The Solvent of Doubt
W. Carl Ketcherside
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My casual invitation to college and university students to write to me has produced a real contribution to my life and thought. I have sought to listen and learn as well as to reply and I find my life enriched by the exchange. I am never shocked by disclosure of doubt or dismay, and I am not at all concerned with selling someone a bill of goods consisting of my own views and opinions. This makes for a great deal of freedom and understanding. One can grow mighty tired if he feels obligated to bend everyone in his direction and especially when a lot of folks don't want to be bent.
No one else can raise as many questions as a college student, and no one else is as eager to find answers. One thing I notice is that the questions are not new. They are the same ones that were asked in childhood but they take on a greater significance in college. I wonder if this is an indication of an innate sense of quest for the meaning of life and of personal relationship to the universe which comes as naturally to the rational being as eating when hungry.
Does one start searching for God like a newborn babe starts nuzzling its mother's breast until it fastens upon the nipple with the mouth already drawing and pulling? If so, is there no universal breast, no source of supply for the soul hunger? Must we wail in vain, like an infant in the night whose mother has died and is growing cold beside it?
I got to thinking about this when I received a letter from an art major in a western college a few weeks ago. He grew up in a strict "Church of Christ" environment, but he is about to slip his cable and go adrift with the tide. He has reached the conclusion that God is not real and that each person creates his own image of God. He points out that his own mental picture of God has been changing, and that the God-image is conditioned solely by environment. The "God" of the Hottentot or the pin-headed pigmy is not the "God" of the Wall Street broker, for example.
I must confess that my own concept of God has undergone some changes also, but these alterations have produced exactly the opposite effect upon me as upon my young friend, whom I have yet to meet. I find my trust in God grows stronger each day of my life. Instead of taking "French leave" from the camp of the believers, I am driving my tent stakes down ever more firmly. I'm here for life. Read that again. I mean I'm here "for life."
A vagrant thought flitted through my mind that perhaps his flirting with modern art which thrives upon distortion and seeks to reduce the real to an unreal imagery, might have upset my young brother. I think one might shut himself up with pictures which there is ever a danger of hanging downside up, until he might get out of focus and have his thinking upside down. I know that I trust I will never meet a woman or a cow like they are pictured by some of our more garish "pop art" entrepreneurs.
Seriously, though, changing concepts about the nature of God have nothing to do with the existence of God. We need to alter our concepts about a great many personalities and things as we mature, but to postulate that we invent that about which our concepts alter, and that such alteration is a proof of invention, seems a little immature to me. Some fairly great intellectuals have even argued that the ability to conceive of God, and the universal exercise of that ability, constitutes a very strong presumption that God exists. It is their contention that the concept of God as the Eternal One could not originate with man as he is, and that the Creator had to plant this seed in the human consciousness.
I'm not much of a philosopher, being more of the old-fashioned cracker barrel type, so it is necessary for me to stay pretty close to earth in my rather feeble attempt at reasoning. There are a number of theological experts and geniuses, and I owe them a tremendous debt for the insights they have given me. I read
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That is why I know the only way I can be sure of God in my life is by surrender to him in obedience. Faith can never be separated from doing his will. I know God, I experience God, I share with God, by obedience. Jesus said, "Whoever has the will to do the will of God shall know whether my teaching comes from him" (John 7:17). And this works! I have the will to do the will of God, although I bumble around a lot in practice. And I know where the teaching originates!
It couldn't originate with me because it is too pure. If I originated it I would eventually drag it down to my level. As it is, it keeps hauling and tugging me uphill, even when I dig in my heels and try to grab at passing tree limbs to slow the progress. There is nothing more persistent or relentless than the God-pull on a human heart which has once tuned its directional finder so as to "home-in" on the divine runway.
One reason why I do not think man is a direct descendant of a long line of animal ancestors stretching back into the scum of a primordial swamp is because of the phenomenal faculty of faith. It is true that an ape can make a long leap from one tree to another, but it has to see the other tree before it lets go or cuts loose from its perch. Only man can "obey the summons to go out...and set out in complete ignorance of his destination" as did Abraham. I've launched out on the promises. I have "seen" them in the distance and I am quite convinced of their reality. It is the very essence of faith to see the unseen!
I am no more of a prophet than I am a philosopher, but I predict that our young friend will not drop astern and veer completely from the course. As he probes deeper into art forms he will come to appreciate that this great universe is itself a work of the Artist whose landscapes and seascapes no canvas can capture. Instead of that special breed of arrogance which has tempted him thoughtlessly to imagine he invented God, he will arrive at that state of humility where he will be grateful to God for creating him.
W. H. Fitchett has said, "And truth, no matter how beclouded by doubt, becomes at the touch of the loyal and assenting will translucent. The effort to obey scatters the shadows. It brings an instant verification. Obedience is the true and final solvent of doubt."