Dear Friends,
Alleluia! Christ is Risen! Happy Easter!
I am writing to you from within the fog of being a church professional on the day after Easter. And at the same time, I am writing to you from within the joy of sharing that story (and an egg hunt, of course) with the children in my community. It is a satisfied exhaustion. I hope many of you are feeling the same way.
Now that we’re on the other side of Easter day – but still just at the beginning of the great season of Eastertide! – I am thinking about doubt. After Mary arrives at the tomb looking for Jesus only to find it is empty, the stone rolled away, she is almost immediately greeted by doubt on the part of the men who must see for themselves.
This doubt is, of course, a natural response. We all experience a wide range of doubts – and they often serve us well. We need doubts to keep us from getting into dangerous situations, to avoid scams, to see through harmful ideologies that seek to bring out the worst in us. So imagine if the disciples has not doubted Mary! Their doubt was not necessarily due to her status as a woman (let’s flash forward to Thomas, who received word of Christ’s reappearance from his fellow disciples.
As essential and natural as doubt is, though, there’s a type of doubt that can make educators itchy – and that’s the kind of doubt that emerges from the mouths of babes, so to speak. My program year, for example, kicked off last fall with a second grader asking me about the application of the ten commandments “if someone doesn’t believe in God.” While she was not staking a claim about her own belief, she was clear about the reality that some people don’t operate within this framework? What then?
“Lord I Believe. Help My Unbelief.”
When it comes to questions of belief, of theology and orthodoxy, I think the issue of doubt might be scarier for formation professionals than for parents. That’s not to say I don’t think we’re well equipped to speak to those questions. But I think many of us actually want to respect those doubts, and that can run afoul of the families that we support. While parents may or may not always be equipped for these questions, there’s a lot less risk they’ll make themselves mad! (Sorry, parents!)
This Sunday, as we move deeper into the story of Easter, we’ll encounter the well-known story of the disciples encountering Christ in the upper room after his resurrection. Thomas isn’t there, though, and when he hears about this interaction her declares, "Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands, and put my finger in the mark of the nails and my hand in his side, I will not believe."
It’s not unreasonable. Jesus is supposed to be dead, and his death has caused great distress amongst his followers. It would be natural for them to want to believe someone who claimed to be Jesus, resurrected, even if things seemed awry, if only to assuage their grief. We have all been known to see what we want to see, to accept affirming distortions. So why is it considered a bad thing to be “a doubting Thomas”?
In Mark’s Gospel, we encounter the father who declares, “Lord I believe! Help my unbelief!” Many have deemed this one of the most powerful prayers of our faith – a prayer that affirms our call into closeness with God while also seeking to strengthen it. When Thomas asks for proof, then, I hear it as his version of this prayer. If he absolutely did not believe, he wouldn’t require affirmation – in fact, he might outright refuse it. Rather he wants to believe, or to believe more strongly, and so he calls for corroboration. Show me the wounds. Prove to me it really is you, my most desired Lord and teacher.
But, back to the question of doubt.
I think the best way to think about doubt, or to understand how we respond to it, is to recognize that our own doubts nag at us. They are an irritating voice in the back of our minds when we are leaning into a particular kind of contemporary rationality or logic. When we are faced by children’s doubts, though, it can feel as though everything is at stake – because we know from experience that faith isn’t just about God. It’s about tradition and community and who we are in a much larger context. Children’s doubt can feel like a threat to our family’s history as well as to the future that we have envisioned for them. Of course that’s terrifying!
As someone who is deeply committed to Godly Play, I feel empowered to relinquish some of those fears. I know what we are doing in that room, in that community, is about a lot more than the yes or no of belief. And at least as an individual, I also know that belief actually isn’t a yes/no. If it was, the church would be in a lot of trouble, I think.
Uncertainty’s Gifts
As the person who, as a teen, was designated the point person for children’s most immense church questions, I consider those questions to be gifts, whether they are rooted in the natural curiosity of young children or the growing doubts or disillusionment that come with age and intellectual growth. When we open ourselves to doubt, rather than viewing its emergence as foreclosure, we allow ourselves to explore new ways of seeing. It’s how we stay open to our own growth. It might even be the thing that, in keeping us open, helps us to become like children.
May doubt draw us closer to the resurrected body of Christ. Let it help us be born again in the spirit.
In a world that demands certainty, one that expects adults to stop asking questions and just accept what we’re told, doubt is surely a holy thing. Alleluia.
Peace,
Bird