Why “Skeptical Faith?”

Some readers may wonder why I call my blog “Skeptical Faith.” Aren’t the two words at odds, antithetical?

Not in my view. In fact, I hope that all believers are skeptics AND believers. Thesaurus.com lists “questioning” as a synonym for skeptical, and that’s the sense in which I think a believer, and people searching for God, should be a skeptics.

But the word “skeptical” has also come to mean “agnosticism, atheism, disbelief,” which the thesaurus also lists as synonyms for the word. That’s not the sense in which I use the word in the title of this blog.

Belief and Doubt

But the other sense in which I use “skeptical” is the implied meaning of “doubtful,” because I believe belief and doubt are two sides of the same coin. Doubt and faith, in my view, are not contradictory.

I believe that most believers, and most non-believers, doubt, the believers about their faith and the non-believers about their lack of faith. It’s part of being human because there are so few certainties in the life.

So, can you be a believer and a skeptic? Of course. And if we’re talking about Christian belief, I think there’s a case for it in the New Testament.

It’s true that, in the gospels, Jesus often praises people’s faith, especially when he has cured them or one of their loved ones. But there is also the case of the apostle Thomas, who after the resurrection, insisted on seeing Jesus’ nail-punctured hands and side before he would believe in the resurrected Jesus.

No Rebuke

According to John’s gospel, when Jesus gave Thomas the opportunity to do just that, Thomas believed. Jesus didn’t rebuke him for his previous lack of faith but only praised those who would come to believe without seeing Jesus – in other words, us.

The gospel stories about Jesus’ arrest and trial show that most of his apostles abandoned him, evidently showing their lack of faith in Jesus and his message. Nonetheless, after the resurrection Jesus showed no animosity nor even annoyance about their lack of faith but was his usual loving self.

Many preachers and religious leaders condemn doubt, or avoid the subject altogether, not wanting to hint that there is any room for doubt in the hearts of believers. I believe mature faith not only tolerates doubt but requires it.

I recently read a story in the New York Times by author Christopher Beha entitled, “Why I Am Not an Atheist.” He briefly tells his story about going from altar boy and believer to atheism and back again to his Catholic faith. The article encourages the embrace of “skeptical belief.”

That, he writes, “does not mean believing things without ‘really’ believing them. It means understanding your beliefs as limited, contingent and fallible, recognizing that they can’t be proved correct, that someone else’s refusal to come around to them does not indicate stupidity or obstinacy or bad faith.

Essential Component

“Similarly, a skeptical believer recognizes doubt as an essential component of belief, rather than its opposite. To a skeptical believer, the great mark of sincerity is the extent to which you attempt to live out your beliefs in your own life despite your own doubts, not the extent to which you silence those doubts or the doubts of others.”

We may have a degree of skepticism about the basics of faith – such as the existence of God and for Christians, the divinity of Jesus – or some of the tenets of one’s religious faith. In my view, they all require living your faith and accepting your doubts.

As Beha puts it, such skepticism is “an expression of the fundamental mystery at the heart of reality and the radical limitations of human understanding.”