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 we ought 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. We should never, on the other hand, doubt God’s Word.
When we doubt 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 demonstrated 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. Consider how swiftly the polls change. I can see how 55% of those polled approve of the President. On the other hand I can see how 45% disapprove. What I can’t see is 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?
Real truth exists, truth we can actually know. We should not doubt that. On the other hand we should be fearless in acknowledging we don’t know all of it. We should not race like Richard Petty on our way to a conclusion. Nor should we 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. Each of us should, at one and the same time, 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 remains 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. We are not to doubt Him. He loves me.