{"id":19784,"date":"2021-02-03T09:42:23","date_gmt":"2021-02-03T14:42:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/?p=19784"},"modified":"2021-02-03T10:30:22","modified_gmt":"2021-02-03T15:30:22","slug":"faith-and-doubt-are-not-opposites","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/?p=19784","title":{"rendered":"Faith and Doubt Are Not Opposites"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p><em>The imagination should be\nallowed a certain freedom to browse around.<\/em><em><br>\n\u2014<\/em>Thomas Merton, <em>Contemplation in a World of Action<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/KxFj9xWuEXA\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture\" allowfullscreen=\"\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n\n\n<p>Basic religious faith is a vote for some&nbsp;<em>coherence, purpose, benevolence, and\ndirection in the universe.&nbsp;<\/em>Unfortunately, the notion of faith\nthat emerged in the West was much more a rational assent to the truth of\ncertain mental beliefs rather than a calm and hopeful trust that God is\ninherent in all things, and that this whole thing is going somewhere good.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I worry about \u201ctrue believers\u201d who cannot\ncarry any doubt or anxiety at all, as Thomas the Apostle and Saint Teresa of\nCalcutta (1910\u20131997) learned to do.&nbsp;<em>Doubt\nand faith are&nbsp;actually correlative&nbsp;terms.<\/em>&nbsp;People of\ngreat faith often suffer bouts of great doubt because they continue to grow.\nMother Teresa experienced decades of this kind of doubt, as was revealed after\nher death. In a letter to a trusted spiritual director she wrote, \u201cDarkness is\nsuch that I really do not see \u2014 neither with my mind nor with my reason. \u2014 The\nplace of God in my soul is blank. \u2014 There is no God in me.\u201d [1] The&nbsp;very\nfact that the world media and people in general were scandalized by this\ndemonstrates how limited is our understanding of the nature of biblical faith.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>It seems a movement&nbsp;from certitude to\ndoubt and through doubt to acceptance of life\u2019s mystery&nbsp;is necessary in\nall encounters,&nbsp;intellectual breakthroughs, and relationships, not just\nwith the Divine. Human faith and religious faith are much the same except in\ntheir object or goal. What set us on the wrong path was making the object of\nreligious faith \u201cideas\u201d or doctrines instead of a person.&nbsp;Our faith is not\na faith that dogmas or moral opinions are true, but a faith that Ultimate\nReality\/God\/Christ is accessible to us\u2014and even on our side.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>To hold the full mystery of life is always to\nendure its&nbsp;other half,&nbsp;<\/em>which is the\nequal mystery of death and doubt. To know anything fully is always to hold that\npart of it which is still mysterious and unknowable. Our youthful demand for\ncertainty does eliminate most anxiety on the conscious level, so I can see why\nmany of us stay in such a control tower during the first half of life. We are\ntoo fragile yet.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Author Sue Monk Kidd has written eloquently\nabout the disruption spiritual seekers often encounter in midlife and our\nresistance to it. She wonders:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>What has happened to our ability to dwell in unknowing, to live inside a question and coexist with the tensions of uncertainty? Where is our willingness to incubate pain and let it birth something new? What has happened to patient unfolding, to endurance? These things are what form the ground of waiting. And if you look carefully, you\u2019ll see that they\u2019re also the seedbed of creativity and growth\u2014what allows us to do the daring and to break through to newness. . . . Creativity flourishes not in certainty but in questions. Growth germinates not in tent dwelling but in upheaval. Yet the seduction is always security  <\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image\"><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" width=\"500\" height=\"288\" src=\"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/02\/Screen-Shot-2021-02-03-at-10.29.45-AM-500x288.png\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-19786\" srcset=\"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/02\/Screen-Shot-2021-02-03-at-10.29.45-AM-500x288.png 500w, http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/02\/Screen-Shot-2021-02-03-at-10.29.45-AM-300x173.png 300w, http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/02\/Screen-Shot-2021-02-03-at-10.29.45-AM-768x443.png 768w, http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/02\/Screen-Shot-2021-02-03-at-10.29.45-AM.png 1994w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 500px) 100vw, 500px\" \/><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The imagination should be allowed a certain freedom to browse around. \u2014Thomas Merton, Contemplation in a World of Action Basic religious faith is a vote for some&nbsp;coherence, purpose, benevolence, and direction in the universe.&nbsp;Unfortunately, the notion of faith that emerged in the West was much more a rational assent to the truth of certain mental [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19784"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=19784"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19784\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19788,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19784\/revisions\/19788"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=19784"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=19784"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=19784"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}