Doubt is a pain too lonely to know that faith is his twin brother.
-Khalil Gibran
A fever or pain is itself not a disease
but an immune response in a form of an indication that a struggle is started
within the body; something went wrong whether an outsider intrusion or internal
imbalance which needs immediate attention and some remedial action. The same is
true with the feeling of doubt. Doubt is an indication of somewhat disturbed
belief system which needs immediate attention and some remedial action. In the
words of William Shakespeare, “Modest doubt is called the beacon of the wise.”
I heard a
story about Gautam Buddha who once was taking rest outside a village. A
passerby recognized him and greeted. He, despite being theist, asked Buddha “Do
God exist?” Buddha replied “No.” He passed with a state of despair on his face.
Another passerby asked the same question to Buddha but he was an atheist; the
reply came “Yes.” He also walked with desperate face. Third one came and said
“It doesn’t matter for me whether God exists or not, but, since I met you it is
not unwise to ask you so I am asking do god exist?” Buddha said “May be may not
be.” Buddha’s disciple sat beside him and was listening all questions and
answers and finally asked “All of them asked the same question but you replied
differently I don’t understand why? Which one is correct?” Buddha replied
sheepishly “All of them were correct for those whom given and none of them for
you. The thirst of truth could not be quenched by firm belief in prejudice but
through curiosity i.e. asking smart questions and meeting their answers. I was
just breaking prejudices of the first two and the third one was already in that
state.”
It is not
that we don’t know answers but we don’t know how to ask questions. The moments
of doubt could be used to learn asking question. Most people thought being a
part of question as failure and want to be a part of solution. It is okay but
when the same principle is applied to doubts then the opposite happens. Doubt
doesn’t teach answers but questions. It is the question that meets answer.
Dennis Palumbo, a former Hollywood
screenwriter and now a
licensed psychotherapist in private practice, said “The plain fact is, the more
willing you are to mine the landscape of your own doubts, the truer and more
recognizably human your characters will be.”
Quantum physics
reveals nature as a realm of knowledge. The physical theory has become
converted from a theory about `physically reality', as it had formerly been
understood, into a theory about human knowledge. Freedom is granted to each
experimenter to choose freely which experiment he will perform, i.e., which
aspect of nature he will probe; which question he will put to nature. Then nature
is allowed to pick an outcome of the experiment, i.e., to answer to the
question. These elements of `freedom of choice', on the part of both the human
participant and nature herself, lead to a picture of a reality that gradually
unfolds in response to choices that are not necessarily fixed by the prior
physical part of reality alone. The basic building blocks of the new conception
of nature are not objective tiny bits of matter, but choices of questions and
answers.
Doubt is
like a situation where one stands at an intersection of roads and does not know
which one is correct for his destiny; which one to choose. Doubt is a state of
mind in which one is struggling between opposite propositions and unable to
stick either of them. Doubt is not the situation of multiple choice options but
doubt against each option in terms of its validity whether it is true or not.
On the basis of logic, doubt could be understood in two ways: one in which
logic could be applied equally by both side, i.e. for the proposition or
against the proposition and second in which logic could not be applied by any
side due to lack of evidence. In either case logic could not be of much help
but faith. Logic needs axioms to spin arguments. Mark Twain said “when in doubt
tell the truth.” Truth could not be an interpretation of brainstorming but a direct
message. Truth is something that sprouts from within and requires faith to act
upon it. William James said “faith means belief in something concerning which doubt is theoretically
possible.”
A child was born in the year 570 and raised from
the milk of nomad, vicarious mothers in the desert of Arabia. He tended sheep
and soon hired out to a rich widow as leader of her caravans. In 595, the widow aged
40 and was 15 years older than he, looked upon him with favor and married him.
He continued his living as a rich and respected trader. Each year during
Ramdan, the ninth month of lunar calendar, he wandered in mountains surrounding
Mecca to refresh himself with solitude and prayer. In the year 610, at the age
of 40, the humble trader took himself on one of these retreats in the cave of
Mount Hira and suddenly found someone calling him to proclaim. He terrified and
ran out of the cave. At first, he thought, it had to have been a hallucination;
a trick of the eye or of the year or his own mind working against him. He even
thought worst about being possessed by an evil spirit to deceive him and to
crush life out of him. He was deeply distressed and resolved to commit suicide.
The man who fled down the mountain that night was in a state of stark,
primordial fear and overwhelmed not with conviction but by doubt. Slowly and
gradually he learned to have faith along with confusion and struggling. He
continued his prayer and fast. After three years, once again, he heard from the
same source “By morning brightness and by the stillness of the night, Your Lord
has not forsaken you, nor has He become displeased, and surely what comes after
is better for you than that which has gone before. And soon will your
Lord give you so that you shall be well pleased.” He was Prophet Muhammad,
founder of Islam and this was the beginning of holy Quran and faith in one
“Allah” which started with a terrifying doubt. Lesley Hazleton, author of ‘The
First Muslim’ said “It was precisely Muhammad’s doubt that brought him alive
for me, that allowed me to begin to see him in full, to accord him the
integrity of reality. And the more I thought about it, the more it made sense
that he doubted, because doubt is essential to faith.” In the words of Henry David Thoreau, “Faith keeps many doubts
in her pay. If I could not doubt, I should not believe.”
As it is said that excess of anything is bad, so
is with doubt. Excess of doubt creates fear which ultimately leads to
frustration and misery. One should make a stand and act accordingly with faith.
On the other extreme, if all doubts are abolished, then what remains is not faith
but absolute heartless conviction which leads to self-righteous arrogance.
All innovations whether scientific or spiritual are results of
doubt: doubt over existing system. They are the answers put forward by nature
as a result of the questions raised in doubts and nurtured by faith. All
religious system did not origin at the same time but gradually doubting over
the previous system as Buddhism from Hinduism and Islam and Christianity from
Judaism. But the followers stop asking questions and show their blind faith
which resulted in decline of religions because the questions have changed and
they are still giving the same old answers. If they do not assimilate current
questions then they are preparing grounds for new religions. The existence of many
religions is the outcome of fundamentalist thinking prevailing in the religion
which is not ready to accommodate new questions.
Faith has no easy answers. It involves an ongoing struggle, a
continual questioning of what we think we know a wrestling with issues and
ideas. It goes hand in hand with doubt in a never ending conversation with it
and sometimes in conscious defiance of it. What drives us is that, despite our
doubts and even because of our doubts, we reject the nihilism of despair and
insist on faith. Consider the ambivalence as put by Frederick Buechner, “If you
don’t have any doubts you’re either kidding yourself or asleep. Doubts are the
ants in the pants of faith. They keep it awake and moving.”
Faith and doubt both are needed not as antagonists, but working
side by side to take us around the unknown curve.
-Lillian Smith
