Too often the common perception is that when we have faith, then we will have no questions and no doubts. We can easily equate faith with certainty—with believing particular things with absolute confidence.
But this way of looking at faith makes it less about a radical trust in God and more about a trust in our own beliefs and conclusions. To trust that we are right and have the correct answers is not the same thing as trusting that God is right and good, and that God both has and is the true reality for everything. From this latter perspective, relationship with God becomes what is crucial, not having a personal knowledge that eliminates doubts and questions.
In fact, if we are trusting that truth lies in God, and with God, and is God, specifically as revealed to us in Christ, then we will accept that we will have many doubts and questions. We turn to rest in the Savior for assurance rather than resting on our own understandings.
Trust in the Lord with all your heart, And do not lean on your own understanding. Proverbs 3:5
Last week I wrote about the need for Christian communities to be places where questions are encouraged. Not only does this make it possible and safe for everyone to express their true concerns and grow, but questioning communities are where faith in God can actually be nurtured. This is not at all faith in doctrines, answers, or theological perspectives. Faith is when we risk trusting God because we are profoundly aware of our own limitations.
Wherever doubts and perplexing questions exist and are acknowledged, robust faith can emerge. The doubts do not disappear, but reliance on God, the truth of all things, becomes how we respond to our real inability to know and be sure of anything on our own. Faith exists when doubts are present as our response to our own lack of knowledge and certainty. The only way to trust God is through knowing we cannot rely on ourselves.
You will know the truth and the truth will set you free. John 8:32
We need to hear this familiar statement of Jesus as describing the freeing nature of being in relationship with him, because he is the truth (John 14:6). The freedom Jesus is talking about is not found in human intellectual certainty. In fact, such confidence is illusory and a fiction. We are finite, and the only practical certainty possible for us is with respect to our own limitations.
Freedom, in this sense, comes from knowing our own finite selves and also Christ as the truth of God. We can be free from the unachievable notion that we must be certain, and may instead find the assurance of trusting God.
Neither our finiteness, nor the doubts and questions which naturally come from our contingent existence, disappear when we have faith. Instead, faith is how we live as fragile and vulnerable creatures, trusting God through a faith that has been raised to life by our persistent questions. For this reason, Christian communities need to welcome questions, and the uncertainties that give rise to them.