Room for Doubt

It always saddens me when someone says they don’t feel they can come to church because they can’t ‘sign up’ to particular beliefs and so don’t ‘have a right’ to be there. Church should be exactly where you can come to question what you believe in, to have time to think and explore. That why we call our quarterly discussion group ‘Curious about Christianity’. Curiosity is what’s needed, not certainty.

And the Bible shows this: while one disciple only has to see the empty tomb to be convinced of the resurrection, Mary Magdalen doesn’t recognise Jesus even when he’s standing right in front of her. She needs to hear him speak her name before she believes. The rest of the disciples remain so frightened, even after news reaches them, that they hide in a locked room. And Doubting Thomas, despite the testimony of all those others, still cannot believe.

He certainly wasn’t ready to stand up and say a creed. Not merely agnostic, he demanded physical proof.

Yet despite Thomas’s scathing disbelief, the disciples don’t reject him, nor he them. In so many polarised debates now, we filter, cancel, or even intimidate those whose voices and opinions we oppose; but, as friends and companions, Thomas and the disciples continue to spend time in each others’ company; ‘A week later his disciples were again in the house and Thomas was with them’.

There is always room for the doubter. There is room for all our doubts, even, or especially, in church.

Giles Coren, the restaurant critic and presenter, recently wrote an article for The Times about how he, a secular Jew, has found himself drawn to church, Displaying typical humour, he says: “I gave up not going to church some time ago. Most Sundays I am there, praying and singing — another lapsed atheist…..I do not not believe. I am not without faith. I have a sense that God is there — in the tradition, the words, the 2,000 years of conviction, the imagination of all the people who came before me.’ Coren still feels uncertainty, but considers there may come a time when he will seek baptism; ‘God is the interesting thing about Christianity, and Christians believe that this God became human. Amidst all that we don’t know and don’t see, going to church makes tangible what can feel intangible.’

I would love more people to realise, as Coren has done, that church is here for them, whatever your background, however strong or weak your faith. We don’t need to have all the answers, but when we gather to be curious together, we may suddenly find that Jesus is in the room with us.

Revd Kate McFarlane