Stand-alone Studies

Note: A week before the class meets, ask members to read the Doubter’s Parish article, “Six Lessons I’ve Learned about Doubt.”

Begin the class by asking members, How many of you have seen the 2008 Academy Award-winning film Doubt starring Meryl Streep, Amy Adams, and the late Philip Seymour Hoffman?

Note that the movie ends with the words of a nun named Sister Aloysius saying, “I have doubts. I have such doubts.”

 Enlist someone to read the following paragraphs from the article:

Those anguished words of doubt were spoken by Sister Aloysius, principal of a New York City parish school. She spoke the words after accusing a priest of having an inappropriate relationship with a male student at her school. However, by the end of the movie, one suspects Sister Aloysius’s doubts went far deeper than her unproved accusations against the priest. In all likelihood, they also included doubts about her religious vocation, the Roman Catholic church, and faith itself. “I have doubts,” said Sister Aloysius, “I have such doubts.”

Sister Aloysius isn’t alone in her doubts. In recent decades, tens of millions of Americans have left their churches and other places of worship, and that trend shows no sign of abating. Instead, it’s almost certain to accelerate. Although motivations for departing organized religion are numerous, doubts about God, institutional religion, and traditional beliefs lead the pack.

Review the following two examples of doubt in the New Testament.

First, read Matthew 28:8–10, which occurred on the morning of the resurrection, right after the women heard the news that Jesus had risen from the dead. Then read verses 16 and 17.

The text says that when the disciples saw the risen Lord, they worshipped him, “but some doubted.” Why do you think they doubted? Can you relate to that? Why or why not?

Next, review the story of “Doubting Thomas” in John 21. Read 21:24–25. Ask the members if they can resonate with Thomas in that story. Why or why not?

Note that Martin’s article, “Six Lessons I’ve Learned about Doubt,” is a big-picture overview of religious doubt.

Then review quickly the six lessons that are laid out in the article.

Ask different members to read the lessons, one through six. It would be helpful to bring a printed copy of the six lessons so members can follow along. The six lessons follow:

1. Doubt is unavoidable. Every major character in the Bible struggled with doubt including Abraham, Sarah, Moses, David, Jeremiah, Thomas, and Peter. That’s also been true throughout Christian history. Most leading figures of the church, including Martin Luther and John Wesley, had moments of faith crisis. Mother Teresa, perhaps the greatest saint of modern times, felt God’s absence for decades. In a letter she wrote, “The silence [of God] is so great that I look and do not see, listen and do not hear.” Nobody who believes in God escapes doubt. Instead, like the father with a sick child in Mark 9:24, we often cry out, “Lord I believe, help my unbelief!”
2. Doubt is acceptable. It’s important to affirm that doubt is not the enemy of faith but part of faith. Tennyson was right when he said, “There lives more faith in honest doubt, believe me, than in half the creeds.” When author Madeleine L’Engle was asked, “Do you believe in God without any doubts?” she replied, “I believe in God with all my doubts.” Even Jesus experienced doubt. While dying on the cross, he cried out, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” In his thoughtful and helpful book, Faith after Doubt, Brian McLaren, himself a doubter, said, “Let’s give one another permission to doubt.”
3. Doubt is necessary. The fact is, Christians need to doubt many popular beliefs. For example, we need to doubt biblical literalism, including the idea that God condones slavery, commands genocide, oppresses women, created the world ten thousand years ago, and considers homosexuality an abomination (according to Scripture it’s also an abomination to mix fabrics and eat pork). We need to doubt that God eternally torments people in the flames of hell for having erroneous beliefs about Jesus. We need to doubt that non-Christian believers have no hope in this life or the next. We need to doubt that America is God’s preferred nation and is capable of no wrong and that God has a preferred political party. And we need to doubt the idea that everything that happens in the world is God’s will, as if God actually wants children to get leukemia, teenagers to die in automobile accidents, or global pandemics to terrorize the world.
4. Doubt is painful. Although doubt is common, that doesn’t mean it’s easy. If doubt is felt deeply and lingers long, it can prove overwhelmingly painful, bringing distress, disorientation, and trauma. That’s especially true for people who get paid to believe. One Sunday morning as I drove to church, I found myself singing an old Paul Simon tune called “Kathy’s Song.” In one of the verses, Paul Simon speaks about doubting everything he once held as true. As I sang the old familiar lyrics, I realized that I felt exactly the same way and had for a long time, and I began to weep. Not long after that experience I took early retirement from vocational ministry. For serious believers doubt hurts like hell.
5. Doubt is survivable. Near the end of the classic film The Shawshank Redemption, the lead character, Andy Dufresne, escapes prison through a sewer line. In voice-over narration his best friend Red commented, “Andy Dufresne, the man who crawled through five hundred yards of s*** and came out clean the other end.” Grappling with religious doubt can feel like crawling through a mile-long sewer pipe. But, if we navigate it well, we, like Andy, can come out clean on the other end. I cannot give you a precise prescription for traversing doubt. We all have to navigate our own journey. For example, some people stay in church, others take a sabbatical, and a growing number leave and never return. For most doubters, talking with trusted friends is therapeutic. Reading about other people’s journey can also help, and I’ll share some recommendations at the end of this article. For me, surviving doubt meant writing reams of journal pages. But one way or another, you and I can survive—and even thrive—as we journey through doubt.
6. Doubt is beneficial. In my conversations with doubters, I often speak about “the benefit of the doubt.” If we let it, doubt can lead to profound insight and growth. As already noted, it can help us discard toxic beliefs. Doubt can also help us develop a more mature and healthy faith. After doubting and discarding nonessential beliefs, we can move beyond a faith of doctrinal propositions—doctrines Jesus didn’t talk about or care about. The Golden Rule, the Great Commandment, the Sermon on the Mount, and the parables have nothing to do with doctrinal beliefs. Neither do the Ten Commandments, the prophets’ call for justice, or Paul’s bottom-line conclusion that “the greatest of these is love.” Instead of calling people to affirm creedal beliefs, Jesus calls us to live a life of love. Period. Therefore, in the end, doubt’s greatest gift is that it leads us away from a faith focused on beliefs and shifts us toward a faith focused on behavior.

After each lesson is read, ask members to respond. Ask them questions like, “What do you think about that? Do you agree or disagree? Have you had a similar experience? If so, would you share it with the group?

Before concluding the lesson, remind members that the article includes numerous resources for dealing with doubt. They might be interested in reading some of them.