The bulk of Christians can be characterized by falling into the trap of arguing that terms faith and doubt occur as mutually exclusive. They advance an assertion that the impact of a practitioner’s theological belief can be seen in reducing the willingness to challenge the authenticity of religion itself. For many, however, accepting religious claims comes to directly depend on the extent to which controversial questions with respect to, for instance, Christianity can be answered. The two aforementioned suggestions appear to be increasingly inaccurate, since neither people’s deep Christian faith nor their remote atheistic roots can deprive them of elaborating on counterarguments. Yet, after a thorough consideration, it becomes apparent that as humans we are destined to doubt. Obviously, our sense of doubt serves as a driving force that promotes a desire to make everything as clear as possible.
According to religious philosophers, faith and doubt should be viewed as an integral part of daily reality strongly associated with continuous quest for meaning. In particular, faith has to be referred to as an unquestionable belief, which in turn may result in a state of trusting something or someone. On the other hand, doubt has a strong connection to a state of being reluctant to accept certain statements as true. In the context of my life, however, I define faith and doubt in a slightly different way. To be precise, I conceive of faith as a moral question, which is “a question not of what sensibly exists, but of what is good, or would be good if it did exist” (James, 1896, p. 22). In regard to doubt, I qualify it as a status in which my mind rests upon an in-depth interpretation, rather than shallow techniques for argument mining. Considering the difference between sayings “I believe that,” and “I believe in”, one should know that the first phrase indicates a state of displaying religiousness in many ways. As for the second one, it indicates that an individual accepts the historical existence of a holy man.
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Speculating upon faith in the religious sense, I am of the opinion that it is predominantly a matter of trust, since believing something means relying on it regardless of opposing views among the others. Arguably, faith and doubt emerge to be complementary to each other; arguably, the bigger a person’s doubts grow, the greater faith he/she can build afterwards. Surely, of all belief systems, Buddhism is the one, where faith is most prevalent. Apparently, each adherent of Buddhism puts the aspect of faith first, not sharpening his/her focus on dubious concepts of their religion. Unlike Buddhism, Christianity occurs as a religious belief system, where doubt positions itself as the most prevalent. Yes, many Christians tend to question their belief on a daily basis; yet, fortunately, it does not lead to a dramatic distortion of the religion’s main dogmas. Overall, I can say that the two given religions offer insight into my own faith/doubt equation. In any way, they cannot contribute to totally overcoming life challenges and result in finding peace in life, respectively.
Reference
James, W. (1896) The Will to Believe: And other Essays in Popular Philosophy. London: Longmans, Green & Co.
