Between Faith and Doubt

This may be one of the most difficult pieces I have ever written.

Those closest to me—only a handful of people—know about my lifelong struggle between faith and doubt. I suspect many others experience the same tension but rarely speak about it. When I meet people, whose faith seems unwavering, I often find myself unable to fully understand it. At other times, I quietly envy it.

I suppose I consider myself a Catholic agnostic.

Raised and educated in the Catholic faith from childhood through high school, I rarely questioned what I was taught. As I mention in my recently published book, Resurrection Fern: Trying to Understand It All, I grew up in a small town in southern Louisiana where many things were simply accepted rather than examined.

Nearly forty years later, after losing our first child at just eighteen days old, after my wife and I both faced cancer, and after witnessing so much suffering in the world, those questions have only grown louder.

When you have held your son as he dies, abstract questions stop being abstract. They become deeply personal. They become impossible to ignore.

By "Catholic agnostic," I mean that I have little doubt a man named Jesus lived. My uncertainty lies elsewhere. Is there a God or Supreme Being? Was Jesus divine? Or was he an extraordinary human being whose teachings transformed history?

Whatever the ultimate answers may be, I believe this much is true: Jesus' teachings challenge us to live with humility, compassion, forgiveness, and concern for those who suffer. We all fall short of those ideals. Whatever our politics or nationality, it is difficult to argue that modern public life consistently reflects those values.

The world contains thousands of religions, each believing it possesses the truth. I understand why. Most of us inherit our beliefs from the families, cultures, and places into which we are born. Religious traditions are expressed through human beings and human institutions, and those institutions inevitably carry human flaws.

Then I look up.

The universe is almost impossible to comprehend in its vastness. Some scientists estimate that the observable universe contains as many stars—and perhaps planets—as there are grains of sand on Earth. Carl Sagan captured that perspective beautifully in Pale Blue Dot, reminding us how astonishingly small our world really is.

And so I return to the same questions.

Is there a God?

If so, is God all-powerful but not all-good? Or all-good but not all-powerful?

How do we reconcile childhood brain cancer, diseases that claim millions of lives, and tragedies born of human cruelty - war, terrorism, violence, and hatred?

In a universe of unimaginable size, are we truly the only intelligent life?

And where is God in all of this?

I check on my children all the time. Why doesn't God reveal Himself?

If you are Christian, was God revealed through Jesus, and are we now simply waiting?

These questions send me on a lifelong roller coaster. Some days I believe there is a God. Other days that certainty fades, though never quite to zero.

One word keeps me from abandoning faith altogether: hope.

Not certainty. Not proof.

Hope.

Hope that there is a God.

Hope that love ultimately matters. Hope that kindness is more than an evolutionary accident.

Hope that death is not the final chapter.

And if, after all of this, we are simply food for worms, life was still worth it.

The odds of any of us existing at all are almost beyond comprehension. Against incomprehensible odds, we were given this brief opportunity to love, to learn, to laugh, to grieve, and to leave the world at least a little better than we found it.

Whether or not there is a God, those things matter.

So, while we are here, let us make the most of this extraordinary gift. Let us be kinder. Let us forgive more easily. Let us help those who are suffering. Let us love our families and friends with all we have.

And if there is a God, I hope that was enough.