A church member continues to wrestle with the issues raised by that phrase I use, “the opposite of faith is not doubt; it is certitude.” I appreciate his working on clarifying his thoughts on this, since I find that most people in church don’t work at reaching a rigorous understanding of the concepts that inform our faith, terms like, well, “faith”. Most people seem satisfied with a “devotional” understanding about their beliefs. Being challenged to work at a more mature, informed, and critical understanding can be unsettling. So, I admire this church member for stepping up to the challenge. And, he’s caused me to work at crafting a response about why it certitude is a challenge to faith. Here’s my latest attempt at it. What do YOU think?
Faith and spirituality contain more mystery than most people seem comfortable with. Immature faith often seeks certainty (think of the ego-centric adolescent who “knows everything”) and assurance rather than challenge.
There are some things that we can be certain about, and it’s appropriate to be unapologetic about them. And there are some things we may not be absolutely certain about but we can assert and commit to. That’s o.k. too, but a mature person can discern the difference between being naive about it and giving a rationale for why he or she will stake commitment to it.
I’m not sure I’d say that the more certain we are the more narrow-minded we are. I may say it backward, though: narrow-minded people tend to be more certain about things for which it is unwarrented.
And yes, there is a certain stance related to certitude whose source is hubris and pride. A person in that position is incapable of learning. In fact, I’d say it comes close to describing the “unpardonable sin,” which, in my understanding, is “willful disbelief.” It was the sin of the Pharisees was it not? Despite the evidence in front of their eyes that Jesus was the Son of God as he claimed, they CHOSE to NOT believe that evidence because they KNEW the truth in their own minds.
Certitude in matters of faith can have its source in arrogance and hubris, and in that case, it is an obstacle to faith, or “the opposite of faith” as I’d put it. Another, however, is the certitude of the “innocent” or the naive. For example, there is a type of faith stance that is akin to what I call, “magical thinking.” Its certitude is because it is naive or because it is petulant in wanting it to be so. That stance is fine if one is a child, but if one is an adult it also is an obstacle to faith.
You asked how I would reconcile the statement about certitude being the, “greatest barrier to faith” with Heb 11:1-6? This question reminds me of a church member who once asked me to preach a sermon on the difference between “faith” and “hope.” Quite an assignment! Let me take a stab at addressing the passage you allude to. If we can get past the semantics of the terms, “faith is …. ” “…hope…” and read those terms in the context of the passage. One thing that strikes me is that the illustrations of the people who had faith shows that they had one thing in common: the faith and the hope they held were connected to the relationship they had with God. And it was the character of God, that object of their faith, that is the source of assurance—not what they actually knew, not how they felt about it, not what they wanted, and not even the outcome of their hope. They trusted GOD, not their wishful thinking or desires for outcome of their hope.
I think that may be one way to approach this issue. My certitude is in the character and nature of GOD. I have to give up any assumptions about what I may think that means by way of guarantees—like the idea that I’ll always be safe, I’ll always win, I have all the answers about what will happen because of my belief in God, my own perspective and interpretation is the right (and only) one, etc. Bishop Usher once quipped that what God meant was, “Thou shalt have no other Gods before me; including any notions about me you may hold.” The certitude we are talking about often is something we’ve substituted for God.
I have certitude about a FEW things: God exists, God is love, God loves me (an astounding and grace-filled revelation!), God has a relationship with me. But it is inappropriate for me to spin that off into certitude about other things, including things I may hope for. I do not have a relationship with an automaton, I have a relationship with a living God and the living person of Jesus Christ. Relationships are messy and open-ended and are mediated by trust, not by feeling nor circumstance. And that means that even in the things I hope for, I need to give up any claim to a guarantee. One does not make those demands of God in a right relationship.
I don’t think the Hebrews passage is talking about something like “blind faith.” Nor does it encourage “wishful thinking” or “magical thinking.” The idea about “the opposite of faith is not doubt, it is certitude” had to do primarily with our negative notions about doubt, or about taking a stance where to see doubt as a lack of faith translates into our inability to ask tough questions, and therefore, an inability to learn and grow. Faith’s stance is, as the Hebrew passage illustrates, HOPE in God. And hope does not contain certitude of outcome. “My hope is in the Lord,” in his person, not in guarantees I may desire.
This is tough, isn’t it? We want to have faith, but when faith requires that we give up certitude and bank on hope, we get nervous about it. Last week I heard again that great joke about the man hanging over a precipice, hanging on to a thin branch dangling from the side. He yelled up for help. An angel appears and says, “God has heard your prayers, what do you want?”
The man says, “Thank God! Deliver me! Save me from falling off this cliff!”
The angel says, “Just a moment,” and disappears for a minute, then returns. He says, “O.k., God will save you. You just have to have faith and do one thing.”
“I have faith!” the man cried, “What do I have to do?!”
The angel said, “Let go of the branch.”
The man paused, then said, “Is there anyone else up there I can talk to?”
I think faith requires that we embrace hope and give up notions or dependence upon certitude. Ultimately, faith requires obedience, simply that (as that fellow in the story discovered, he had no faith, didn’t want to bank on hope, and wanted instead a certitude that became an obstacle to his responding to God in faith). In the Hebrew passage the illustration of that is Abram, who had faith in God and therefore obeyed the command to “go,” with no certitude about where he’d end up or about the outcome of the journey. His hope was in God, and that was sufficient.
