A place to unload

I begin with a quote from Rene Descartes that was on my iGoogle page this morning, "If you would be a real seeker after truth, it is necessary that at least once in your life you doubt, as far as possible, all things." The initial reading of this bold statement was like hearing fingernails being pulled across the chalkboard for the first time. What is he talking about? Me...doubt...never! And if Descartes's intent was to create and leave within the heart and mind of his students an immortal sea of doubt, then he must be challenged. (however, I confess I know little of Descartes and what the context for this quote was, but it is a great starting point for this blog...so my apologies to Rene if I have misused...)

What I am able to use from this quote is the reality that it conveys, namely, that to finally embrace a truth often times comes through a great struggle of the soul first. To give an example, the unconditional love of God is well known and widely accepted. Many people who believe in God would not disagree that God loves people without condition. However, this intellectual paradise one enjoys may be transformed to resemble a labyrinth of darkness when the reality of suffering, either one's own or that of someone else, is staring them in the face. The question explicit or implicit becomes, "does God still love?"

Faced with any number of trials, like, death, emotional or physical pain, loneliness, depression, rejection, persecution or fear, is it not a simple leap for the "believer" to wonder how the "unconditional lover" not to mention the all-powerful God, could stand by without seeming to care. It is at these moments when doubt rears its head and the one tormented will either leap into the abyss of despair or to the pathway of faith. Despair tosses out hope altogether and confines its prisoner to a mechanical existence void of any real meaning or choice; faith, however, grabs what priceless jewels its hands can hold, jewels mined from the word of God and jewels received from the generous hand of those who have labored, in that same word. The more the hands of faith carry the stronger and larger they become. It is this faith that rests itself on the proven reality that God does indeed love unconditionally, and doubt is rejected as unfounded, even during an almost unbearable current experience.

So will we doubt? Only if we are determined to, not only discover the truth, but to become one with the truth. God is not merely interested in our intellectual faith, which is a faith that can believe certain truths without those truths ever being seriously challenged. To become one with the truth demands that our belief in truth come up against great odds (Think David & Goliath)only to prevail. The trial of our faith will either, reinforce true beliefs, or deconstruct faulty ones. Either way, at the end of the day it will be our faith in the truth of God that is crowned victorious because a temporary season of doubt brought the truth into clearer focus.