Blogging through The Orthodox Heretic day 23

In Blindness a scribe encounters Jesus and calls out "Have mercy on me!" Jesus stops, lays hands on him, and immediately the man becomes blind and cries in joy. Jesus tells him, "You will be blind for a while," to which he replies, "It does not matter for the moment you touched me, I saw all I ever need to see."

Again, I'll go in a different direction that Peter in his commentary... I was struck by the impossibility of reproducing a mystical experience. For some folk that leaves them lost. They have experienced the holy and when it never happens again in the same way or perhaps with the same intensity, they lose any faith. Perhaps the one experience is enough?

It also had me thinking of faith and doubt. You can read an earlier post to get my thoughts on faith and doubt as fraternal twins. Perhaps a mystical experience opens us in a new way to doubt as well as faith...

Faith & Doubt - Fraternal Twins

In common usage, the antonym for "faith" is "doubt." Certainly that would be true in most churches. I think the reality is different. I think the word, "certainty" is a better antonym and that faith and doubt are more like fraternal twins... not exactly the same but very, very closely related.

Let me explain. Both faith and doubt require a bit of humility that says, "I'm not entirely sure." Faith, the book of Hebrews tells us, is "the substance of things not seen." That is to say, it is the things about which we cannot be 100% certain. We've looked at the evidence and at our experience and everything points that way. We've wrestled with the question and have come up with the best possible answer, but we don't have all of the data and there is no formula to get a scientific provable answer. Any answers we do have are written in pencil as they are subject to change. We have faith. We aren't sure. Likewise with doubt, we have wrestled with the questions and looked at all of the available data and it just doesn't seem to point at the commonly accepted answers. It doesn't feel like the answer that is presented to us is the best answer and maybe there isn't an answer at all... but we still aren't sure. We have doubt. There is room to revisit the questions.

Both leave room for more growth and more possibilities. Both imply that the questions are more important than the answers and the wrestling is more important than reaching conclusions. Indeed, as soon as a permanent conclusion is reached, we are no longer in the realms of faith and doubt, but of certainty. That is not a good thing. Certainty has no room for any other possibilities. There is no wrestling. There are no other possible answers. There is no room for discussion. There is no growth yet to come. All humility goes out the door.

If my analysis is at all correct, it has huge implications for those of us who call ourselves followers of Jesus. We are not called to certainty, we are called to faith. The journey of faith does not come to an end because there is no end. Instead we move back and forth between doubt and faith, struggling with the difficult questions of life. Sometimes we are strong in our faith. Other times we are full of doubt. Both are essential steps on the path. Certainty takes us off the path, impedes our progress and our growth, and keep us from knowing the wonders we have not yet seen or experienced.

So hold fast to your faith... and your doubt. Both are positive steps along the journey to which we're called.

The Dark Night of the Soul

Jesus has a very special love for you. As for me, the silence and the emptiness is so great that I look and do not see, listen and do not hear.
— Mother Teresa to the Rev. Michael Van Der Peet, September 1979

Last week, Mother Teresa's letters to her friend were released to the public, showing a woman who struggled mightily with doubt. Immediately people like Christopher Hitchens came out saying that ths was more proof that faith is ridiculous and even Mother Teresa didn't really have any. Indeed, Hitchens essentially says that she was trapped in a hole she had dug for herself during her time of delusion... i.e. faith.

Hitchens suffers from a common misconception - that faith and doubt are opposites. They are not. Indeed, they are twins and without doubt, there is no faith. When Mother Teresa audibly heard Christ speak to her and call her to ministry among the poorest of the poor, she knew. She did not need or have faith. She had heard the voice of God speaking. There was no question. There was no trust. There was only the choice of whether or not to obey. When she later knew Jesus as "The Absent One," it was only faith that kept her going. Remember that the writer of Hebrews tells us that "Faith is the substance of things not seen." It is precisely when we doubt that we find faith. It is in the dark night of the soul that we discover faith and stand upon that which we cannot see.

Obviously Hitchens and his like see proof that she was just a crazy masochist doing what no sane person would ever do. For me, my respect for the woman has sky-rocketed. She was not a super-hero, just a woman with doubts and struggles like any other who happened to do lots of small things with extra-ordinary love. In doing so, she brought the kindom of God a whole bunch of steps closer. And Mr. Hitchens... if she was just crazy... oh that the world would be blessed with more crazy people like her.