The Psychology of Belief, Part 9: In Praise of Doubt

Religiously speaking, I doubt a lot.

Maybe it's my personality or my training. Social Scientists do have some of the highest rates of agnosticism and atheism in the academy.

I used to think two things about doubt. First, that I was alone in my doubt. And second, that sharing my doubts would hurt my students.

I now think both of those are wrong.

I've gradually discovered, if you ask people in an honest moment, that just about everyone has doubts. And I'm not just talking about passing, fleeting moments of "I wonder if..." I'm talking about deep and prolonged doubts. Recurrent doubts. Doubts that keep you up at night.

Since these doubts are so widespread when I've shared my doubts with students they, almost to a person, are deeply relieved. The overwhelming response is, "You have doubts? I thought I was the only one who thought that way!" Since religious people so rarely speak of doubt we feel that expressing it is somehow pornographic, unfit for proper company. So we eat it and stew on it and think we are alone. Think we are strange or odd or different to the point of deviance.

So, I've become convinced that sharing doubts is very therapeutic. Paradoxically, sharing doubts promotes deeper faith. Here is a recent story to illustrate this.

A few years ago I was teaching in my adult faith class at the Highland Church of Christ. I was doing a lesson on doubt. I started with this, "Have you ever had doubts? If so, let's share them as I write them on the board." It was quiet at first, but then the responses flowed in...

I've doubted that God exists...
I've doubted that God really cares...
I've doubted that prayers make any difference...
I've doubted that there is a heaven after death...

So many doubts came out that I filled the board and it took all of class. After class I worried. I thought the class had gone really badly. I mean, all we did for class was just list all our doubts and put them on the board. There was no time for a "positive" response. So, it was a weird class.

A few days later a faculty friend and member of the Highland class told me this story. Apparently, a prospective ACU student, a highschooler, was visiting Highland with his parents that day and wandered into my Doubt Class. The next day the parents were touring ACU when they recognized my friend from class. They had this to say (I'm reconstructing the dialogue here): "Tell Richard how important that class was for our son. It just might have saved his faith. He has been struggling with church for some time, but that class opened his eyes. Never in his life had he heard an adult admit to doubting God. Consequently, he felt he was strange and that religion wasn't for him. But hearing all those adults sharing their faith struggles made him realize that it is okay to doubt and that he fits in at church."

I was stunned. A class of listing doubts actually rescuing faith? Apparently so.

So, I want to de-pathologize doubt. I want us to speak more openly of it. It is a ubiquitous condition and I think it is healthy to know you are not alone.

Toward that end, I'd just like to introduce myself. Hi. My name is Richard. And I'm a doubter.