Faith Cannot Exist Without Doubt
Today’s sermon by the reverend at my local Unitarian church reinforced every reason why I identify with Unitarianism. Entitled “Are Atheists Still Welcome At This Church?,” it focused on the centrality of the fact that faith requires doubt and that in Unitarian Universalism, one can find a faith in which all creeds are welcome. The reverend stressed explicitly that in order to have faith, whether in a triune, united, nameless, or unnameable deity, rational skepticism is necessary, yet that necessity of skepticism applies both to theists and atheists: one can never know with certainty whether one is correct when it comes to an unknowable entity.
I’ve been on a long and winding spiritual road. I was raised strictly Baptist (where, ironically, I had my first gay hookup with the pastor’s son… but that’s another story) and logically enough, gravitated to strict atheism, flush with the high school fever of Kant, Hegel and Nietzsche. I’ve since moved toward to a less defined version of agnosticism, in that I accept that it is impossible either to prove or disprove the existence of a deity. To quote one of my personal heroes, I do, however, believe that “the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice.” Be it the universe itself, I do believe that a power greater than human comprehension exists, and Unitarianism is where I’ve found my spiritual home. I’m not alone.
