“Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen” (Heb. 11:1).
Compared to many of my peers I would probably be considered a rather religious guy. I was raised going to church every Sunday (and sometimes for mid-week bible study), I went to a Christian school K-8, and I’ve always called myself a Christian. To some of my non-religious friends, then, it comes as something of a shock when I say that there were times when I either didn’t believe, or else very weakly.
Christianity has been a given in my life, a kind of presupposition that didn’t require any more evidence than the sky being blue. This kind of nominal faith, however, did not deal with the substantial and ever-increasing religious doubts of my adolescence. I could quote Psalm 1 and John 3:16 by memory, but was doubting whether the God these scriptures described actually existed.
Even when I was most agnostic, when I was asked if I believed in God I would have said yes without hesitation. Although sociologists could attribute this to family pressure or psychologists or beliefs ingrained in my subconscious, I think there is something more to it. I knew friends who had almost identical upbringings to my own, had similar interests and influences, and lost any hint of faith as early as elementary school. For some reason then, God sustained my faith even when I didn’t.
My move towards agnosticism (and to some extent atheism for a time), can in part be attributed to my misunderstanding of doubt and faith. For me at the time, and I would imagine for many others in my position, I viewed doubts about faith as immoral in-and-of themselves and thus wanted to repress them. This, however, only led to my doubts festering beneath the surface without being addressed, allowing them to become more and more oppressive in my mind.
Faith was nothing more than an assent to a series of claims without question. There was a mental split between what I could believe by reason and secular sources, and what my religion required me to believe. Under this framework of faith, it is no shock at all why people would disparage the term in our hyper-scientific age. I don’t, however, think this is the best way of describing either faith or doubt.
According to the author of the Letter to the Hebrews (i.e. St. Paul), faith is not merely a proposition, an idea, or some pious affirmation, but rather the very substance of the thing for which we hope. When we have faith, in a real sense we already have those things which we foresee. By faith, I see that God is before me in the Eucharist, that the Saints hear my prayer, and that my guardian angel defends me night and day.
Similarly, the language of doubt is misapplied and misunderstood. According to St. John Henry Cardinal Newman, “Ten thousand difficulties do not equal one doubt.” Questions about the faith, areas where we lack understanding, and propositions that strike us as difficult, are not doubts themselves, but only become so when we give up hope in understanding or resolving the issue. I don’t have to fear questioning my faith because I believe that truth is consistent. No truth attained through reason can contradict a truth known through faith.
Faith, then, is not something to be grasped at greedily as if it will fly out of your mind at the smallest falter. Honest questions, too, are not meant to be simply ignored and pushed down as if they are the enemies of faith. With a proper understanding of faith, I can delve into the questions that still confound me and gain an even stronger faith in the process.
James Pritchett is a Sophomore studying History and Classics with a deep affinity for his native land, the Golden State. Despite being the most recent lover of Catholicism on the Torch staff, he is the C101 editor and his main interests consist of reading Dostoyevsky, playing devil’s advocate, and correcting people on niche theological heresies.
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