Faith without doubts is blind: it can only exist where absolute certainty is impossible. My faith is no doubt a shocker to those who know me, although not entirely incredible. I am not a religious man, religions to me are things that start wars and cloister people into pigeon holed thought processes that create unity at the cost of truly meaningful existences. Personally I have struggled with many of the big questions such as the problem of pain and the existence of God, but my thoughts tonight turn to the nature of faith.
Faith by it's own definition requires a lack of surety. My thesis rings true on many fronts. I believe that true Christians are not called to absolute surety, as this would mean that what we believe in can be empirically derived. While it is true that to a certain extent that truth can be empirical, the very fabric of Christianity hinges on many things that defy physics or other scientific disciplines that consequently put accounts (literal or figurative) more into the realm of the fantastic than cold hard empirically defined reality that we are so accustomed to. The very crux of my faith (that a man came here, faced a violent and brutal death that left little doubt that he was truly dead, then was seen by several people to be completely alive and bearing only scars of the event) is indeed by its nature a paradox of science.
Faith is a step towards understanding. Even evolution is subject to this gap. The further you study the patterns of thought involved in evolutionary biology you discover that we look for links between species. This assumes evolution. Yet links are found and then are assumed to be proof that evolution is true. This is a fallacy of circular reasoning. We are all subject to it. We have to assume something is true before we can begin to search for truths to support our beliefs. I am not here to argue whether evolution is valid or suspect, merely to point out that even in something accepted many is plagued by this beast of faith.
But blind is not the faith all Christians are called for. The blind faith we are trained in as children in one ideal or another (and the process is not different than for those who teach any number of secular thoughts). My faith is open to interpretation, a level of maturity that says that some things are meant to be accepted for now until a better answer presents itself. I have personally seen in myself a change from many ideas of theology that have been debunked by simply applying low level reasoning to Biblical passages on which Christianity is supposed to be based. I see no where in Scripture that says "Do not doubt the existence of God, it is folly and you will be punished for it." I see a man incredulous that his best friend was brutally decimated three days previous to his hearing that he is alive again, so much so that his friend confronts him and doesn't invite him to put his finger through the holes in his hands, he commands it. There is a place in Christianity for searchers. In fact, it would seem that it encourages us. It teaches us that there are false realities that will be taught to us by influential and usually highly educated and seemingly knowledgeable people, but we are able to open the Bible and see what God has said and create our own cohesive narrative. Granted, this does not lower the Bible to one of those cheap "create your own adventure" novels we read as kids. But it does mean that no special knowledge is needed to determine what the Bible says. It is freely available to whoever would read and understand it.
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