Doubt and Faith

The story is told of two Jewish men from New York. They met in the street one afternoon. Their discussion turned to the existence or non-existence of a supreme being. One of the men says, "With all of the suffering in the world - with all of the kids in Africa and Haiti and even our own Appalachian region living on the edge of starvation - with heart disease and cancer being the killers they are, and Alzheimer's there for those unlucky enough to live into it - with mining disasters that take parents from children and spouses from spouses - how could it be possible that any God exists?"

The second man replies, "I lost my family in the Holocaust." Nothing more needed saying. If there is a God, where was He? How could we take seriously a God who so deserts His Chosen People?

Just then one of the men looks at his watch. "It's almost 3!" he exclaims. And the other replies, "Oh - we gotta hurry. We'll be late for prayers!"

I do frequently get myself caught up in the same sort of attitude - finding myself certain that no loving God could permit what seems to be going on, but then it's time for prayer.

Doubt and faith. Faith and doubt. I'm not sure that it's possible to have a meaningful, life-defining and life-changing faith unless you have first wrestled with the other side. Faith that is there only because of upbringing, because of cultural conditioning, is a start, and we'll take it as a start. But it's only a start. Mature faith, a faith to grow by, is faith that has had an honest encounter with its flip side, doubt.

If you are not familiar with Elie Wiesel's work you should become so. Wiesel survived the Nazi camps. His family didn't. He was in the same camp as his father. Wiesel went to sleep one night. His father was in a nearby bunk. When Wiesel awoke the next morning someone else was in his father's bunk. That's how Wiesel found out his father had passed away. In another passage Wiesel describes the hanging of another prisoner, a prisoner who had committed a terrible  offense. Well, as terrible an offense as a ten-year-old could manage. Because of the boy's small size he was strangling for quite some time before death mercifully intervened.

After the war Wiesel moved to Paris to live with relatives.This boy, all of seventeen, recounts looking into a mirror, and seeing only a corpse looking back.

And the question, always the question: God, where were you? Were you busy? Had a better offer? Wiesel did come to a point where his faith and his Jewish tradition took on renewed meaning for him. But that question - that one question - can it ever go away?

Do you think that Nelson Mandela and Desmond Tutu - yes, Archbishop Tutu - went through their periods of doubt? How could they not?

And where was God in that June twenty-six years ago when I was living out of the back of my station wagon by a stream in western Pennsylvania, with my wife and kids in a perfectly good home 700 miles away? There was that night when I remember drinking two beers out of a case. I woke up the next day in my car, having no clue how I'd gotten there. I looked for what remained of the case of beer after the two cans I'd remembered drinking, and found out that I'd gone through the case. I remembered nothing after the first two. Just FYI: that's called a blackout. A blackout is a big red flashing warning sign that you're in trouble. Deep.

I had no right asking the "Where were you, God?" question. My damage was self-inflicted. I was the perp. But my wife and kids certainly could have been asking.

Every single one of the people I've described found their faith after - or during - their fight with doubt. Me too.

Why doesn't God just fix everything? In When Bad Things Happen to Good People, Rabbi Abraham Heschel describes three characteristics attributed to God. God is all-loving. God is omnipotent. God is omniscient. Heschel's position is that we must surrender one of these attributes. That's not my answer. To me, to give up any of these is to give up God.

So why does God let this stuff happen? Short answer: I don't know. I wish I did. Or, maybe I should be glad I don't. I do know that my walk, as wobbly-legged as it is at times, is a walk of faith. It's faith that I only found on the other side of doubt.

As always, I'd love to hear from you. Thanks for hanging out for a few, my friends!