When Doubting is an Act of Faith

Reading: "Cherish Your Doubts "By Robert T Weston

Cherish your doubts, for doubt is the attendant of truth.
Doubt is the key to the door of knowledge; it is the servant of discovery.
A belief which may not be questioned binds us to error, for there is incompleteness and imperfection in every belief.
Doubt is the touchstone of truth; it is an acid which eats away the false.
Let no one fear the truth, that doubt may consume it; for doubt is a testing of belief.
The truth stands boldly and unafraid; it is not shaken by the testing:
For truth, if it be truth, arises from each testing stronger, more secure.
Those that would silence doubt are filled with fear; their houses are built on shifting sands.
But those who fear not doubt, and know its use, are founded on rock.
They shall walk in the light of growing knowledge; the work of their hands shall endure.
Therefore let us not fear doubt, but let us rejoice in its help:
It is to be the wise as a staff to the blind; doubt is the attendant of truth.

Reflection: 

That reading  is one I remember from the Unitarian Universalist church of my childhood. In that congregation many had come from other faith traditions where they had doubted and questioned what was taught, and perhaps had been told explicitly or implicitly that doubt was not okay. How wonderful to find a UU church where we were encouraged to “cherish our doubts” and believed that truth could stand up to doubt, could stand up to testing. This theme, this willingness to doubt goes all the way back to the beginning of the Unitarian tradition- Consider Michael Servetus, a 16th century physician and early thinker of Unitarianism who wrote a book questioning the trinitarian dogma of the church called “On Errors of the Trinity” which got him in a lot of trouble for questioning church doctrine. If you’ve got doubts, you are in the right place.

In my childhood home we had a creek in our backyard and the neighborhood kids loved to walk from rock to rock across the creek. You learn after a few stumbles to test each rock as you go- how solid and stable is it? I think growing up UU gives me a sort of confidence, a faith that it’s worth testing and sorting through what we assume to be true -- like walking across the stones in the creek. It’s in our 4th principle: A free and responsible search for truth and meaning. I came across this perfect exchange in my novel this week- 2 scientists talking about what they are learning form their research:

One says --“We knew that, though.”
The other replies -- “We suspected it.”
“Do we know it now?”
“We suspect it harder,” “We’re scientists We only know things until someone shows us we’re wrong.” [Leviathan Falls p. 151]

I confess to you that the events of the past few years have got me doubting a lot of things that I thought were settled truth in my own mind. It’s not comfortable to see the bedrock beliefs you were standing on suddenly seem shaky and cracked, “why-- if that’s not true, what else isn’t true?” As unsettling as this time has been, continues to be, that testing becomes more and more important- what is real, now even after all that change. What can we count on? And what has changed, and what did we get wrong?

The wisdom story we shared this morning, The Scared Little Rabbit from the Buddhist tradition, reminds us that it really is important to inquire and investigate the assumptions that drive our actions. “never be led by hearsay, test all things for yourself.”

But doubt is a double-edged sword. We see in our culture today a knee jerk or reflexive doubting that is not “a servant of discovery” but a blunt weapon. One person I know battled Covid for weeks in the hospital and when he was finally sent home told his circle “I don’t believe I really ever had Covid” I know a lot of us have had similar experiences- friends, neighbors and family who believe what they read on social media over what their own doctors tell them, over the evidence of their own bodies.

Or consider how destabilizing it is for our democracy for the results of every election is doubted even after independent investigations, and close scrutiny of data and facts show that the results are sound.

In h The Tibetan book of Living and Dying Sogyal Rimpoche writes, 

“our society promotes cleverness instead of wisdom, and celebrates the most superficial, harsh and least useful aspects of our intelligence. We have become so falsely “sophisticated” and neurotic that we take doubt itself for truth, and the doubt that is nothing more than ego’s desperate attempt to defend itself from wisdom is deified as the goal and fruit of true knowledge. … not the open-souled and generous doubt that Buddha assured us was necessary for testing and probing the worth of the teachings, but a destructive form of doubt that leaves us nothing to believe in, nothing to hope for, and nothing to live by.” [p. 123]

This calls to mind our 5th source is -- “Humanist teachings which counsel us to heed the guidance of reason and the results of science, and warn us against idolatries of the mind and spirit.” I think part of what Sogyal Rimpoche is saying is that doubt itself can become an idolatry.

“Doubt is the touchstone of truth; it is an acid which eats away the false.” To extend that metaphor, acid eats away a lot of things, some of which are quite important to us.

Consider democracy: Clearly our system of government privileges some voices over others. If democracy is going to live up to our values, we must use our questioning, doubting minds to create a more equal government for all. At the same time- who knew democracy was so fragile? Who knew that it relied so heavily on all of us agreeing that it was important, that we wanted it to succeed, that if we all agreed on the rules of the game and followed those same rules we could trust the outcome?

Consider relationships: how constant doubting the loyalty, affection, friendship of the other can corrode the trust between you. It’s the plot of just about every Rom-com that one protagonist doubts, and so the other doubts. I think most people at one time or another have defended their tender hearts by doubting everyone, keeping at bay connections that might have been supportive and compassionate. This is the kind of heavy-handed doubt Sogyal Rinpoche is talking about. But this is the very nature of friendship, of love -- to risk putting weight on the relationship like reaching out your toe to that rock in the stream. We risk opening our heart, and hope the other does too. When we meet all people with skepticism, we limit and put at risk our relationships. We give each other the benefit of the doubt, (interesting phrase that) relationship becomes possible.

Consider our sense of self, our own worthiness. Teacher and Poet John O’Donohue writes:

Try, as best you can, not to let
The wire brush of doubt
Scrape from your heart
All sense of yourself
And your hesitant light.

I can’t offer you any proof that each person has inherent worth and dignity, and I’ll get real with you for a moment here, there are definitely times when I wonder- what is my worth? But if I try to head off my fears using doubt as a defense mechanism, I could easily dim that “hesitant light”. Instead we can try a more subtle use of doubt, like an experiment. If we have an old voice of judgement in our minds, that says “you’re no good” can we bring our skillful doubt to that, and ask “really? How do I know that? Where does that question come from? What other conclusions are possible given the facts of this moment?” What if we lived our lives as if we had inherent worth and dignity, investigating and exploring questions about what the worth of our lives have been to myself and to our community. Such an experiment could help us grow in self knowledge and wisdom.

Sogyal Rinpoche tells us: 

“The Buddha summons us to another kind of doubt, ‘like analyzing gold, scorching, cutting and rubbing it to tests its purity.’ ... In the place of our contemporary nihilistic form of doubt, then, I would ask you to put what I call a “noble doubt” the kind of doubt that is an integral part of the path toward enlightenment” [p. 124]

Consider Community: Because of our human capacity to co-regulate, to effect each others nervous systems unconsciously, both anxiety and resilience are sort of infectious. Feeling trust and safety or feeling distrust and fear are both contagious. Our distrust can become a self-fulfilling prophecy. In a way we make our community trustworthy by deciding together, as a collective that it is trustworthy. I have seen this beloved community month after month, year after year, discuss heavy and challenging things together, and when we start from that gracious assumption of good intent the discussions are deep and meaningful. I’ve also seen meetings where there is a deep distrust in one another, a suspicion that infects the relationship. I’ve seen communities rooted in distrust tear themselves apart. There’s a paradox there- trust has to be earned, but it can’t be earned if we don’t risk. Also, trust is a subtle and complex thing, just as doubt is. Trust is specific and personal. For example, I had a friend who was often 45 minutes late for our get-togethers. I could have painted with a broad stroke, assumed “she untrustworthy” but if I used a finer stroke I noticed the many ways she was trustworthy, and in fact she was quite reliable about always being late. I decided I would always meet her at my place or hers and bring a book in case she was running behind. Like the fine brushes of an archeologist, we brush away the dust until what is true and solid emerges.

As I was looking for hymns this week, I sung through #293 “O Star of Truth”. The tune is nice but it ends with the phrase “though I be lone and weary” and I thought, that’s not the kind of doubt I want to encourage today- doubt that isolates us and makes us weary. I am talking about the kind of doubt that can happen within beloved community – our community can help us be accountable, challenge us. We aspire to be that kind of community that can say “I have a different point of view”

And of course when we have evidence to the contrary- for example the wrong link is in the newsletter, the preacher uses the wrong word for something -- we try to again assume good intent behind the mistake, and also to make course corrections as we go. We know for a fact our leaders, or members, our tradition is fallible. Rev. Rebecca Parker once said what she admired most about UUs was that we understood something about what it is to be human. We know that we make mistakes, and we know that we learn and grow. We come together in community as fallible, growing, evolving humans, and part of the reason I love this congregation is because I trust that if I make a mistake, you will ask me about it in a gentle loving way- “the 28th is a Tuesday, did you mean worship would be on a Tuesday, or that it will be on Sunday the 26th?”

Sogyal Rinpoche writes: 

“Don’t let us take doubts with exaggerated seriousness, or let them grow out of proportion, or become black-and-white or fanatical about them. What we need to learn is how slowly to change our culturally conditioned and passionate involvement with doubt into a free humorous and compassionate one. This means giving doubts time, and giving ourselves time to find answers to our questions that are not merely intellectual or “philosophical” but living and real and genuine and workable. Doubts cannot resolve themselves immediately; but if we are patient a space can be created within us, in which doubts can be carefully and objectively examined, unraveled, dissolved and healed.”

On the spiritual path we will experience doubt, I know I do. Our task then is the subtle discernment of what is trustworthy -- in our religious tradition, in our community, in ourselves. It’s an easy habit to let our doubts convince us that nothing is trustworthy, to let our cynicism coat everything with a single shade of paint. Could we instead engage with doubt in a way that is “ free, humorous and compassionate?” Could we hold our doubts like an artist’s paintbrush with subtlety and skill to reveal a living and complex reality? Your doubts are welcome here- let us support one another as we test the stones beneath our feet, and trust that which we find to be trustworthy.