Clergy/Leaders’ Mail-list No. 1-097

IF YOU DOUBT SOMETIMES, YOU’RE IN GOOD COMPANY!

From ‘Sunrise Sunset’ (HarperCollins/Harper San Francisco), Rowland Croucher’s book of daily meditations. Feel free to use or adapt it.

One thing I know, that though I was blind, now I see. John 9:25.

A great American preacher of a generation ago, Harry Emerson Fosdick, once preached a sermon on ‘The Importance of Doubting Your Doubts’. In it he listed several great Christians who were plagued by doubt: ‘What a radiant Christian faith [William Lyon Phelps] had. But listen to him in his autobiography: ‘My religious faith remains in possession of the field only after prolonged civil war with my naturally sceptical mind.’ That experience belongs in the best tradition of the great believers.

John Knox, the Scottish Reformer – what a man of conviction! Yes, but remember that time when his soul knew ‘anger, wrath and indignation, which it conceived against God, calling all his promises in doubt.’

Increase Mather – that doughty Puritan – what a man of faith! Yes, but read his diary and run on entries like this: ‘Greatly molested with temptations to atheism.’

Sing Luther’s hymn, ‘A Mighty Fortress is our God,’ and one would suppose he never questioned his faith, but see him in other hours. ‘For more than a week,’ he wrote, ‘Christ was wholly lost. I was shaken by desperation and blasphemy against God.’

‘[I write] for the encouragement of someone struggling with unbelief… The noblest faith of the church has come out of that struggle. You don’t really possess the Christian faith until you have fought for it.’

[Harry Emerson Fosdick, ‘The Importance of Doubting our Doubts’ in What is Vital in Religion, London: SCM Press, 1956, pp. 92-93.]

Inscrutable, mysterious and wonderful God, I trust you! Amen.