> From this.
Doubt is not a sin. As the Bible says, “Test all things; hold fast what is good.” For it may be that by faith we are saved, but it is by doubt that we learn. And if we hold that the one inclination does not kill the other, another quote comes to mind: “To doubt everything or to believe everything are two equally convenient solutions; both dispense with the necessity of reflection.” (That’s Henri Poincare.) Thusly do I say to all the saints to try and doubt some of the things you hear, to all the scientists to try and believe some of the things you are told. For sometimes the lesson of doubt is merely that we should have had faith in the first place. Yes, faith can (often) be wrong, but there is a certain nobility in many of its failures.
It must be said, however, that it is better to question everything than to question nothing. Some of us are born with a particular certainty that allows that individual to understand many things, and allow for experiments that work on the first try; the rest of us go by trial and error (and repeat), and it is doubt that is more a friend to us than faith. Let us rather doubt that there is a God at all than believe in a God that is wrong, a God who is not love. On nobility’s flipside, there is virtue in this exact righteousness of unbelief, and I ask you to believe that it indeed is righteous. For you believe in less than nothing if you believe in a God who is not love. Thou callest good, evil, and thou callest evil, good: more hope be there for one born blind, deaf, and dumb than thee, for whatever understandest thou to be true in the world.
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