Doubt

I can't sleep. I don't know why, because I'm exhausted, but I just keep tossing and turning. I can't sleep. Therefore, I blog.

Doubt is a topic that's been on my mind in the past couple weeks. I was reading (before my failed attempts at finding slumber..) Life of Pi. So far it's been proven to be an interesting book, but one of the last passages I read tonight really stuck out at me.

It was my first clue that atheists are my brothers and sisters of a different faith, and every word they speak speaks of faith. Like me, they go as far as the legs of reason will carry them - and then they leap.
I'll be honest about it. It is not atheists who get stuck in my craw, but agnostics. Doubt is useful for a while. We must all pass through the garden of Gethsemane. If Christ play with doubt, so must we. If Christ spent an anguished night in prayer, if He burst out from the Cross, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" then surely we are also permitted to doubt. But we must move on. To choose doubt as a philosophy of life is akin to choosing immobility as a means of transportation.

This brings up a couple of thoughts. One, do you think it is a sin to doubt God? Two, whatever your conclusion may be for the previous question, do you think Christ doubted, or was his cry something other than doubt?

One:
Now Thomas, one of the Twelve, was not with the disciples when Jesus came. So the other disciples told him, "We have seen the Lord!" But he said to them, "Unless I see the nail marks in his hands and put my finger where the nails were, and put my hand into his side, I will not believe it."

A week later his disciples were in the house again, and Thomas was with them. Though the doors were locked, Jesus came and stood among them and said, "Peace be with you!" Then he said to Thomas, "Put your finger here; see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it into my side. Stop doubting and believe." Thomas said to him, "My Lord and my God!" Then Jesus told him, "Because you have seen me, you have believed; blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed."


Jesus simply says, "Stop doubting and believe." He doesn't lecture, he doesn't forgive, it's simply a statement. However, he does go on to say "blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed." aka anyone who is a Christ follower and did not live at the same time and place as Jesus and was able to see, talk to, listen to, touch Jesus. I also believe that doubt is a natural thing, a human tendency. We have been born with free wills, and I think part of our free will allows us to consider, think, debate, question, before we choose whether to follow God or not. That's what he wanted, after all, a choice to return his love, not an army of robots programmed to love him.


Two: I'm still unsure of what I think about this one. I would love to hear other opinions.

I'm going to try and go get some sleep again. T-minus six hours until the preschool bomb. Ka-boom.