Voltaire (via vruz)

Indeed!  A very wise woman, Rabbi Sheila Peltz, once visited Auschwitz; her response was “As I stood before the gates I realized that I never want to be as certain about anything as were the people who built this place.”

Undercover Nun has pointed out a number of times that a person who claims to have no doubts about his or her faith is either lying or is immature.  Doubt is necessary for faith.  If we are certain, we don’t have faith; we just have insurance.

Undercover Nun is a deeply faithful, committed Christian. But I struggle with some of the basic tenets of Christianity.  The resurrection of Jesus completely boggles my mind.  How could this even be possible?  And even if it’s possible for God, why would Jesus choose to come back here to this place where we tortured and killed him?  It just doesn’t make sense to me!  And yet, I see the Truth in it, and I consciously choose to place my faith in the promises of the resurrection, even when I have questions and doubts.

In some senses, a faith commitment is a gamble.  The stake is my immortal soul.  The elements of Christian doctrine are ideas that cannot be empirically proven in this world.  If they could be, they would be knowledge and certainty, and faith would be reduced to a mere business transaction, purchasing afterlife insurance.

No, the road to mature faith winds through question and doubt, wanders through lonely desert, climbs up craggy mountains where we just know we will fall to our doom.  We don’t know — we can’t know — why lies at the end of our journey.  Every stumble or trip causes us to wonder.  But we choose to place our faith — we stake our immortal souls — in God who loves each one of us beyond measure.

Voltaire is right.  Doubt is not pleasant, but it’s necessary.  Because certainty?  It’s laughably absurd.