Doubt

 I listened to a podcast recently about churches needing to accept people who are asking questions, and not come off as unwelcoming, or unwilling to come alongside them.  Even great saints experience doubt, and people in hard places may need support more than even implied criticism.

All entirely true, and I can steer you to churches that don't like questions if you want to see one in action. But there are opposite or divergent truths about churches as well, and these also deserve some attention.  Some churches love questions but don't like answers.  I should say, they don't like religious answers.  Those usually love political and cultural answers. I wrote about this in 2006 when I scoffed at an Episcopalian's assertion that the defining attribute about them is Doubt. Yet when I looked into it, I had to admit he was largely correct, and I was Hoist on my Own Petard. Not only the UU's and Episcopalians, but the mainstream denominations now increasingly shy away from religious answers.  I don't think it is accidental that they are simultaneously embracing political views of stricter or looser wokeness, but that is a different topic.  I see a connection, but that may be an overread on my part.

I am reminded of the bishop in CS Lewis's The Great Divorce who could not accept the idea that in heaven there would no longer be free inquiry into the nature of God.  He wanted to lead discussions in heaven about such things. The person sent to discuss at the very borders his possible repentance and entry into paradise tried to explain that there is no further need to discuss the nature of wetness when one is immersed in water. (He allows there may be further subtleties enjoyed by the wet folks as they seek to understand more deeply, but not that the quality of wetness is anymore up for debate.  Everyone knows what it is there.) The bishop would have none of it, and returned to Hell, humming a hymn. 

Roman Catholics have loved questions for centuries.  They also seem to like answers. It seems about right. My own denomination, formed from a fusion of Lutherans and Pietists, has tried to hew closely to the practice of allowing considerable difference in interpretation of many doctrines, so long as core doctrines are retained.

There is secondly the question of whether these are honest questions are not.  I think most religious questions start out as honest ones.  I believe this both from theory and from practice. Sometimes the questions derive from intellectual objections, sometimes they stem from tragedy or unfairness coming into their lives, sometimes they come from disillusionment with respected figures.  I don't know if I am much tolerant of the honest questions of young people at this point, but there was a time when I was, and gave cautionary advice even to their parents about letting doubt and questioning unfold. I had a minor reputation for it in our circles, likely exaggerated. 

This may no longer be true, because I have seen honest questions turn dishonest too many times.  If you want an answer, then seek an answer. Ambiguity can itself be an honest landing point.  There are things I believe are paradoxes, or elusive, or not easily definable.  The works of GK Chesterton, and Elie Wiesel's Souls on Fire were greatly liberating in this way, though my introduction to the possibility through Tolkien and Lewis likely set me up for understanding this. But if you are still asking the same questions ten years later and are asking everyone else to listen attentively, I have to wonder if you are serious.

That could be badly wrong.  Perhaps questions and doubts have to incubate in their own time, and I am just not of sufficient character to be patient.  

Summary: Yes, churches should be willing to walk alongside those with honest questions (though Jesus was pretty harsh with Nicodemus, come to think of it). Yet what if the churches themselves are avoiding answers for their own reasons?  And what are we to do with dishonest questions?