In Dialogue With Doubt

Many consider the stories of the Bible ancient religious fables completely unrelated to contemporary circumstances, and so abandon them. Others consider biblical stories as factual historical accounts and interpret them literally to provide certitude for their doctrinal positions. Still others, wishing merely to be uplifting, select only those biblical stories that fill the blank places of their lives with peace of mind and spiritual assurance. In my opinion all of these views are misconceptions.

Those who are immersed in the crises of their times have again and again pondered the great mysteries of life for illuminating insights.  That is as true for the biblical authors as it is for us. Faith is not a synonym for credulity. Faith is an ongoing dialogue with doubt. It achieves authenticity only where it consciously manifests the internal and external difficulties with which we must struggle.

The Bible, for example, provides us with the mythical  story (a story that never took place but always happens) of the Tower of Babel, Genesis 11:1-9, precisely because it depicts our hidden inclinations, our furtive desires for superiority, security and ultimacy.

Humans undertook the construction of this gigantic tower, this technical achievement, because they had deposed God, and sought to build a tower which reached into the vacant heavens from which they had exiled God; an architectural symbol of their human superiority. But something remarkable and unexpected occurred upon its completion. The tower, despite all its impressive nature, was not capable of providing a binding center, around which all humans could gather and be united in a common cause. To the contrary, their aim was frustrated by the very God whose power and absoluteness they wanted to get hold of. They were scattered abroad over the face of the earth and their languages confused so that they couldn’t understand one another, not as the result of ‘fate’, but because of their own ‘hubris.’

The beings who had been created for relationship with one another and with God, had exiled God. Then, in their own anxious quest for security and ultimacy they inevitably discovered that they could no longer trust one another. Having failed in their attempt to attain a sense of permanence and finality, each of them became subject to the dictatorship of their own willpower. Each one became ‘unpredictable,’ and so each one became afraid of everyone. Fear destroys trust, and the fear which erupted in Babylon upon the completion of the tower, is still with us. It still destroys trust and allows the terror of the ‘unpredictable’ to triumph; rather than uniting people it drives them apart. It always has a centrifugal tendency. When the human self becomes secretive, it becomes ever more adept at hiding its power behind technical prowess. One might even say, the more unpredictable and secretive persons become the more they resort to using forceful means of dealing with others. Instead of becoming neighbors people become adversaries.

The breakdown of relationships portrayed in the story of the Tower of Babel continues to reflect the distortions of social and individual relations. It remains as relevant in our post-modern age as it was when it was first written. We still build bigger and bigger homes in which to store our possessions, we still move from generosity to the development of social and economic systems that privilege the few at the expense of the many, still carve fault lines between the healthy and the disabled, elderly and ill; still live in gated neighborhoods or behind walled borders to keep others out; still fortify ourselves with ever larger, more destructive weapons.

It isn’t our technical achievements which are the problem. They are scientifically sound and predictable. It is human beings who, rather than being predictable, have, in their search for security and finality, become increasingly unpredictable. Mistrust has grown as humans have accumulated power. And, since power encourages seduction, those who can’t be trusted become ever more dangerous the more  powerful they become.

The story of the Tower of Babel is the best story I know for expressing the Bible’s forthrightness in addressing the ‘religious’ temptation to acquire finality, a finality which “simply does not belong to the human condition.” Rather than offering readers an already perfect state the Bible is realistic in its appraisal of the human condition. It does not capitalize on “the most cowardly instinct of finite creatures, namely, the instinct to flee the creaturely state” (Douglas Hall). Instead it is  filled with stories that, like the story of the Tower of Babel, dig down into the deepest recesses of real life in order to illumine our darkness, expose the difficulties of our creaturehood, and give our despairing humanity not the certainty, but the confidence (living with con, faith fide) to go on, or as Elie Wiesel, the Jewish holocaust survivor, author and Nobel Peace Prize laureate says, to “begin again.”

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