DW's Blog

The Crucible of Doubt: Forging Authentic Faith

by DW Green — September 25, 2024

Once we’ve pursued our doubts to their conclusion, we forge a stronger, not weaker, belief system.

Doubt is what leaves us open to truth, wherever it lies, however difficult it may be to accept. Above all, doubt compels us to reexamine everything we’ve been led to believe is unassailable. Without doubt, life would be a series of untested, uncertain assumptions, none truly ours, but borrowed from others whose truth we’ve adopted as our own.

The problem with accepting received truth rather than discovering it for ourselves is that it’s not worth dying for—and we don’t. It becomes a veneer of ideas beneath which we live our lives without passion or care. This kind of faith happens around us but not within us—we merely go through the motions. At the first crack in the edifice, we’re gone; at the first chink in the castle wall, we flee to less demanding pastures.

Doubt, conversely, is the mother of conviction. Once we’ve pursued our doubts to their conclusion, we forge a stronger, not weaker, belief system. These truths are genuine because they’re now true for us, not just for someone else. To suppress doubt, to discourage thinking, to try to stop someone from questioning the unquestionable is to make them more susceptible to cynicism and less accepting of naive belief.

It is doubt that forms the foundation of faith.