The Necessity of Doubt

I again want to express my gratitude for your gracious recognition, last month, of my 30 years of ministry. There are times that I cannot fathom the reality that I have been doing this for 30 years. But then I look at my children and their spouses and consider our anticipation of our first grandchild, and it becomes a bit more believable.

If you would ask me what I consider to be the most important message I have tried to convey throughout my ministry, I think I would have to say that it is the message I want to address once again this morning - the necessity of doubt.

The most dangerous people in the world are those who have no doubt about their knowledge, their understanding, their beliefs, their attitudes, or their assumptions about life. The most dangerous people in the world are those who are unwilling to entertain any notion that they could be wrong - whether they be Islamic extremists, fundamentalist Christians, liberals, conservatives, or fanatics of any brand. People who know without a doubt that they are right tend to act as insufferable tyrants.

Over the years, I have warned you many times not to assume that what you hear from this pulpit is the gospel truth. I would never stand up here and say something that I believe to be false, but I do not make the claim that my interpretation of the gospel is the final and perfect interpretation. In fact, my own understanding has changed over the years.

So what I do up here is to share with you my best grasp, in this moment of time, of what God would have us be and do, and I do so with considerable conviction - because, if I have no conviction that what I believe is true, there is little point in my sharing it with you. But you must finally choose for yourselves what you believe.

I just finished the second book of three from the third (and final?) trilogy in the Chronicles of Thomas Covenant series. Linden Avery, who now wields the power of Covenant's white gold and who is therefore considered to be the best hope for the salvation of the Land, refuses to reveal her final purpose to those who have devoted themselves to her service.

The Giants, those who most recently joined her quest, wonder whether she intends that they should doubt her. To which she responds (Donaldson, Stephen R., Fatal Revenant, p. 506), "Yes...I need you to doubt me. If you don't decide to help me for your own reasons instead of mine, I'm doomed anyway...I've told you what I want to accomplish. If you are not satisfied, you should walk away."

The necessity of doubt lies in its desire and its willingness to test all things against all available measures of truth. The convictions of our faith have little value if they are the convictions of another rather than our own. The way we live our lives will finally not be much influenced by the convictions of others, but only by those convictions that we have thoroughly tested and fully accepted as our own.

So, I would argue, doubt is important in the process of discerning the truth by which we will choose to live. But I would also argue that doubt is necessary simply because no presentation of truth which we ever receive comes to us without some inherent reason to doubt (I would say - not even the scriptures).

Consider this morning's gospel text (Matthew 13:24-30, 36-43). Jesus tells a parable about wheat and weeds. There is little or no reason to doubt that Jesus told this parable. But then Matthew goes on to report that Jesus offers an allegorical interpretation of the parable. There is considerable reason to doubt that the interpretation reported by Matthew actually came from Jesus.

The fact that this interpretation, offered as one spoken by Jesus, is allegorical is the first clue that something is amiss here. Reading a story allegorically means assigning every part of the story to something in our own lives. In this case, the good seed are the children of the kingdom and the weeds are children of the devil. The sower is the Son of Man, and the enemy is the devil.

Many scholars have concluded that the parables of Jesus, while they may convey a variety of teachings or points, cannot be interpreted allegorically. The allegory consistently breaks down at some point.

In the attempt to interpret this particular parable allegorically, for instance, we have the implication that the world can be divided into two groups of people - good and evil. Not only does that violate our common sense, it violates what Paul says consistently, which is that no one is righteous. It also suggests that there can be no redemption. If you are a child of the devil, how in the world do you somehow then become a child of the kingdom?

When Paul speaks of being debtors, not to the flesh, to live according to the flesh (Romans 8:12-25), he is clearly saying that we have choices to make, and our redemption depends on whether we choose to live by the flesh or by the Spirit. There is nothing inherent in us, Paul seems to be suggesting, that makes us children of the kingdom or children of the devil. It is all about how we respond to God's invitation.

Now if, as the allegorical interpretation of the parable suggests, the day comes when God closes the door on the possibility of our redemption, does that mean that God's compassion and forgiveness are limited? Does that mean that God will love us eternally only if we become the persons God desires us to be?

What, then, happens to the whole notion of grace, which is God's love and acceptance of the unlovable and the unacceptable? Is God's grace a limited time offer?

The teachings of Jesus suggest that the only door which ever closes on our opportunity to be redeemed is the one we close. This is the judgment, John has Jesus saying, that the light has come into the world and people have chosen darkness over the light. The only judgment in this picture is what we bring on ourselves by our refusal to accept God's unconditional forgiveness.

The idea that God, at some point, tires of waiting for us and begins to root out those who are evil and toss them into a furnace of fire, just doesn't fit with what the gospels generally say. Besides, many people who claim to be saved in Jesus do not act like his disciples, and many who have never made that claim of salvation act more like his disciples than some of us. So which people will God toss into the furnace, and which will God welcome into the eternal kingdom?

There is another way to understand this parable. Jesus wants to say what the kingdom of heaven is like. He tells this story which everyone would understand. You have a field full of wheat, but there is a problem. Inextricably mingled with the wheat is a weed, and not just any weed.

The particular Greek word refers to a weed that is almost identical to wheat. We call it darnel wheat or false wheat. It is almost impossible to tell which is which until the heads of grain form - the heads on wheat are heavy and make the plant droop, unlike the heads on the false wheat which continue to stand tall. So farmers must wait until the harvest is ready to easily distinguish between the two.

Now what point could Jesus possibly be making with this story? We know that one of his favorite and prominent teachings was about forgiveness and the importance of not judging others.

So, it seems to me, the point Jesus wanted to make with this parable was that it is impossible to tell, at any given time, who is good and who is not. It is almost impossible to decide who serves the purposes of good and who serves the purposes of evil.

Now you may be thinking - that's not so hard to tell. People who do good things are good, and people who do bad things are evil. Aside from the fact that there are many subtle shades of good and evil, this argument again disallows any possibility of redemption.

Matthew, one of the disciples of Jesus, had been a tax collector and had benefited personally from the Roman occupation of Judea. Judas, on the other hand, served Jesus faithfully (we presume) until the moment he betrayed Jesus to the authorities. Who among us will presume to have the authority to determine who is likely to ultimately be redeemed and who is not? At what point do we feel we have the right to make that decision about someone else?

Jesus says we never reach that point. We are to forgive others countless times. We are even to forgive and to love our enemies. Ultimately, the only say we have in the redemption of another is that, by our willingness to love them and forgive them, we may empower them to choose God's redemption instead of continuing to serve the purposes of evil. We have no role and no rights when it comes to deciding if and when they have had their last chance at redemption.

Bishop Gene Robinson recently spoke at St. Mary's Cathedral in London. He told a story which he had heard told by Archbishop Desmond Tutu's daughter about her mother-in-law. The family was upset because of one son's choice of a sweetheart. Her parents were not pleased with the woman and it was causing much uproar in the family.

Then one night, her mother-in-law went to bed and prayed about it. The next day she told her family what God had made clear to her - she had put herself on the wrong committee.

"I'm not on the selection committee," she said. "I'm on the welcome committee. It's my son's job to choose. It is my job to welcome the person he loves."

"We don't get to be on the selection committee," Bishop Robinson said. "God chooses. We get to welcome." (Posted by Katie Sherrod at http://walkingwithintegrity.blogspot.com/ - titled Fear Not! Gene Robinson preaches at Putney)

The history of our faith is filled with examples of people who decided they had both the wisdom and the authority of God to be on the selection committee and therefore to pronounce judgment on others. As I said, these are among the most dangerous and offensive people who live. They do not hesitate to write others off as worthless sinners. They do not hesitate to demand that others conform to their own perception of what is good and right. And they have no doubt about their own convictions.

It seems to me that Jesus wants us to doubt. Jesus wants us to doubt that we can be so sure which is the wheat and which is the weed. Jesus wants us to doubt (to be less certain) that we are the redeemed and that our neighbors, or our enemies whom we so thoroughly dislike, are the damned.

Even as God causes the rain to fall on the good and the evil alike, so we are called to love all persons, to forgive all persons, and to respect the inborn divine image in all persons. By so doing, we might just help a person come to redemption who otherwise might never have come close.

God calls all persons to redemption and some of the most unlikely people respond. God chooses who to call. We get to welcome them and to encourage them and to embrace them as fellow travelers on the way to God's timeless realm.

Thanks be to God. Amen.