do. The first line is so true; the Christian life is struggle, whether it's loving your neighbor or finding the truth. But to say "I don't care what you believe?" Certainly I couldn't care less about someone's beliefs about baptism, but surely somewhere, at some point, beliefs must matter. Without belief, of what consequence is this story we must tell as a church? The post this passage comes from begins with the story of John the Baptist doubting whether Jesus was "the one who is to come," and encourages the reader to "embrace a doubting faith." I want to yell, "Yes!" but this question keeps nagging me... If we look at the whole of John the Baptist's story, would we categorize him generally as a man of conviction, or a man who embraced a doubting faith? My suspicion is the former.

Come to think of it, doesn't Hebrews equate faith with certainty?

On this point, I am at no loss for great thinkers who agree. Here are a couple of my very favorite paragraphs from G.K. Chesterton's Orthodoxy:

But what we suffer from today is humility in the wrong place. Modesty has moved from the organ of ambition. Modesty has settled upon the organ of conviction; where it was never meant to be. A man was meant to be doubtful about himself, but undoubting about the truth; this has been exactly reversed. Nowadays the part of a man that a man does assert is exactly the part he ought not to assert: himself. The part he doubts is exactly the part he ought not to doubt—the Divine reason. [..] For the old humility made a man doubtful about his efforts, which might make him work harder. But the new humility makes a man doubtful about his aims, which will make him stop working altogether.

At any street corner we may meet a man who utters the frantic and blasphemous statement that he may be wrong. Every day one comes across somebody who says that of course his view may not be the right one. Of course his view must be the right one, or it is not his view. We are on the road to producing a race of men too mentally modest to believe in the multiplication table. We are in danger of seeing philosophers who doubt the law of gravity as being a mere fancy of their own. Scoffers of old time were too proud to be convinced; but these are too humble to be convinced. The meek do inherit the earth; but the modern skeptics are too meek even to claim their inheritance.

I am intensely drawn to these words. Here is a blog post from 2005 where I even echoed something similar (much less insightfully and eloquently, of course). Along these lines, how about this viral video which made the rounds in 2010:

Typography from Ronnie Bruce on Vimeo.

Tempting stuff, isn't it? Well at least it is for me.

Where have I landed in this turmoil between those who challenge us to speak with conviction and those who challenge us to embrace a doubting faith? Well as I said, it's a constant conundrum. The best I have right now is this:

First, have few beliefs. Second, hold these few beliefs dearly, passionately, and with as much conviction as you can muster. Choosing these beliefs is mighty difficult. I know Christ died and was resurrected to free us from sin. I know we must love our neighbor. There are a few others. I used to cast this net wider, but the humility I hope God is teaching me has shrunk it. Thank God for that. For those beliefs which I have given holding up as unquestionable, perhaps the fear I feel at the instability of doubt will move me to rely on him.

Image: uglyagnes