It isn’t uncommon that I, as they say, have questions.
I’m a natural skeptic and will literally not believe anything until I have multiple sources to confirm it. Nothing trending on social media moves my beliefs even so much as an inch. I dismiss gossip without prejudice. I bat away rumors with ease. No, I won’t believe most things until I see it with my own two eyes or gather at least two or three opinions. I’m the annoying guy at the magic show who takes great pleasure in trying to puzzle out how the illusion occurred (I rarely succeed). I can’t just sit back and enjoy the show.
All my life, I thought my skepticism was unquestionably a virtue. I thought it meant I was level-headed, cautious, and smart. I thought it meant I was more rational than other people. Everything in my education confirmed my prideful opinion. In philosophy class, we learned about Descartes and his resolve to doubt everything because doubt, in his opinion, is the beginning of knowledge. We read Hume, who insists that accepting any truths based on tradition or custom is foolish. We studied John Locke, who asserts that truth is validated primarily by personal experience.
These rarified philosophical ideas have filtered down into pop culture and, today, most of us are natural skeptics. We want everything proved to us before we believe. Because of this, we end up with all sorts of different ideas arbitrated by some mysterious interior process unique to each person.
The world is populated by billions of skeptics claiming their personal opinions are true because the gold-standard of belief, the only way to defeat skepticism, is personal experience. Everything else is doubted and dismissed. Our trust is given randomly, and the best sources of truth such as elders, parents, and religious tradition are quickly dismissed.
A terrible method
The ironic thing about enlightened skepticism is that it’s a terrible way to gather knowledge. When we don’t trust, we cannot learn. When we reject trust as a matter of principle, we don’t actually stop trusting. We become gullible and trust the worst of all sources - ourselves. I don’t know about you, but I get stuff wrong all the time. I’ve learned the hard way that I need to trust other people. On my own, I was going disastrously wrong.
For instance, for many years leading up to my conversion, I didn’t trust the Church. I was intrigued, but had questions. Endless questions. I interrogated any Catholic I could find about intricate moral teachings and theological nuances. I was a doubter demanding the Church to justify herself to me. I figured that, if I could just get all my questions answered, it would make sense to convert. In the meantime, I would remain a skeptic.
As a priest, I often see the same attitude with young couples who have been dating for years and put off marriage. These couples have endless questions. They approach their relationship from a place of skeptical doubt about the future, so the information gathering phase of the relationship drags on endlessly.
The questions will never end.
There’s always another question to ask.
When it comes to faith, there are always difficult moral teachings of the Church with which to contend. There are always miracles to doubt, fears for the future, and unknown possibilities. Same with marriage. No two people can know everything about each other. Even after 50 years of marriage, this is impossible.
Safe, not smart
It became clear to me that, if I continued to doubt, I would never convert. I would never actually know what it was like to be Catholic. A young couple who use doubt as an excuse to put off marriage think they’re learning more about each other but, in fact, they’re doing the opposite. They won’t really know each other until they marry.
It turns out, radical skepticism has a lot more to do with playing it safe than being smart.
Being a skeptic means never believing anything. It means never having to take a risk, accept a challenge, or be exposed to the possibility of failure. This is why, while I listen to skeptics when they give me feedback, I rarely allow their doubts to sway me. They seem smart but their negative approach will halt any project, acquisition of knowledge, or big decision dead in its tracks.
We've just celebrated the feast of the Apostle Thomas, often known as Doubting Thomas.
True, St. Thomas does express a skeptical tendency, but I think the nickname is unfair. When he’s told of the Resurrection, he has questions. Because he doesn’t trust his friends, he is slow to acquire vital knowledge about his Lord.
But in the end, St. Thomas doesn’t remain in doubt. Instead, he exemplifies exactly how we ought to gather knowledge. Seeing Christ, he acknowledges his slowness to belief and cries out, “I believe, help my unbelief.” His skepticism is transformed into trust.
Even as he acknowledges that he still has questions and lingering unbelief, he declares that he will, nevertheless, take a risk and follow Christ.
A thousand years later, St. Anselm got to the heart of how to acquire knowledge when he wrote about faith seeking understanding. Faith, he says, is the key to knowledge. A potential convert will never know the Church until he actually converts. A couple will never know each other deeply until they actually marry.
Faith takes a risk and acquires knowledge. This doesn’t mean that we no longer have any questions, but it does mean that, with the openness and knowledge that arrives with faith, we might actually receive answers.
