Above Doubt and Fear 8/22/48
Scripture: John 20: 24-29
Text: John 20: 25, 28; “..... Except I see ... I will not believe.”
“..... My Lord and my God.”
For some reason which seemed good to himself, Jesus chose one man among his apostles who was a doubter. For that matter, he chose another who proved to be a traitor. Evidently all sorts of men were not only welcomed, but desired and needed by our Lord to help him in revealing the eternal truth to mankind.
Probably you recall the story told in the Gospel of John concerning Jesus’ appearance to his friends after the crucifixion. Thomas, called Didymus, was not at first with the rest of them. The others said openly to him, when they saw him, “We have seen the Lord.” That was too much for Thomas. Sorrowfully, but firmly, he told them that he would believe no such thing unless he had first put his fingers where the nails pierced Jesus’ hands, and his hand to the side that had been pierced with the spear.
Later on, Thomas had the same experience of Jesus’ presence as had the other disciples. And it seemed that Jesus was saying to him, “Reach here your finger. See my hands. Put your hand in my side. And be not faithless, but believing.”
There are doubts which come into the lives of most of us which seem devastating. Unexpected disease incapacitates some splendid soul; and friends, family, and even physician find it hard for a time to believe in the goodness of God. A promising young person is suddenly taken from the earth in death and those who have pinned their love and hopes on that life are for a time irreconcilable.
It is said that the great poet Alfred, Lord Tennyson, wrote no poetry at all for ten years after the death of his friend, Arthur Henry Hallam. Hallam had seemed a youth of extraordinary promise, and a young man of outstanding ability when he was stricken, in Vienna, at the age of 22, and died.
Not only did the personal tragedy of his death cut off the springs of poetry in Tennyson for ten years, but it was sixteen years before the poet wrote that monumental poetic tribute to Hallam, “In Memoriam.” By that time he was able to say, “There lives more faith in honest doubt, Believe me, than in half the creeds.”
Is it possible that doubt sometimes leads to faith? What hope is there beyond our fears? It is certain that this is a doubting era and a time of great fears. Honest religion does not call doubt a crime, but an illness. For doubt can be terribly real in the face of life’s seeming futilities. The stern aspects of our faith demand great faith.
The disciple, Thomas, is not just one example of doubter toward whom all others may point with abhorrence. His doubts are characteristic of our age, and of most of us at times. Doubt has left its mark on everyone and we must “confess the sins of our times as our own.”
Thomas was persistent and sincere at raising questions. There was a time when Jesus was giving the greatest lesson of comfort ever taught. He was telling his disciples of preparations for his Father’s children. “If I go to prepare a place for you, I will come again, and receive you unto myself; that where I am there ye may be also. And whither I go ye know, and the way ye know.” [John 14: 3, 4]. The sheer poetry of it swayed the other disciples; but not Thomas. Thomas wanted to know more. He asked, “Lord, we know not whither thou goest; and how can we know the way?” [John 14: 5]. No blind acceptance or assumption with Thomas! Patiently the Master answers -- in language that is still that of the poet rather than of the engineer -- “I am the way, the truth and the life.” [John 14: 6].
Now here is a splendid thing about Thomas, doubter though he was and without vision; he was still ready to venture. When Jesus faced a trip to Bethany that gave his enemies a perfect chance to ambush him, Thomas, knowing full well the danger, did not lack the courage to say, “Let us go also, that we may die with him.” [John 11: 16]. He might be filled with his doubts and yet still be willing to lead the others in loyalty and love under threat of death.
There are many causes which lead men into doubt. (1) Some become bewildered at the tremendous expanse of our universe. I once knew a theological student, now minister of a church in the east, who had been a stubborn doubter of realistic sort in college. In contemplation of some of the facts of astronomy, he drew a great wall-sized chart of some of the stars of the sky. And he used to like to fasten it across one wall of his room, turn to one or more of his religious friends, and say, “Will you tell me just where in all that tremendous expanse one can find God? Please point out the location to me.” It wasn’t just a trick. He was a sincere, philosophical seeker after truth. His father was an avowed atheist, and he believed himself to be one also.
A change presently came over his thinking -- how, I do not know. But later on, he used to take out that same chart, fasten it to the wall and address this question to his friends: “Can you point to a single bit of space in all the starry universe where God is not found?”
He had, for one thing, not limited his ideas about God to his own first little notions of the universe. But as his understanding of the magnitude and grandeur of the universe grew, his concept of the nature of God at length also grew. A poet writes,
... as his universe grew great,
He dreamed for it a greater God.
It is my observation that first-rate scientists do not discover, but rather do affirm the presence of mystery and are essentially religious souls in that expanded sense.
(2) If some become doubtful because they are for a time overwhelmed by increased factual knowledge, there are some also whose doubt is the result of a lost conscience. Ours is an age of disillusionment and this leads us to grow slack in our conduct. And lax conduct has always led to greater doubt.
I have known parents who hesitated to send their young people to certain colleges - or to any college or university - because they feared that the uncovering of certain scientific knowledge would destroy their faith. Some, indeed, have selected the occasional school in which faculty members write their own texts, keeping them strictly in line with a given religious dogma rather than with objective scientific findings. This, it seems to me, tends to the perpetuation of small ideas, both of the world and of God.
And at any rate it is probable that more college students lose their faith through declining morals than through scientific discoveries.
(3) Doubts arise also when we question the character of God. Is God all-good, all-powerful, all-knowing? In what ways is God’s goodness, power, omniscience apparent? Why is an honest man ruined by some crooked dealing on the part of others? How does it happen that a child goes through all its life with useless eyes - blind to so much that stimulates the senses of others? How can it be that a woman lives to sell her honor for gold, or a man bargains the integrity of his office for graft while virtue starves over half the world? Where is the fairness of rain falling on the just and the unjust alike?
History and experience are punctuated by question marks for which some of the glib answers often given are quite inadequate. Indeed the only answers approaching adequacy are found in the spirit of people who still trust though they can not see. And that is a mystery, though very real.
Doubts may stop us for a time, as they did Tennyson. But we can not stop with doubt, nor could he. For he lived to write with power,
There lives more faith in honest doubt,
Believe me, than in half the creeds.
(1) The great lesson of the book of Job is that of undefeated trust. If we can not understand the God of things as we want them to be, we can still trust the God of things as they are. And somehow integrity lies in such trust.
(2) Integrity lies also in adherence to duty. I do not easily forget the remark of a man with whom I had occasional pleasant dealings. His wife was helping with the church school teaching in a church of remarkable neighborhood promise. He himself had had a fleeting interest there, but not for long, and he was a bit impatient with his wife. He said to me, “She seems to think it is her ‘duty’ to be of some such service.” And he used the word “duty” with a kind of gentle sneer which seemed to suggest that he wanted to be considered above such nonsense.
That man is a person of considerable ability and promise. His family had the means to train him well. He had a complete academic training for the Christian ministry including a degree from a leading eastern theological seminary. Yet he was not a minister and I do not think he ever will be. I have not heard that he has ever succeeded much in business, though his father before him was very considerably successful. Aside from being a pleasant sort of fellow, intent on helping other folk to have a good time through various kinds of what he calls “personal service,” I do not think he will ever amount to much nor contribute anything significant to his generation.
And it seems to me that the tragic key to this probably failure lies in his refusal of that which most earnest men call “duty.”
An Englishman who became one of the great Christian preachers and Christian interpreters of his country described the agonizing transition in his own life from blind, unreasoned, dogmatic faith through doubt to the new and clearer day of his soul. Speaking of the “awful hour -- let him who has passed through it say how awful -- when this life has lost its meaning, and seems shriveled into a span,” Robertson says, “I know but one way in which a man may come forth from his agony scatheless; it is by holding fast to those things which are certain still -- the grand, simple landmarks of morality --- It is better to be generous than selfish, better to be chaste than licentious, better to be true than false, better to be brave than a coward.”
So it was with Thomas. Though doubting, he still loved the Master, he was willing to face death with him, to trust him.
And there came the day for him, as there come ours if we also remain true, when with a great burst of gladdened insight he could say, “My Lord, and my God.”
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Delivered in Wisconsin Rapids, August 22, 1948 (Union Service)