Do we not tend to see doubt as something negative? Something to avoid or overcome? Doubt is what we writers and editors, when we hang out together and tell stories about the rest of you, call a “transitive” verb. These are verbs not that suffer from gender dysphoria, but that require an object. You can run, or hum without an object. But you cannot throw, or love or hate without an object. Everybody, as the saying goes, needs someone to love. Doubt too requires an object. You can’t just doubt; you have to doubt something. Some things are good to doubt, others not so much. If you receive an email from the Namibian oil minister’s widow offering to give you millions if you help her, that you should doubt. The Word of God, on the other hand, is something we should never doubt.
When the object of our doubt is ourselves, we are likely in a good spot. We tend toward overconfidence in ourselves, in terms of our knowledge, our character and our calling. GK Chesterton put it this way:
What we suffer from today is humility in the wrong place. Modesty has moved from the organ of ambition and settled upon the organ of conviction, where it was never meant to be. A man was meant to be doubtful about himself, but undoubting about the truth; this has been exactly reversed.
Mark Twain had his own insight when he wrote, “What you don’t know can’t hurt you. It’s what you do know that just isn’t so.” We are a credulous people, believing anything and often its opposite. I think of this every time the polls change. I can see how 55% of those polled approve of the President. I can see how 45% disapprove. What I can’t see if how those two numbers can flop with the same President in the space of a week. Who are the 10% who cheer on the President one day and turn on him the next?
There is real truth out there, truth we can actually know. We should not doubt that. We should, however, be unafraid to acknowledge we don’t know all of it. We should not race like Richard Petty on our way to a conclusion. We should not allow peer pressure to push us into embracing the party line. We should never convict others when we know we don’t know the whole story. We should at one and the same cherish and spread abroad far and wide these three words, “I don’t know.”
You may upset your friends. If, however, they get too upset, get new friends. The ones you have now are looking for allies and yes men, not friends. At least, that’s what I think you should do. I can’t say for sure.
The great thing about truth truth is that a. it is knowable and b. doesn’t require us to believe it in order for it to be true. It is unfazed when we are certain and wrong, but also not insulted when we are unsure. This much I do know- my heart, like everyone else’s is deceitful and wicked. My Redeemer is not. He is not to be doubted. He loves me.
