I can't remember the number of times in my young years as a Christian that I was told that I should have no doubts. But I did, and I do...
I grew up in a boarding school that taught me a strict, disciplined christianity: and whilst that sounds bad, it wasn't. My experiences at the school taught me many things that benefit me today. But it also filled me with a sense of guilt if I didn't always get the religious part right.
I read recently of another young man, who "came up to the well-known American preacher Harry Emerson Fosdick, and confessed with some distress - that he no longer believed in God. 'So you are an atheist,' said Fosdick. 'Describe to me the kind of God you don't believe in. ‘The youth then outlined the childish ideas about God in whom he could no longer believe. 'My boy,' said Fosdick, 'that makes two of us. I don't believe in that God either.'
Don't get too worried, yet, I do believe in God, and I do know this God to be intimately engaged in my life. But the God I know is much different to the one of my youth. And I think that the God I am trying to know likes doubt... the God I am trying to understand, (but let's face it never will) applauds the person who, with integrity of heart and mind, questions, yells and argues with the reality that is life and God.
I think that one of the origins of doubt is integrity. It is not wrong, or sinful, to doubt, we must continually challenge long-held beliefs, and "sacred cows". The only faith that is worthwhile is that which is not afraid to question anything. Nothing is too sacred for honest analysis. Doubt which springs from integrity is very healthy.
So my pet subject of integrity raises its head again... after all it's all about integrity!
