Struggling with your Faith is Good and Necessary

"Struggling with your Faith" cartoon by David Hayward

Doubt is the companion of belief. You cannot believe without doubting. Doubt behaves like a trellis upon which faith grows. Tear down the trellis of doubt and you tear down the support for faith. Or, in a more biblical analogy, uproot the weeds of doubt and you endanger uprooting the wheat of faith with it. So, doubt is necessary for our spiritual development. If we again consider Fowler's stages of faith, doubt is a crucial component of stage 4 where we cross over from a dogmatic certainty into the dark depths of mystery. Individuals avoid this stage of spiritual development because of the fear it induces as well as the social ramifications it arouses. Religious communities demand its avoidance because it threatens their purpose of keeping and controlling their people. There is a place beyond the dualistic reality of belief and doubt. Discover it! Rather, let it discover you! It is a place of peace like you've never experienced before, immune from the binary, conflictive realm of belief/doubt. Do you need to talk with someone about this? Try me.