Hearing that, we might get the impression that doubting and questioning our beliefs is a shameful thing. But probably the only foolish and shameful questions are the ones we raise as a smoke screen when we are just trying to find a way to avoid doing what we know God wants us to do. But if we sincerely want to be Christians, then asking questions about our beliefs and being honest about our doubts is not a bad thing, but is in fact a very good and honest thing--and of all places on earth the church ought to be the arena where such honest struggle and controversy are only welcomed, but strongly encouraged.
The truth is, beyond childhood there will be times in our lives when we need to challenge our belief systems, question the way things are in the church and world, and search deep into our tradition and in our souls, in a necessary reaching out to the God who is beyond our definitions and pious platitudes. Usually this stage occurs in the teen years or young adulthood, but in can happen later, too, and more than once, in times of suffering and crisis.
Yet, shocked by doubts and questions, threatened authority figures like parents and pastors sometimes shame teens or young adults for asking questions. Hey, it happened to me! As a teen I asked so many questions in the Pastor’s Sunday high school class that he kicked me out—permanently. I tried to make a joke of it, but it was no joke, but rather a deep hurt. And I have too often seen family members trying shush up a serious ill older person who is wanting to raise questions about suffering and death. Such shame should never be inflicted on adults or kids —we run the risk of alienating them from the church. It’s for our own comfort, not theirs, that we try to sell them on the cheap grace of mere beliefs, when they are looking for the costly grace of trust in the God whose life and love is beyond even our most exalted doctrines.
In fact, any demand for unquestionable absolutes in matters of the faith betrays the nature of our Lord himself! Raising questions about beliefs and religious practice is not only not bad, it is the very thing Jesus himself practiced. Jesus was always stirring up trouble. Every where he went, he challenged the way things were, because he was trying to show the people to trust not in traditional teachings, but in the mysterious loving God beyond all definitions.
So we finally get to Jesus’ teaching of "seed faith". A tiny seed of trust in the God beyond all our understanding is enough to change everything for us. For when we hit bottom in life, we see that’s all we’ve ever really had and it will be all we really ever need: just the tiny seed of faith—trusting in God as God and not in our own beliefs about God. With such tiny seed faith, life-altering miracles can and do happen down in the valley of the shadow of death! Such faith does not come easy, and it’s not common. It’s the way of the Cross, often despised, because people settle for comfortable old certainties, when they could have had the power of the living God.
Thus Saint Ignatius of Loyola wrote, "There are very few people who realize what God would make of them if they abandoned themselves into his hands, and let themselves be formed by his grace." Pray, then, to be among those few--good soil open to God, ready for the seed of faith, and for the letting go and the dying and the growth and the power to move mountains. Amen.