FAITH AND DOUBT 04.

Faith & Doubt 04: How to Believe

So far in this series, we have visited some interesting ideas and foreign lands.

Very few people doubt their faith quite like someone who has spent years studying it. You start by placing anthropological rubrics over sacred texts. You ask how human beings develop ideals of God, craft imagery to represent those ideals, and tell stories to sustain them. You notice that nearly every civilization does this. Put any group of sapiens by a river long enough, and eventually they’ll start naming gods—and then worshiping them.

And then the irony creeps in.

The gods often end up looking suspiciously like the people who made them. We name our gods, and then our gods name us. We cast out an ideal, and then we follow it. That realization doesn’t destroy faith—but it does destabilize naïveté.

So how do you believe after that?

How do you keep believing when you’ve seen the seams in the text, the editorial layers, the divine evolution from Genesis to Job to John? How do you believe when you know that God, in the Bible, is something of a moving target? Here’s my answer—not airtight, not systematized, but honest.

First: I have been interrupted.

There have been moments in my life that I cannot reduce to psychology or coincidence. Timing too precise. Comfort too present. Direction too clear. I cannot prove those moments to you—but I also cannot unbelieve them.

If you listen to the Text and Rock Podcast, I have shared some of these moments as of late— something I made a point not to do for a long, long time. This is because it is WAY EASIER to bring skepticism and scrutiny to faith than it is to encourage others to lean into it. My humble stance, as of late, is that people NEED hope against chaos, faith that ultimately wins, and most of all, purpose and meaning in their lives. And so I have tried to be honest about when god has met me personally and undeniably:

The Hebrew Bible calls this panim el panim—face to face.

Jacob wrestles through the night and limps away saying he has seen God face to face and lived. The Rabbis later call it hashgacha pratit—particular providence. Not fireworks. Not spectacle. Just the quiet, piercing sense that you are being seen inside your own story.

When doubt gets loud, memory gets stubborn.

But I do remember. In fact I cannot forget.

Second: the biblical tradition is too powerful to discard.

The Hebrew prophets dared to say that the Creator of the universe cares about how the poor are treated. That justice is not optional. That righteousness is not tribal but cosmic. It is alien to the ancient world and it is wild. We are still trying to figure this one out. Amos says justice should roll down like waters—and in the ancient Near East, that was revolutionary.

Rabbinic Judaism and early expressions of Christianity double down even more.

Hillel summarizes the Law: “What is hateful to you, do not do to your neighbor. The rest is commentary.” That is moral universalism. That is an ethical horizon cast farther than most ancient systems dared to go. The idea which begins in Jesus, that if each of us sought to love perfectly as God loves perfectly, the world could be much, much closer to divine perfection. This is the larger framework which grounds ALL SORTS of ethical assumptions of the modern West. I mean the good things. We believe in human rights, blind justice, that there are ways we ought to act and ought to treat one another. These come from the Bible, like it or not.

Even Nietzsche (whom I actually love to read) knew this.

When he declared God dead, he also admitted he was standing inside a moral house built by that very God. You can critique the tradition—and you should—but you cannot deny its civilizational weight. I believe, in part, because I believe in that moral architecture.

Third: the way of Jesus works.

Strip away the stained glass and read the Sermon on the Mount from Jesus of Nazareth slowly. Not good enough. Read it and try to do it. Read it and try to do it even when it seems impossible: Love your enemies. Forgive relentlessly. Practice hidden virtue. Refuse retaliation.

Love an American and a Russian equally as a human. Do the same with a democrat or a republican— they are just a human who has been sucked into identity politics. Forgive the person who betrayed you. Even try to understand why they believed it was the best course of action for them at the time. Hold a level of virtue and character personally, over and against the madness of the crowds and mob mentality. Be wise, just, courageous, righteous, and humble. Learn to absorb insults because they cannot truly affect your goodness.

This is not naïve spirituality.

It is psychological and moral genius. When I live this way—imperfectly but intentionally—my life stabilizes. I am a calm in the storm. i can almost walk on the water. Almost. When I move toward ego, indulgence, resentment, and self-protection, my life fractures. I begin to sink. This is no accident. Wisdom is the groove of the cosmos and while we can hardly discipline ourselves or punish ourselves out of destructive patterns— we can follow a good Master.

The Stoics spoke of aligning with this logos, the rational structure of reality.

Jesus radicalizes that alignment. Anger is already violence in seed form. Lust is already betrayal in embryo. Integrity begins beneath behavior. When I try the opposite way, life gets worse.

And this is where we need to talk about freedom.

Many people think freedom means being able to do whatever you want, whenever you want to do it. I could not disagree more. I think that definition of freedom is precisely why our culture feels off the rails right now—because appetite is not the same thing as liberty.

Freedom is not indulgence.

Freedom is clarity.

Freedom is knowing in your heart the best and most life-giving direction to go in—and then running in that path as fast as you possibly can. Freedom is alignment with what is true and good, not escape from constraint.

The ancient tradition knew this.

In Deuteronomy, Israel is told, “I have set before you life and death… therefore choose life.” That is not restriction. That is invitation to freedom. Choose the path that leads somewhere good and beautiful and wide and open— where you actually WANT to end up..

The Psalmist says, “I will run in the path of your commandments, for you have set my heart free.” Notice the paradox. Running in the path is the freedom. Direction produces joy. And what is the path: commandments. Divine expectation that there is a best way to be human.

That is where the life of faith is.

That is where the life of joy is.

Fourth: I do not have faith in a book.

This matters.

I do not hold faith in the text of Scripture. I hold faith in God. The Bible is human literature about divine encounter—layered, evolving, argued over, breathtaking.

The Talmud preserves minority opinions alongside majority rulings because its compilers are aware we get naming God wrong all the time. It is expected and even cherished to argue about God and come up with different names.

In Bava Metzia 59b, a heavenly voice attempts to settle a debate—and the Rabbis reject it, quoting Deuteronomy: “It is not in heaven.” Think about that. Basically the humans arguing about the meaning of the text tell God to butt out of the discussion. Haha! Argument is canonized. Wrestling is holy. No one, even the blessed one be he, ought to get in the way.

God does not collapse because Genesis depicts Him walking in a garden, or because Job’s God overwhelms from a whirlwind, or because John declares God Spirit.

Those are attempts at naming a moving target that is: the energy that makes everything go, the cause of all causes, the primary mover, the awareness inside you, th conscience in your chest. And it is evolving just like you.

God, if real, is not ink on parchment. God is what Paul gestures toward in Athens: the one in whom we live and move and have our being. That is not bibliolatry. That is metaphysics.

Fifth: life without transcendence shrinks.

I have tried the alternative paths. I hate to admit it, but I have. So did Augustine, and so dare I hope I am in good company.

Pure materialism. Radical autonomy. Ethical relativism dressed up as sophistication. They promise freedom—but they often deliver fragmentation.

Augustine said our hearts are restless until they rest in God. Nothing has proven truer in my own life. The restlessness is diagnostic. Without transcendence, suffering is just chemistry. With transcendence, suffering can be story. And story changes everything.

Here’s what I mean. When I orient my life toward something beyond myself—even imperfectly—there is expansion. Patience increases. Ego loosens. Meaning deepens. When I walk the opposite direction, I become smaller.

Even my opportunities and success suffer, it is almost like a divine joke. When I take the gloves off, so will God. On the other hand, when I orient my life around being the next chapter of my tradition, everything clicks. It is either a blessing or a curse, but it is my experienced reality. And so here it is honestly.

Finally: doubt refines more than it destroys.

Maimonides argued that the safest way to speak about God is to say what God is not. Strip away projection. Remove the beard. Remove the storm cloud. Remove the anthropomorphism. Until all you have is the essence, the energy, the goodness.

When you do this, what remains is larger.

The Psalms ask, “How long, O Lord? Will you hide your face from me” That question is in the canon. Which means doubt is not a modern defect. It is an ancient companion. This writer experienced divine silence and inadequate explanations. So you are not alone in both the experience or the complaining about it. Cheers traveler.

If Israel means “one who wrestles with God,” then wrestling is not rebellion—it is identity.

So how do I believe?

Not because I have certainty.

Not because the text is simple.

Not because doubt disappeared.

I believe because I have had moments I cannot un-have. Because the ethical heritage of this tradition is too good to abandon. Because the way of Jesus produces a life that is whole. Because God is larger than the literature written about God. Because when I try the opposite way, life gets worse. Because true freedom is not doing whatever I want—but running as fast as I can toward what gives life.

Belief, for me, is not certainty. That would be lame and too small.

It is commitment in the presence of ambiguity.

It is limping like Jacob and refusing to let go.

That is, after all, the essence of love in the heavens above and on earth below: for love to be true it cannot be coerced. You have to choose your child and your child has to choose you back— without evidence that would force the hand.

Heart, Swift-footed Markilles