Doubt has been treated, sometimes, as the enemy of faith. The contemplative tradition has often known better. Honest doubt is not unbelief. It is faith asking its own questions, refusing the easy answer, willing to walk the harder road toward truth. This sonnet honors that hour.
The Sonnet
There comes an hour when the easy creed No longer satisfies the deeper part, When questions rise like weeds among the seed, And shake the trellis of the tended heart. I do not turn from these unwanted thoughts, Nor try to silence what will not be hushed, But hold them, with the patience that comes from oughts Of love, and let them be at last unblushed. For honest doubt is not the foe of faith, But faith refusing to be small and pat, A wider trust that takes the harder swathe, A truer hope that meets where wonder sat. So I will sit with what I cannot know, And let the asking deepen as I go.
Reflection
The opposite of faith is not doubt. The opposite of faith is certainty in the wrong things, the closed mind that refuses to hold open the possibility that it has not yet understood. Doubt, the honest kind, is faith refusing to settle for an answer that has not earned the weight it claims.
Christ welcomed Thomas when he came back asking to touch the wounds. He did not scold the question. He met it. The God of the Bible is not afraid of our doubt. He has, in fact, given us minds with which to ask, and a creation large enough to keep us asking. The faith that emerges on the far side of honest doubt is a faith that has actually been thought through, and that kind of faith does not break easily.
If you carry questions today, do not be ashamed of them. The God who made you for truth is not threatened by your asking. Walk into the questions. Faith is wide enough to hold them.
