I want to go on record as being a big fan of doubt. And partly that’s because, as I’m going to unpack here in a bit, I think some doubt’s a healthy thing. But it’s mainly because I have found, in my own faith journey, it’s just an inevitable thing.

Doubt’s a part of life. Now some people seem to be free from doubt. They find belief in God easy. Sometimes their belief is so luminous and constant that it defies every shadow and seems to banish the night, and I can’t stand them. I covet their certainty. Because sometimes, I have doubts. And I think that’s natural. We learn to doubt at an early age. At some point somebody tells us a lie, maybe even for a good reason. But once we discovered we’d been lied to, the seeds of doubt are planted, and they’re worse than dandelions for rooting out. The next time we were told something, we questioned whether it was true: we doubted.

And that’s a necessary thing for survival in this world. If we believed everything we were told, we’d soon be in trouble. So if someone tells us their laundry detergent is better than someone else’s, we question it and try the off brand. If the government tells us they’re doing something for our own good, we question their motives. If we get something in the mail that says we may already be a winner, we toss it. We’ve all been disappointed, been lied to, been tricked, so in self-defense we doubt.

Now, today’s passage from the Gospel of John portrays the Bible’s poster boy for doubt, Thomas. We call him "Doubting Thomas," but he’s no different from the rest of us. At some point, I’m guessing we all doubt the resurrection, just like he did. So we can’t blame him. Consider this from Thomas' point of view. He saw Jesus crucified. The Romans nailed him to a cross. And when the Romans set out to kill somebody, they do a thorough job of it. So the physical evidence was clear: Jesus was dead. And now, first the women and then the rest of the disciples were saying that Jesus was alive. And Thomas, well, he’s a bit skeptical.

And I don’t blame him. I have to acknowledge that I’m a lot more like Thomas than I’d like to admit. And I can also acknowledge that I can learn something from him. I have a special kinship with "Doubting Thomas." At times, I’ve known myself to be "Doubting Deana." When I was going through a particularly tough time spiritually a few years ago, when I had lost a lot of friends to AIDS, I decided that, most of the time, I didn’t believe in God any more.

This was a little awkward since I was on the Board at MCC-DC, was the vice-moderator, in fact, and I thought it was a tad unseemly, perhaps, for a leader in the church to be pretty much an atheist. So I thought about that, and I went to my pastor, Larry Uhrig, God rest his soul, and explained myself. I had it all quantified, and I told Larry that, on average, in any given week, I didn’t believe in God four days out of seven, a majority of the time. And on the three days that I sort of believed in God, on at least two of them, I hated God. So, I concluded, I ought to step down from the Board. And he looked at me and narrowed his eyes and shook his head, and said: "Oh no no no no no. You don’t get off THAT easy." And basically, he forced me to keep struggling with my doubt, the S.O.B.

So what happened to my doubts? Well, I did keep struggling. And because what I was dealing with was doubt brought on by grief over losing so many friends – grief not unlike what Thomas experienced, I suspect – my doubts, like his, centred on whether or not I could believe in resurrection. I was frantically searching for some evidence that someone was telling the truth about it. And finally out of desperation I turned to God and prayed – somehow that’s always the LAST resort – and asked God to show me the truth, you know "if you CAN, God...."

And that’s when I realized that trying to create faith in myself was a losing proposition. Faith is a gift of God. When I feel like I don’t have enough faith, I put the responsibility right at God’s feet..... "God, let me see the evidence, or just give me the gift of faith." And God is very generous. God ALWAYS gives faith to those who seek it. And it doesn’t come from proof, it just comes from God. Look at the story of Thomas. If we take it literally it means that Jesus goads Thomas into shoving his hands into the wound in Jesus’ side. Why? So he can muck around in all that gore in order to come to what is, in fact, just the opposite of seeing and touching – namely faith! Faith comes from an encounter with God.

Now, that’s not to say that I’ve stopped doubting. I still doubt a lot of things. I question my competence as a minister, especially when I reflect on the fact that sometimes the things preachers say make other folks’ doubts worse. I question the things I had always assumed about the Bible and the things other people told me. I question my own understanding of God's Word. But I no longer doubt the really important things. I know that God is a loving God. And I trust God to love me and lead me. To show me what I need to believe, and what I need to do to be more loving as Christ was loving, and to forgive me when I fail to follow. So, I’m still an quirky mix of faith and doubt.

And I suspect that makes me about normal, in this way, if in no other. I suspect that most of us often find ourselves between these two extremes; we have neither constant luminous belief nor utter disbelief. We can, on occasion at least, affirm a belief in God, and yet still hold doubts. And maybe we can never quite get used to this uneasy mix of belief and doubt in our lives. Although we may yearn for constant certainty, we suspect that we will continue to find it elusive. I do, anyway. I used to work for a lawyer, named Ed Schmeltzer. And Ed was, and I presume still is, an atheist. Now, THERE was a man who was certain all the time. I used to tell him that his faith in no God was just as strong as my faith in God. He just hated it when I would prove that he really DID have faith in SOMETHING.

But for the most part, I don’t think you can divide the world into two kinds of people; those who believe in God and those who don’t. That kind of clarity, and duality are only rarely reflected in life. In life as you and I experience it, the distinction between the believer and the doubter is not so easily made. Indeed, even the most ardent believer has moments of entertaining doubts. And the most confirmed skeptic – Ed Schmeltzer not included, he would say – has moments when his or her doubts are themselves subject to doubt.

There’s a book called, "Living Faith While Holding Doubts," by a minister in Vermont by the name of Martin Copenhaver. And Copenhaver cites a study of religious attitudes in his country, which revealed that a staggering number of people avoid any association with a church because they’re convinced they won’t find one in which they can freely and safely explore their religious doubts. Now, a significant number of those who did think they might go to church said they were looking for things like; good preaching; or a church whose members are seriously concerned to work for a more just and peaceful and compassionate society; or an excellent choir; or a friendly youth group; or ample parking. But the one factor that was ranked dramatically higher than any other was a desire for a community in which their doubts could be explored.

I like to think Christos is that kind of a church. When we say that, as church for L/G/B/T people, we want to be a place where people can bring their WHOLE selves before God, I like to think that we can bring our doubts and fears as well. We can be a place where the good news of Jesus Christ is proclaimed, and yet we still bring our doubts. Because we are often both believers and unbelievers at the same time.

And I don’t think it’s hypocritical to belong to a church or attend worship and at the same time have doubts. Worship isn’t just for folks who have everything resolved, for people who have it all together, spiritually. Now, I will admit that a worship service in and of itself doesn’t necessarily resolve the tension between what we seem to say by our presence in church, and what we actually believe in our hearts and minds. I suspect that for some of us, the things we say and do and sing in worship may take us a little beyond our unresolved places.

There may be affirmations made that seem difficult for some of us to believe. We may find it uncomfortable when, for example, the liturgy calls us to say some of the very things about which we hold the most doubt. Even the prayers that are printed in the bulletin may address a God whom we may doubt, at times, even exists. The songs may praise acts of God that seem for some of us implausible, at best. We may listen to the scriptures that are read and go "I dunno about that....."

So our own inner critic knows that there’s often a disconnect between what we hear, or even say during worship, and what we firmly believe. And this tension between expressing belief through worship, while holding grave doubts, can be disturbing. It leaves some of us torn between what we see ourselves doing and what we know ourselves to believe. And not surprisingly, we begin to wonder if we’re hypocrites. But to be a hypocrite is to be engaged in some kind of willful deception. And this isn’t the case when we bring our honest doubts and yet still gather as a people for worship...yearning for belief, and hoping for a living faith in God. That’s not hypocrisy.

Now, we know we can’t make other people believe. We can’t even MAKE ourselves believe. Fortunately, it doesn’t depend on us. The famous theologian Paul Tillich asked the question: "Can we maintain any certainty in spite of the fundamental uncertainties which are the character of our period in religion as well as in all other realms of life? Can we maintain it in spite of our personal doubts and despairs and of our skeptical heritage? The answer to these questions does not depend on us."

It doesn’t depend on us. We don’t have to do all the hard work of creating faith. What we can do is discover and awaken whatever measure of belief we may already have. According to Christian mystics this is achieved through what they have called "practising the presence of God." And that doesn’t mean sacrificing our brains on the altar of blind faith. Rather, it is living in faith to give belief a chance.

It means being willing to approach the communion table, not knowing for sure what it represents, but in the desire that we might discover, and then feast on, the mysterious presence of God. It includes giving resounding voice to the praise of God that may only at first, be a whisper within us. It’s choosing to behave as if the people around us are God's beloved children even though we’re used to seeing them as just the people around us.  It’s choosing to act as if we, ourselves, were God’s beloved children, redeemed by Christ and resurrection people like him, instead of the nasty things the tapes inside our heads or the memories, tell us we are.

This willingness to practice belief while waiting to believe is, in itself, an expression of faith. It’s a step taken in trust, with a desire to discover if there is truth in what we affirm. To find out if what we do as if it is true might become, in time, what we do because it is true. God can take the turmoil of doubt and transform it into the peace of faith. God took "Doubting Thomas" and transformed him into "Believing Thomas," and God can do the same for all of us. Yes, blessed indeed are those who have not seen the Christ and yet believe, but blessed indeed are those who doubt and still seek to touch God as well.

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