Faith Without Doubt
Numerous people have sent me notes since this past Saturday asking if I'd heard about Ted Haggard, a local pastor at New Life Church, the largest of several rock-band megachurches that have long been giving Colorado Springs a bad name among secular folk. Well, uh, yeah. It's about the only thing there was in Saturday's paper, and has dominated local news ever since then. Quick summary: One of our noisiest and most self-righteous local Bible-thumpers was caught having sex with a male prostitute out of Denver, and admitted that he'd been paying this guy for sex for three years. Oh, and then it came out that the same guy sold Haggard some meth, which Haggard insisted he never used. Boy, where have we heard that before?
It's true that Haggard is human, but he's also a religious leader, and I don't think it's unreasonable for us to have much higher standards for religious leaders than for ordinary people. I've been saying for years (basically since the Roman Catholic clergy abuse crisis blossomed) that religious leaders (clergy or lay) who cannot control their appetites must resign now, and work on their own inner demons before trying to help others with theirs. Crying "fallenness" is no excuse at all. Most of us who haven't spent years in divinity school are perfectly happy being faithful to our spouses.
One has to ask why these periodic meltdowns of prominent religious leaders happen at all. One obvious reason is that born leaders (especially male leaders) tend to have ravenous sexual appetites. But it isn't always about sex; it can be about drugs, power, or (especially) money. I think there's another issue here: Faith without doubt.
People who work relentlessly at removing any least shred of doubt from their faith in God don't always notice that the same effort removes doubt from their faith in themselves, and can cause them to subconsciously make excuses for their own nasty behavior, often without realizing what's going on. In my lifelong struggle with religion, I've learned a number of things, and tops on the list is that "blind" faith (that is, faith without doubt or examination) is absolutely deadly.
Faith is not effortless, and it is not automatically any source of comfort. Quite the contrary: Faith is almost by definition life's supreme challenge, and that challenge is the engine by which we grow spiritually. Inherent in that growth is doubt. If you don't doubt that you have flaws that need work, you will deny them, hurt others, and continue being a selfish, hurtful shit. A mindset that cannot doubt anything about one's religious framework or culture tends not to doubt one's personal integrity, either.
There's nothing wrong with doubting the existence of God, nor certainly doubting the details of any given religious tradition. God will get you sooner or later; C. S. Lewis called Him "the Hound of Heaven," and I don't think He requires adherence to a particular religious tradition so much as being pointed in the right direction. (That direction being one of mercy, kindness, and generosity.) Being pointed in the right direction requires self-examination and self-doubt. If you never question the validity of your picture of God nor the religious framework within which you live, you will not grow, and you will end up stale, aching, and empty. Certain personality types have a tendency to turn that inner emptiness into rage directed at others, and there's where a great deal of toxic religion comes from. I've run into a few reactionary types in the far corners of the independent Catholic wing of Christianity, and they were for the most bitter, angry men who had no ability whatsoever to doubt themselves. Alpha males, Right Men, whatever you want to call them, they are dangerous people, not only to themselves and their loved ones but to their religious traditions and the very idea of religion itself.
I doubt every last detail of my own religious tradition, and yet I keep returning to it. Am I nuts? No. Am I a heretic? Hardly. I think that's just how faith works. The more you doubt it, the more you understand it, and the more you understand the vastness of the challenge that faith represents. If you continue to feel that it's worthwhile (a separate discussion) the effort can transform you, and that's ultimately what faith is about.