Welcome all Doubters – By Coe Hutchison

Last week I posted this video on Faith means Doubt.  Coe Hutchison chair of the MSA Board and pastor at Grace Lutheran in Port Townsend WA responded witha comment I thought was so good I asked him to make it into a post as we all struggle with the realities of life and the doubts that assail us.  Each time we grapple with doubts our faith is stretched, renewed and hopefully revitalized.

In the Gospel message for last Sunday, June 19 (Matt. 28:16-20), we read that even after following Jesus for years some of the disciples experienced doubt. And the Gospel’s author decided that it was important to point this out in the very last words of his Gospel. We might expect Matthew to paint a picture of the sure-hearted disciples rejoicing at meeting the resurrected Jesus and going forth into the world with confidence. Instead we read that some DOUBTED! Thanks be to God for Matthew’s honest and accurate testimony to real life. And yet in the face of doubt and questions and faint-heartedness, Jesus declares his reassuring presence with us to the end of the age.

I have often thought that it would be good to have signs on our churches that say, “Doubters Welcome Here!” There is no better place for us to bring our doubts than to the place where Jesus meets us.

Frederick Buechner writes, “Faith is better understood as a verb than as a noun, as a process than as a possession. . . Faith is not being sure where you’re going, but going anyway. . . . Tillich said, that doubt isn’t the opposite of faith; it is an element of faith.” (Frederick Buechner, Wishful Thinking, 30)

Thomas Merton, as Christine noted, was a wonderful encourager of the doubting faithful. Here is my favorite quote from Merton that I have carried with me for years. “My Lord God, I have no idea where I am going, I do not see the road ahead of me, I cannot know for certain where it will end. Nor do I really know myself, and the fact that I think I am following your will does not mean that I am actually doing so. But I believe that the desire to please you does in fact please you. And I hope I have that desire in all that I am doing. I hope that I will never do anything apart from that desire. And I know that if I do this you will lead me by the right road, though I may know nothing about it. Therefore, I will trust you always, though I may seem to be lost and in the shadow of death. I will not fear, for you are ever with me, and you will never leave me to face my perils alone.” (Thomas Merton, Thoughts in Solitude (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1976)

May God continue to bless the doubting faithful!