Doubt Isn’t the Opposite of Faith
Fear is.
Father Eric Ritter’s comment, “Doubt isn’t the opposite of faith; fear is,” remains in my mind days after I heard him preach the homily for Saint Matthew’s Tuesday 6 AM Mass. The Gospel passage for Tuesday was:
As Jesus got into a boat, his disciples followed him.
Suddenly a violent storm came up on the sea,
so that the boat was being swamped by waves;
but he was asleep.
They came and woke him, saying,
“Lord, save us! We are perishing!”
He said to them, “Why are you terrified, O you of little faith?”
Then he got up, rebuked the winds and the sea,
and there was great calm.
The men were amazed and said, “What sort of man is this,
whom even the winds and the sea obey.
We know Saint Francis’ prayer, “Lord, make me an instrument of your peace:
where there is hatred, let me sow love;
where there is injury, pardon;
where there is doubt, faith;…”
Therefore, switching the antonym of faith from doubt to fear gets our attention. And compels us to spend some time on this familiar Gospel passage. So familiar, perhaps, that its meaning has been lost.
The first time I imagined being in a fishing boat in a raging storm with Christ asleep on a cushion was during a meditation on that Gospel passage shortly after I converted to Catholic Christianity. The Legionnaire priest giving the meditation received my undivided attention because of the simple imagery he used, effectively applying the words to my life, to the lives of each of us.
The Gospel of Mark adds the details given in that long-ago meditation:
“A violent squall came up and waves were breaking over the boat, so that it was already filling up. Jesus was in the stern, asleep on a cushion. They woke him and said to him, “Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing?”
The priest talked about a friend of his, an intimate friend: Jesus. And his faith that was both simple and convoluted. Throughout the meditation, his expression was joyful. His smile lit up the room as he spoke of Who and what he loved. That priest took me by the hand as we climbed into that boat, to sit there and see what these guys saw, feel what they felt: the terror and then the awe. These men spent much of their lives on the water. Rough waters were part of the job; annoying but expected. To cause such terror among these experienced men, those waves had to be colossal.
Why are you terrified?
Reflecting on fear, faith, and doubt recalls one of Michael Crichton’s best novels: State of Fear. Like many of Crichton’s thrillers, it is jam-packed with research. Twenty-one years ago, when Crichton’s book was published, global warming was the cause of worldwide political unrest, even frenzy. And impassioned ‘believers,’ were religious in their crusades, some to the point of terrorism and murder, the subjects of this novel. It’s a fun read.
However, it is just one character that I remember years after reading the book. Professor Hoffmann doesn’t appear until the last quarter of the book. An iconoclast, Hoffmann spectacularly debunks the concept of global warming, which makes him the enemy of most of the characters in the book. And some modern readers who opine about “the toxic legacy of Michael Crichton.”
When young protagonist, Evans, admits that he has no idea what Professor Hoffmann does, the professor declares,
“I study the ecology of thought,” Hoffman said. “And how it has led to a State of Fear.”
State of Fear
With that statement, this story changed from a fun read to something far more intriguing.
“the military-industrial complex is no longer the primary driver of society. In reality, for the last fifteen years we have been under the control of an entirely new complex, far more powerful and far more pervasive. I call it the politico-legal-media complex. The PLM. And it is dedicated to promoting fear in the population—under the guise of promoting safety…
…. modern people live in abject fear. They are afraid of strangers, of disease, of crime, of the environment. They are afraid of the homes they live in, the food they eat, the technology that surrounds them. They are in a particular panic over things they can’t even see—germs, chemicals, additives, pollutants. They are timid, nervous, fretful, and depressed. And even more amazingly, they are convinced that the environment of the entire planet is being destroyed around them.
Remarkable! Like the belief in witchcraft, it’s an extraordinary delusion—a global fantasy worthy of the Middle Ages. Everything is going to hell, and we must all live in fear. Amazing…
It isn’t just climate change that Professor Hoffmann denigrates in this remarkably prescient story, however. It’s an insidious and sinister amalgam of forces in the “political, legal and media complex” that combine with academia. Because of the knowledge explosion during the last decades of the twentieth century, the university was no longer the arbiter of knowledge, it was accessible to the unmatriculated.
“What happened,” he continued, “is the universities transformed themselves in the 1980s. Formerly bastions of intellectual freedom in a world of Babbittry, formerly the locus of sexual freedom and experimentation, they now became the most restrictive environments in modern society. Because they had a new role to play. They became the creators of new fears for the PLM. Universities today are factories of fear. They invent all the new terrors and all the new social anxieties. All the new restrictive codes. Words you can’t say. Thoughts you can’t think. They produce a steady stream of new anxieties, dangers, and social terrors to be used by politicians, lawyers, and reporters. Foods that are bad for you. Behaviors that are unacceptable…
The modern State of Fear could never exist without universities feeding it. There is a peculiar neo-Stalinist mode of thought that is required to support all this, and it can thrive only in a restrictive setting, behind closed doors, without due process. In our society, only universities have created that—so far. The notion that these institutions are liberal is a cruel joke. They are fascist to the core, I’m telling you.”
There’s far more to stimulate and provoke in this excellent novel: grab your own copy.
Saint Thomas, the doubter.
On Thursday of this week, the liturgical church celebrated the Feast of Saint Thomas, the apostle. His is yet another Gospel passage that begs for contemplation. Because like each of us, the apostle now called ‘doubting Thomas’ is complicated.
Saint Thomas the Apostle has a biblical modifier: the twin. John the Evangelist mentions it three times. The repeat makes us wonder, doesn’t it? Consistently we refer to Thomas as ‘the doubter,’ even using it as an adjective for a skeptic—doubting Thomas.
But could Didymus mean something other than a twin sibling?
Like a description for a dual nature?
One that both doubts and believes?
Like us who say we believe but frequently reveal our lack of belief?
Saint Gregory the Great explains:
Thomas, one of the twelve, called the Twin, was not with them when Jesus came. He was the only disciple absent; on his return he heard what had happened but refused to believe it. The Lord came a second time; he offered his side for the disbelieving disciple to touch, held out his hands, and showing the scars of his wounds, healed the wound of his disbelief.
Dearly beloved, what do you see in these events? Do you really believe that it was by chance that this chosen disciple was absent, then came and heard, heard and doubted, doubted and touched, touched and believed? It was not by chance but in God’s providence.
In a marvellous way God’s mercy arranged that the disbelieving disciple, in touching the wounds of his master’s body, should heal our wounds of disbelief. The disbelief of Thomas has done more for our faith than the faith of the other disciples. As he touches Christ and is won over to belief, every doubt is cast aside and our faith is strengthened. So the disciple who doubted, then felt Christ’s wounds, becomes a witness to the reality of the resurrection.
Touching Christ, he cried out: My Lord and my God. Jesus said to him: Because you have seen me, Thomas, you have believed. Paul said: Faith is the guarantee of things hoped for, the evidence of things unseen. It is clear, then, that faith is the proof of what can not be seen. What is seen gives knowledge, not faith. When Thomas saw and touched, why was he told: You have believed because you have seen me?
Because what he saw and what he believed were different things. God cannot be seen by mortal man. Thomas saw a human being, whom he acknowledged to be God, and said: My Lord and my God. Seeing, he believed; looking at one who was true man, he cried out that this was God, the God he could not see.
What follows is reason for great joy: Blessed are those who have not seen and have believed. There is here a particular reference to ourselves; we hold in our hearts one we have not seen in the flesh. We are included in these words, but only if we follow up our faith with good works. The true believer practises what he believes. But of those who pay only lip service to faith, Paul has this to say: They profess to know God, but they deny him in their works. Therefore James says: Faith without works is dead.
Caravaggio: The Incredulity of Saint Thomas
