The Dance of Doubt and Faith

Doubt is a dirty little secret that many Christians, especially leaders, don’t want to talk about.

In front of our congregations or organizations, we feel the need to keep up an image of confident holiness, so we never give voice to the deep questions that plague our hearts and minds. So great is our fear of honest doubt that often we will not even admit our struggle to ourselves. But you know, and I know, we all struggle with doubt—and that’s perfectly normal.

Doubt is not veiled unbelief; it’s merely an expression of uncertainty. It is seeing, hearing, experiencing, even knowing the reality of God and still asking, “How can this be?” It is the shadowy middle ground between belief and unbelief, and it is part and parcel of a rigorous and dynamic faith. In fact, doubt carries in it the seeds of faith. For example, in order to doubt that God is good or loving or just, we must first, on some level, believe that God is real and that he matters.

If you’re a Christian and never have doubts or questions, you’re not thinking seriously about your faith.

C’mon, as Christians we believe that God became a man in the person of Jesus Christ. Is that even possible? Really? We believe that Jesus was crucified and then raised from the dead—not resuscitated, but resurrected. Really? Even the disciples, who would be world-class leaders in their own right, balked at this initially. They lived and worked with Jesus during his earthly ministry, witnessed his miracles and his crucifixion; yet when the resurrected Christ stood before them, they questioned, “How can this be?” 

And our doubts are not limited to the actions and claims of God. They often penetrate the realm of the emotions and relationships. This sort of doubt is what Saint John of the Cross, the sixteenth-century Spanish poet and Carmelite priest, spoke of as the “dark night of the soul,” in which we experience spiritual loneliness and desolation in our lives with God.

We mistakenly think that the spiritual giants and leaders among us live their lives with an unshakable spiritual confidence, or easily attain and maintain intimacy with God.

That is most often not the case. In 1959, Mother Teresa wrote, “In my soul I feel just that terrible pain of loss—of God not wanting me—of God not being God—of God not really existing.” Her dark night stayed with her for more than fifty years. In one letter, she writes, “As for me, the silence and the emptiness is so great, that I look and do not see, listen and do not hear—the tongue moves [in prayer] but does not speak.” Yet Mother Teresa also knew of the deep and abiding joy of God—the “very special love” of Christ—that compelled her to serve among the world’s poorest and most disenfranchised people in Calcutta and become known as “the Saint of the Gutters.”

Over time, she came to see that her own painful experiences of abandonment could help her identify more intimately not only with what Jesus experienced on the cross, but also with what the poor and marginalized faced on a daily basis.

Mother Teresa’s doubt was not so much contrary to her faith and leadership as it was a catalyst to it. Her roots grew deeper than most because they were forced to grow in the dry and rocky soil of suffering and doubt. She embodied the compassion of Christ, not in spite of her doubt, but because of her honest struggle with doubt.