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ProudDog
Posts:511
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| 03/24/2008 9:07 AM |
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| It's the Easter Season! This week we're going to discuss doubt. (remember 'doubting thomas?') and how it relates to faith. To get things started be sure to read some thoughts Kate and I have put together (Faithful Doubt and Doubt) and then join the conversation! |
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-Kirk Moore |
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Berni
Posts:13
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| 03/25/2008 12:32 AM |
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I don't believe God minds an honest doubter, it is outright disbelief that he does not like.
I think we can have faith and still doubt, especially when we are asking something for ourselves. We can have faith someone else will be healed, or whatever but have doubts whether we will receive the same help.
Doubt can be uncertainty but does not mean lack of faith. There have been a few things in the body of Christ that I have felt unsure about, so putting it on the back burner until God reveals more is not doubt.
In fact I think persisting in the faith you have despite your doubts, trusting in God to reveal truth to you down the road is more character building, I think than believing everything without question. God has given us good minds and wants us to use them.
I think the only essential things we have to have no doubts about is who Jesus is, the Son of God made flesh, and the way of salvation is only through Jesus' death in our place on the cross. Believe that and time will deal with any other doubts. Just my view
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Berni Wright |
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greenrebel55
Posts:70
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| 03/25/2008 1:44 PM |
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| Hi Berni, I'm with you. I think doubt is the other side of awe. When you experience a resurrection moment and your mind is stunned and your heart is full, your eyes go wide, your mouth drops open and you go WHOA! Then, as it fades, your mind wants to know, "What just happened here?" Anyway I think that's one way to look at doubt. |
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shine
Posts:30
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| 03/25/2008 7:44 PM |
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| Years ago a pastor loaned me a very dog-earred paperback(looking like it had been read 20 times) copy of a book called The Christian Agnostic, by Leslie Weatherhead. I'm sure this faithful pastor, now retired, loaned her book to everyone who had some big questions and was worried about having big questions. It set my mind at ease to know that it was alright to not know and to accept the parts of Christianity that made sense and to discover Christ in relationship, not through human dogmas required by other people. I think doubt and extreme curiousity can co-exist, doubt meaning that one does not have all the answers, but is involved in exploring more deeply. I think doubt that doesn't care is a different thing. |
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katehuey
Posts:174
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| 03/25/2008 8:42 PM |
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"As I see it, the primary religious task these days is to try to think straight...You can't think straight with a heart full of fear, for fear seeks safety, not truth. If your heart's a stone, you can't have decent thoughts – either about personal relations or about international ones. A heart full of love, on the other hand, has a limbering effect on the mind." William Sloane Coffin
Do you think that perhaps Mary Magdalene was just a little bit ahead of the other disciples - including Thomas - when it came to having a heart full of love instead of a heart full of fear? Maybe that made it a little easier for her to believe what seemed too good to be true. Her mind was limber.
Didn't fear barricade the doors, and love made its way in, anyway? Not only love, but hope and joy and new life, which are, I think, part of love.
How often do you experience really, really good news as "too good to be true"? |
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Kate Huey |
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ProudDog
Posts:511
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| 03/26/2008 11:39 AM |
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What do y'all think of these thoughts?
Doubt that takes risks helps us grow in faith
Fear with open doors helps us to see what we're missing. |
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-Kirk Moore |
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subear
Posts:774
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| 03/26/2008 12:22 PM |
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Kirk asks, "What do y'all think of these thoughts?"
"Doubt that takes risks helps us grow in faith"
I think doubt opens us up for deeper thinking, contemplation, reflection. It drives us into deeper research to discover (maybe) a deeper meaning (for ourselves) or a deeper truth (for ourselves), and this serves to increase our faith.
"Fear with open doors helps us to see what we're missing"
Fear is more difficult to deal with. Fear can close the door that doubt opened, stunting our spiritual growth. Jesus said to Mary, "Do not be afraid." And that is when she was able to recognize "the gardener" as Jesus.
Unless, on the other hand, we go into "fear" as a Tibetan Buddhist would, with the practice of Tonglen, the meditation practice of facing our greatest fears, not by trying to get away from them, but, by breathing in the fear, bringing our awareness directly into that feeling and just being there with it (not the story, just the feeling, emotional and physical) filling ourselves with that feeling, being in the present moment with that feeling. . . and allowing the spaciousness of Being to purify and allow us to see it for what it is. . . no thing. . . as it breaks up and dissolves into the nothingness from which it came. . . And exhaling the healing breath of Being, bringing healing thoughts and energy to all sentient beings who have ever felt that particular fear.
~In Peace, Love and Transformation,
Susannah
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"We are not human beings having a spiritual experience. We are spiritual beings having a human experience." Pierre Teilhard de Chardin |
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subear
Posts:774
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| 03/26/2008 1:22 PM |
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On the other hand,
fear can jump-start us out of our "dream" and into action.
P,L,&T,
SB |
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"We are not human beings having a spiritual experience. We are spiritual beings having a human experience." Pierre Teilhard de Chardin |
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Berni
Posts:13
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| 03/26/2008 11:32 PM |
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Doing something out of obedience to the Word despite one`s doubt takes courage and actually requires a lot of faith.
Fear to step into an open door that we know God has opened is unbelief.
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Berni Wright |
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katehuey
Posts:174
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| 03/27/2008 8:51 AM |
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| Berni, your image of an open door (that God opens) reminds me of the closed door that the disciples hoped would protect them. Little did they know! |
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Kate Huey |
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katehuey
Posts:174
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| 03/27/2008 8:56 AM |
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I wonder how many folks think of Easter evening as Pentecost (which it is in John's Gospel). I had never thought of Jesus breathing the Spirit into the disciples as an echo of the creation story, when God breathed life into humans. The story holds together in so many beautiful and unexpected ways.
And our story holds together with the traditions of our sisters and brothers, as Subear points out in describing the Buddhist practice of "exhaling the healing breath of Being, bringing healing thoughts and energy to all sentient beings who have ever felt that particular fear." Surely the Spirit was healing breath!
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Kate Huey |
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