On Intellectual Exhaustion and Rebuking Doubt

He rebuked the doubters. His followers told us to be prepared, to have answers. But these questions! So complex. So penetrating. So serious.

I've been raised in church my whole life. The idea of doubt was, at best, an afterthought. I didn't doubt because I could see God around me. I saw it in the happiness of my parents, in the unity of fellowship. But that was before Nietzsche. That was before Freud and Weber.

I'm in a class with four other people, discussing the beginnings of postmodernism, in all of its horrifyingly consistent lack of direction. All signs point away from God, from Christianity in particular, but these “truths” guide us to nowhere. A “method,” nothing more. That's what I'm told to make of Nietzsche. That's what I'm told to consider in Freud. But this is of course an oversimplification. For what purpose is another question? Perhaps my professor really does consider the material too dense for those of us who signed up for Modern Political Philosophy. But then again, maybe I'm considered too young to recognize the fact that every author lined up for this syllabus hates the idea of truth in absolutes.

Surely we could have read someone else this semester, somebody who appreciates certainty in general, not solely in their own elaborately drawn musings. Raymond Aron. Eric Voegelin. Pierre Manent. Yes, even Leo Strauss. The list goes on. But the class does not.

So I'm inundated with piece after piece, each one delivering a blow to the “gut” of my faith. It's a test, I'm convinced. But it's also something more. It's a chance for me to really see the challenge that others my age are facing. It's stimulating to read someone who disagrees with your entire frame of reference, who vehemently attacks the very foundation of your life. But it's also intellectually exhausting. I'm literally tired after reading Nietzsche, noting where I can the many ways he distorts the Bible, observing how his outsider's view remains that -- outside. But with each work, with each quotable passage, I feel doubt creep in. I feel myself acknowledge what I thought I'd never have to.

My faith is weak. It's small. It's based on a God whose size changes with my happiness. He's big when I'm happy, but he's small when I'm weak. His plans are promising when I start my new job. But His plans are cruel, directionless when I'm reminded of the suffering of a friend.

And I'm rebuked. My doubt makes me weaker, and Jesus knows this. He knows that it's one thing to question, another to desire no answers.

But this is typical of my generation, to seek and never find, to fully illustrate the thinker's pose and never acquire the thinker's pain. To “wrestle” with an issue is to understand victory. A match implies finality. But we are scared of truth. We are scared at the prospect of our limitations. What we fear most of all is the possibility of being right. There is a responsibility that comes with truth. That's what it means to have an answer for those who come to you. You have to know where someone is at to tell him where he should be.

So why are we afraid of truth? Why don't we pursue it when He is that truth? We have become content with letting Him be that truth, but we've made it a separate truth. We have avoided the difficult conversations involved with speaking truth, denying the Biblical imperative to spread that truth like wildfire. How is that different from denying him? William Buckley once said, “The purpose of an open mind is to close it, on certain subjects.” He noted, “If you don't, you've simply abdicated the responsibility to think.” We've done worse. We've abdicated that responsibility, to really know something, to be convicted by reality. But in the process, we've also avoided what to do with that truth.

“Private convictions” is a contradiction in terms. It's meaningless. And it defines where some would take our faith. A faith that's merely personal, that's always looking down and in, but never around and out, is not a faith. It's a uniform. It's a pose.

Doubt is the shield that covers this reality. Sure Nietzsche is difficult (and depressing, but a very capable writer, too). But he is also wrong. No matter how many times I read him, I am still haunted by the hopelessness of his idealism. And there is idealism in every page, up to the last statement in the Genealogy of Morals. He predicts an end to faith. Yet it lasts. And lasts. And lasts.

It is because I know this, because the recognition of the permanency of my faith convicts me, that I am obligated to stoke these flames in my heart. And not just on some blog post that nobody will read. But out here. Out there. Somewhere other than inside. There is a truth. There is a way. And it's a part of my life. I may doubt the direction, but I cannot stand still. That is why doubt is rebuked. It can never be a destination in itself, and when the journey becomes the goal, we have lost our conception of truth.

Doubt is not a place. It's a tangent.

Truth, though. That's home. And we have to move to get there.

***
[See James 1:6; Matthew 21:21; John 20:27.]