In churches which follow the ecumenical lectionary, this coming Sunday is Doubting Thomas Sunday. It’s the day when my patrol saint takes center stage.
Doubt has often been described as the enemy of faith. That’s not my experience. Usually it is the companion of faith. Check out the following quotes.
When you are deluded and full of doubt, even a thousand books of scripture are not enough. When you have realized understanding; even one word is too much. –Fen. Yang.
Faith is different from proof; the latter is human, the former is a Gift from God. –Blaise Pascal
Seeking to know is only too often learning to doubt. –Antionette du Liger de la Garde Deshoulieres
Faith which does not doubt is dead faith.—Miguel de Unamuno
It is not as a child that I believe and confess Jesus Christ. My hosanna is born of a furnace of doubt.– Fyodor Dostoyevski
I believe though I do not comprehend, and I hold by faith what I cannot grasp with the mind. –Saint Bernard
The problem with the wise is they are so filled with doubts while the dull are so certain.– Bertrand Russell
It is the dull man who is always sure, and the sure man who is always dull. –H. L. Mencken
Doubt isn’t the opposite of faith; it is an element of faith. –Paul Tillich
Doubt is not a pleasant condition, but certainty is absurd. – Voltaire
Doubt is an incentive to truth, and patient inquiry leadeth the way. –Hosea Ballou
Fanaticism is…overcompensation for doubt. — Robertson Davies
Faith does not ignore the facts, it ignores the power of the facts. –Benny Hinn
Sometimes God doesn’t tell us His plan because we wouldn’t believe it anyway. — Carlton Pearson
Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart. And try to love the questions themselves.– Rainer Maria Rilke
We turn to God for help when our foundations are shaking only to learn that it is God shaking them. –Charles West
If knowing answers to life’s questions is absolutely necessary to you, then forget the journey. You will never make it, for this is a journey of unknowables — of unanswered questions, enigmas, incomprehensibles, and, most of all, things unfair.– Jeanne Guyon
I will have nothing to do with a God who cares only occasionally. I need a God who is with us always, everywhere, in the deepest depths as well as the highest heights. It is when things go wrong, when good things do not happen, when our prayers seem to have been lost, that God is most present. We do not need the sheltering wings when things go smoothly. We are closest to God in the darkness, stumbling along blindly. –Madeleine L’Engle
God always answers in the deeps, never in the shallows of our soul. –Anonymous
Faith is deliberate confidence in the character of God whose ways you may not understand at the time. –Oswald Chambers
It’s a good thing to have all the props pulled out from under us occasionally. It gives us some sense of what is rock under our feet, and what is sand. –Madeleine L’Engle
