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TOPIC: Gordon, Samuel Dickey - Quiet Talks on Personal Problems (Other Topics in this Collection)
SUBJECT: 13. Some Marks of Honest Doubt.
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Some Marks of Honest Doubt.
Then there is the real doubter. He is not absorbed in what he does not believe. No true doubter ever is. He is concerned about finding out what should be believed. He is digging for facts. He carries a sifter and attempts to separate the mere husks from the wheat-hearts. There is the throwing aside of much that comes of course. But this is merely incidental with the honest searcher. His eye and thought are on the kernel of fact. No serious, thoughtful man allows himself to give his strength to declaring what he does not believe, except incidentally for an immediate purpose. He centres thought and strength on what is plainly true, on what must be believed. And as that is held sharply up to view the other falls away. The best way to get rid of error is to hold up the truth. Darkness goes when the sun rises.
The honest doubter is a wholesome man to meet. He is not trying to trip somebody up, but to get a sure footing for himself. He never attacks. He inquires. He is always seeking for light. He goes about with his eyes and ears more open than his mouth. It is opened chiefly to ask questions, real questions that seek information. He welcomes truth from any quarter, and contributions to one's stock of truth sometimes come from most unlikely quarters.
There is another sure mark of this wholesome man; he will admit himself wrong when new light shows that he is. That is always a hard thing to do, nothing is much harder. It makes a severe mental wrench many a time. It wounds one's intellectual pride very sorely. Many a man's growth is stunted and stopped at this point. For refusal to admit the light that comes has a peculiarly stupefying effect upon the mind. The honest doubter honestly admits to himself that he was wrong in his former conclusions, and then he will admit it to others. Such admission reveals the really great man. He is not half so much concerned about whether his views have been right, as he is to get right now. And he knows that nothing clogs up the road to truth like misconceptions of truth, or positive wrong —untruths.
And then the final test of the real, true doubter is this, that as light comes he will allow it to govern his habits, his life. Here is the test that drops many a man out of the ranks. The sharp tug-of-war comes at this point. For it is an essential of finding truth that the spirit and habit of life be made to fit what is found. That may mean very radical changes. It may cost friendships, and income, and standing. But that will not deter the true man, for he is honest first of all. For mark you keenly, the great truths are the moral truths. They concern the life we are living now, and to live always. The great test of truth is its effect upon the life. Truth itself affects life. It pushes away the artificial, the false, the wrong, and, breathing as a soft warm south wind upon life, brings out its strength and fragrance.
Jesus spoke a word about this that states a great law quite apart from His immediate use of it: "He that is willing to do ... shall know." It is a characteristic of the great truths that they attack what is contrary to themselves, what is wrong. Truth is aggressive. It points out with unflinching finger the wrong, the untrue, the false, the sin. It insists upon a man's life measuring up to its requirements. Its voice is distinct and sharp, although most quiet. It insists on being heard. The only way to get rid of that voice is to shut up the ears. And then the poor fool of a man hasn't changed the voice nor stopped it. He has only cut himself off from hearing it; but not cut himself off from the result it is announcing to him. Truth is always asking a man to do something. To him who obeys it becomes an open book in big, plain type. He that is willing to do shall know. Obedience leads to a university degree in the highest knowledge. Knowledge of truth lies only along the path of obedience, with most at the farther end.
Christianity owes much to honest doubt. There was a doubter in the original group of twelve men who stood closest to Jesus. And there is pretty sure to be found one who has doubted, or who doubts, wherever twelve thoughtful men gather.
Jesus' attitude towards the first doubter is wonderfully cheering and helpful. He didn't chide nor find fault. He welcomed personal investigation. In earnest tones He said, " Reach hither thy hand; find out for yourself; know by the feel that it is I myself who was dead and now am risen."
Thomas accepted that invitation. He revealed his sincerity and earnestness. He came where he was likely to get light. He was a true doubter, honest in his perplexity, looking for light, and when it came frankly admitting that he had been wrong. To every thoughtful, honest doubter comes that same warm, eager invitation from Jesus' lips, "Reach hither thy hand; find out for yourself." A true doubter never settles down in his doubts. He asks questions. But he asks them to get information; not to puzzle somebody else, and never for the sake of arguing, and never to prove himself right.
Much skepticism is an extreme mental protest against the extreme statements of religious teachers. One extreme always draws out an opposite extreme. Both men are extreme and therefore both in part wrong. The angle of vision is not the correct one for clear seeing. But let not the man at the skeptical extreme think to excuse his position, nor to rest in it because the other man is extreme too. A man should seek for truth, and not be held back by somebody's extreme statement of it. The earnest man does seek for truth, not that he may combat the other man in his wrong view of it, but for the sweet peace of knowing truth, and the yet sweeter peace of living his life in its dear light. No man is justified in staying at one extreme because somebody else is at the other. He is hindering the truth itself, and, worse, is hindering some other man who is hiding behind him.