doubt

110:3.5Con­fu­sion, be­ing puz­zled, even some­times dis­cour­aged and dis­tracted, does not nec­es­sar­ily sig­nify re­sis­tance to the lead­ings of the in­dwelling Ad­juster. Such at­ti­tudes may some­times con­note lack of ac­tive co-op­er­a­tion with the di­vine Mon­i­tor and may, there­fore, some­what de­lay spir­i­tual prog­ress, but such in­tel­lec­tual emo­tional dif­fi­cul­ties do not in the least in­ter­fere with the cer­tain sur­vival of the God-know­ing soul. Ig­no­rance alone can never pre­vent sur­vival; nei­ther can con­fu­sional doubts nor fear­ful un­cer­tainty. Only con­scious re­sis­tance to the Ad­juster’s lead­ing can pre­vent the sur­vival of the evolv­ing im­mor­tal soul.

102:6.5Con­vic­tions about God may be ar­rived at through wise rea­son­ing, but the in­di­vid­ual be­comes God-know­ing only by faith, through per­sonal ex­pe­ri­ence. In much that per­tains to life, prob­a­bil­ity must be reck­oned with, but when con­tact­ing with cos­mic re­al­ity, cer­tainty may be ex­pe­ri­enced when such mean­ings and val­ues are ap­proached by liv­ing faith. The God-know­ing soul dares to say, “I know,” even when this knowl­edge of God is ques­tioned by the un­be­liever who de­nies such cer­ti­tude be­cause it is not wholly sup­ported by in­tel­lec­tual logic. To ev­ery such doubter the be­liever only replies, “How do you know that I do not know?”

102:7.6The God-know­ing in­di­vid­ual is not one who is blind to the dif­fi­cul­ties or un­mind­ful of the ob­sta­cles which stand in the way of find­ing God in the maze of su­per­sti­tion, tra­di­tion, and ma­te­ri­al­is­tic ten­den­cies of mod­ern times. He has en­coun­tered all these de­ter­rents and tri­umphed over them, sur­mounted them by liv­ing faith, and at­tained the high­lands of spir­i­tual ex­pe­ri­ence in spite of them. But it is true that many who are in­wardly sure about God fear to as­sert such feel­ings of cer­tainty be­cause of the mul­ti­plic­ity and clev­er­ness of those who as­sem­ble ob­jec­tions and mag­nify dif­fi­cul­ties about be­liev­ing in God. It re­quires no great depth of in­tel­lect to pick flaws, ask ques­tions, or raise ob­jec­tions. But it does re­quire bril­liance of mind to an­swer these ques­tions and solve these dif­fi­cul­ties; faith cer­tainty is the great­est tech­nique for deal­ing with all such su­per­fi­cial con­tentions.

102:7.7If sci­ence, phi­los­o­phy, or so­ci­ol­ogy dares to be­come dog­matic in con­tend­ing with the proph­ets of true re­li­gion, then should God-know­ing men re­ply to such un­war­ranted dog­ma­tism with that more farsee­ing dog­ma­tism of the cer­tainty of per­sonal spir­i­tual ex­pe­ri­ence, “I know what I have ex­pe­ri­enced be­cause I am a son of I AM.” If the per­sonal ex­pe­ri­ence of a faither is to be chal­lenged by dogma, then this faith-born son of the ex­pe­ri­en­ci­ble Fa­ther may re­ply with that un­chal­lenge­able dogma, the state­ment of his ac­tual son­ship with the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther.

102:7.8Only an un­qual­i­fied re­al­ity, an ab­so­lute, could dare con­sis­tently to be dog­matic. Those who as­sume to be dog­matic must, if con­sis­tent, sooner or later be driven into the arms of the Ab­so­lute of en­ergy, the Uni­ver­sal of truth, and the In­fi­nite of love.

102:7.9If the non­re­li­gious ap­proaches to cos­mic re­al­ity pre­sume to chal­lenge the cer­tainty of faith on the grounds of its un­proved sta­tus, then the spirit ex­pe­ri­encer can like­wise re­sort to the dog­matic chal­lenge of the facts of sci­ence and the be­liefs of phi­los­o­phy on the grounds that they are like­wise un­proved; they are like­wise ex­pe­ri­ences in the con­scious­ness of the sci­en­tist or the philoso­pher.

159:3.8The world is filled with hun­gry souls who fam­ish in the very pres­ence of the bread of life; men die search­ing for the very God who lives within them. Men seek for the trea­sures of the king­dom with yearn­ing hearts and weary feet when they are all within the im­me­di­ate grasp of liv­ing faith. Faith is to re­li­gion what sails are to a ship; it is an ad­di­tion of power, not an added bur­den of life. There is but one strug­gle for those who en­ter the king­dom, and that is to fight the good fight of faith. The be­liever has only one bat­tle, and that is against doubt—un­be­lief.

165:5.5“But in the work which is just ahead of us, and in that which re­mains for you af­ter I go to the Fa­ther, you will be griev­ously tried. You must all be on your watch against fear and doubts. Ev­ery one of you, gird up the loins of your minds and let your lamps be kept burn­ing. Keep your­selves like men who are watch­ing for their mas­ter to re­turn from the mar­riage feast so that, when he comes and knocks, you may quickly open to him. Such watch­ful ser­vants are blessed by the mas­ter who finds them faith­ful at such a great mo­ment. Then will the mas­ter make his ser­vants sit down while he him­self serves them. Ver­ily, ver­ily, I say to you that a cri­sis is just ahead in your lives, and it be­hooves you to watch and be ready.

34:7.8Hav­ing started out on the way of life ev­er­last­ing, hav­ing ac­cepted the as­sign­ment and re­ceived your or­ders to ad­vance, do not fear the dan­gers of hu­man for­get­ful­ness and mor­tal in­con­stancy, do not be trou­bled with doubts of fail­ure or by per­plex­ing con­fu­sion, do not fal­ter and ques­tion your sta­tus and stand­ing, for in ev­ery dark hour, at ev­ery cross­road in the for­ward strug­gle, the Spirit of Truth will al­ways speak, say­ing, “This is the way.”

190:1.6The ma­jor­ity of those pres­ent en­deav­ored to per­suade David not to do this. But they could not in­flu­ence him. They then sought to dis­suade the mes­sen­gers, but they would not heed the words of doubt. And so, shortly be­fore ten o’clock this Sun­day morn­ing, these twenty-six run­ners went forth as the first her­alds of the mighty truth-fact of the res­ur­rected Je­sus. And they started out on this mis­sion as they had on so many oth­ers, in ful­fill­ment of their oath to David Zeb­e­dee and to one an­other. These men had great con­fi­dence in David. They de­parted on this as­sign­ment with­out even tar­ry­ing to talk with those who had seen Je­sus; they took David at his word. The ma­jor­ity of them be­lieved what David had told them, and even those who some­what doubted, car­ried the mes­sage just as cer­tainly and just as swiftly.

101:0.3Re­li­gion, the con­vic­tion-faith of the per­son­al­ity, can al­ways tri­umph over the su­per­fi­cially con­tra­dic­tory logic of de­spair born in the un­be­liev­ing ma­te­rial mind. There re­ally is a true and gen­uine in­ner voice, that “true light which lights ev­ery man who comes into the world.” And this spirit lead­ing is dis­tinct from the eth­i­cal prompt­ing of hu­man con­science. The feel­ing of re­li­gious as­sur­ance is more than an emo­tional feel­ing. The as­sur­ance of re­li­gion tran­scends the rea­son of the mind, even the logic of phi­los­o­phy. Re­li­gion is faith, trust, and as­sur­ance.

102:6.7Be­lief may not be able to re­sist doubt and with­stand fear, but faith is al­ways tri­umphant over doubt­ing, for faith is both pos­i­tive and liv­ing. The pos­i­tive al­ways has the ad­van­tage over the neg­a­tive, truth over er­ror, ex­pe­ri­ence over the­ory, spir­i­tual re­al­i­ties over the iso­lated facts of time and space. The con­vinc­ing ev­i­dence of this spir­i­tual cer­tainty con­sists in the so­cial fruits of the spirit which such be­liev­ers, faithers, yield as a re­sult of this gen­uine spir­i­tual ex­pe­ri­ence. Said Je­sus: “If you love your fel­lows as I have loved you, then shall all men know that you are my dis­ci­ples.”

103:8.4If you truly be­lieve in God—by faith know him and love him—do not per­mit the re­al­ity of such an ex­pe­ri­ence to be in any way less­ened or de­tracted from by the doubt­ing in­sin­u­a­tions of sci­ence, the cav­il­ing of logic, the pos­tu­lates of phi­los­o­phy, or the clever sug­ges­tions of well-mean­ing souls who would cre­ate a re­li­gion with­out God.

103:8.5The cer­tainty of the God-know­ing re­li­gion­ist should not be dis­turbed by the un­cer­tainty of the doubt­ing ma­te­ri­al­ist; rather should the un­cer­tainty of the un­be­liever be might­ily chal­lenged by the pro­found faith and un­shak­able cer­tainty of the ex­pe­ri­en­tial be­liever.

182:3.11Be­fore Ju­das and the sol­diers ar­rived, the Mas­ter had fully re­gained his cus­tom­ary poise; the spirit had tri­umphed over the flesh; faith had as­serted it­self over all hu­man ten­den­cies to fear or en­ter­tain doubt. The su­preme test of the full re­al­iza­tion of the hu­man na­ture had been met and ac­cept­ably passed. Once more the Son of Man was pre­pared to face his en­e­mies with equa­nim­ity and in the full as­sur­ance of his in­vin­ci­bil­ity as a mor­tal man un­re­servedly ded­i­cated to the do­ing of his Fa­ther’s will.

67:3.7This seven years of wait­ing was a time of heart search­ing and soul dis­ci­pline. Such crises in the af­fairs of a uni­verse demon­strate the tremen­dous in­flu­ence of mind as a fac­tor in spir­i­tual choos­ing. Ed­u­ca­tion, train­ing, and ex­pe­ri­ence are fac­tors in most of the vi­tal de­ci­sions of all evo­lu­tion­ary moral crea­tures. But it is en­tirely pos­si­ble for the in­dwelling spirit to make di­rect con­tact with the de­ci­sion-de­ter­min­ing pow­ers of the hu­man per­son­al­ity so as to em­power the fully con­se­crated will of the crea­ture to per­form amaz­ing acts of loyal de­vo­tion to the will and the way of the Fa­ther in Par­a­dise. And this is just what oc­curred in the ex­pe­ri­ence of Amadon, the mod­i­fied hu­man as­so­ciate of Van.

102:1.1The work of the Thought Ad­juster con­sti­tutes the ex­pla­na­tion of the trans­la­tion of man’s prim­i­tive and evo­lu­tion­ary sense of duty into that higher and more cer­tain faith in the eter­nal re­al­i­ties of rev­e­la­tion. There must be per­fec­tion hunger in man’s heart to in­sure ca­pac­ity for com­pre­hend­ing the faith paths to su­preme at­tain­ment. If any man chooses to do the di­vine will, he shall know the way of truth. It is lit­er­ally true, “Hu­man things must be known in or­der to be loved, but di­vine things must be loved in or­der to be known.” But hon­est doubts and sin­cere ques­tion­ings are not sin; such at­ti­tudes merely spell de­lay in the pro­gres­sive jour­ney to­ward per­fec­tion at­tain­ment. Child­like trust se­cures man’s en­trance into the king­dom of heav­enly as­cent, but prog­ress is wholly de­pen­dent on the vig­or­ous ex­er­cise of the ro­bust and con­fi­dent faith of the full-grown man.

196:0.11In the earthly life of Je­sus, re­li­gion was a liv­ing ex­pe­ri­ence, a di­rect and per­sonal move­ment from spir­i­tual rev­er­ence to prac­ti­cal righ­teous­ness. The faith of Je­sus bore the tran­scen­dent fruits of the di­vine spirit. His faith was not im­ma­ture and cred­u­lous like that of a child, but in many ways it did re­sem­ble the un­sus­pect­ing trust of the child mind. Je­sus trusted God much as the child trusts a par­ent. He had a pro­found con­fi­dence in the uni­verse—just such a trust as the child has in its pa­ren­tal en­vi­ron­ment. Je­sus’ whole­hearted faith in the fun­da­men­tal good­ness of the uni­verse very much re­sem­bled the child’s trust in the se­cu­rity of its earthly sur­round­ings. He de­pended on the heav­enly Fa­ther as a child leans upon its earthly par­ent, and his fer­vent faith never for one mo­ment doubted the cer­tainty of the heav­enly Fa­ther’s over­care. He was not dis­turbed se­ri­ously by fears, doubts, and skep­ti­cism. Un­be­lief did not in­hibit the free and orig­i­nal ex­pres­sion of his life. He com­bined the stal­wart and in­tel­li­gent cour­age of a full-grown man with the sin­cere and trust­ing op­ti­mism of a be­liev­ing child. His faith grew to such heights of trust that it was de­void of fear.

124:4.2Through­out this year he ex­pe­ri­enced many sea­sons of un­cer­tainty, if not ac­tual doubt, re­gard­ing the na­ture of his mis­sion. His nat­u­rally de­vel­op­ing hu­man mind did not yet fully grasp the re­al­ity of his dual na­ture. The fact that he had a sin­gle per­son­al­ity ren­dered it dif­fi­cult for his con­scious­ness to rec­og­nize the dou­ble ori­gin of those fac­tors which com­posed the na­ture as­so­ci­ated with that self­same per­son­al­ity.

136:8.3Through­out all this mo­men­tous di­a­logue of Je­sus’ com­muning with him­self, there was pres­ent the hu­man el­e­ment of ques­tion­ing and near-doubt­ing, for Je­sus was man as well as God. It was ev­i­dent he would never be re­ceived by the Jews as the Mes­siah if he did not work won­ders. Be­sides, if he would con­sent to do just one un­nat­u­ral thing, the hu­man mind would know of a cer­tainty that it was in sub­servience to a truly di­vine mind. Would it be con­sis­tent with “the Fa­ther’s will” for the di­vine mind to make this con­ces­sion to the doubt­ing na­ture of the hu­man mind? Je­sus de­cided that it would not and cited the pres­ence of the Per­son­al­ized Ad­juster as suf­fi­cient proof of di­vin­ity in part­ner­ship with hu­man­ity.

139:8.6Je­sus en­joyed Thomas very much and had many long, per­sonal talks with him. His pres­ence among the apos­tles was a great com­fort to all hon­est doubters and en­cour­aged many trou­bled minds to come into the king­dom, even if they could not wholly un­der­stand ev­ery­thing about the spir­i­tual and philo­sophic phases of the teach­ings of Je­sus. Thomas’s mem­ber­ship in the twelve was a stand­ing dec­la­ra­tion that Je­sus loved even hon­est doubters.

135:4.6At last he thought out the method of pro­claim­ing the new age, the king­dom of God; he set­tled that he was to be­come the her­ald of the Mes­siah; he swept aside all doubts and de­parted from En­gedi one day in March of A.D. 25 to be­gin his short but bril­liant ca­reer as a pub­lic preacher.

135:7.1John still had con­fused ideas about the com­ing king­dom and its king. The longer he preached the more con­fused he be­came, but never did this in­tel­lec­tual un­cer­tainty con­cern­ing the na­ture of the com­ing king­dom in the least lessen his con­vic­tion of the cer­tainty of the king­dom’s im­me­di­ate ap­pear­ance. In mind John might be con­fused, but in spirit never. He was in no doubt about the com­ing king­dom, but he was far from cer­tain as to whether or not Je­sus was to be the ruler of that king­dom. As long as John held to the idea of the restora­tion of the throne of David, the teach­ings of his par­ents that Je­sus, born in the City of David, was to be the long-ex­pected de­liv­erer, seemed con­sis­tent; but at those times when he leaned more to­ward the doc­trine of a spir­i­tual king­dom and the end of the tem­po­ral age on earth, he was sorely in doubt as to the part Je­sus would play in such events. Some­times he ques­tioned ev­ery­thing, but not for long. He re­ally wished he might talk it all over with his cousin, but that was con­trary to their ex­pressed agree­ment.

191:5.4When the Mas­ter had so spo­ken, he looked down into the face of Thomas and said: “And you, Thomas, who said you would not be­lieve un­less you could see me and put your fin­ger in the nail marks of my hands, have now be­held me and heard my words; and though you see no nail marks on my hands, since I am raised in the form that you also shall have when you de­part from this world, what will you say to your breth­ren? You will ac­knowl­edge the truth, for al­ready in your heart you had be­gun to be­lieve even when you so stoutly as­serted your un­be­lief. Your doubts, Thomas, al­ways most stub­bornly as­sert them­selves just as they are about to crum­ble. Thomas, I bid you be not faith­less but be­liev­ing—and I know you will be­lieve, even with a whole heart.”

142:5.3“The Su­preme Spirit shall bear wit­ness with your spir­its that you are truly the chil­dren of God. And if you are the sons of God, then have you been born of the spirit of God; and whoso­ever has been born of the spirit has in him­self the power to over­come all doubt, and this is the vic­tory that over­comes all un­cer­tainty, even your faith.

26:9.3The test of time is al­most over; the race for eter­nity has been all but run. The days of un­cer­tainty are end­ing; the temp­ta­tion to doubt is van­ish­ing; the in­junc­tion to be per­fect has been obeyed. From the very bot­tom of in­tel­li­gent ex­is­tence the crea­ture of time and ma­te­rial per­son­al­ity has as­cended the evo­lu­tion­ary spheres of space, thus prov­ing the fea­si­bil­ity of the as­cen­sion plan while for­ever demon­strat­ing the jus­tice and righ­teous­ness of the com­mand of the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther to his lowly crea­tures of the worlds: “Be you per­fect, even as I am per­fect.”

139:8.10Thomas had some very bad days; he was blue and down­cast at times. The loss of his twin sis­ter when he was nine years old had oc­ca­sioned him much youth­ful sor­row and had added to his tem­per­a­men­tal prob­lems of later life. When Thomas would be­come de­spon­dent, some­times it was Na­than­iel who helped him to re­cover, some­times Pe­ter, and not in­fre­quently one of the Al­pheus twins. When he was most de­pressed, un­for­tu­nately he al­ways tried to avoid com­ing in di­rect con­tact with Je­sus. But the Mas­ter knew all about this and had an un­der­stand­ing sym­pa­thy for his apos­tle when he was thus af­flicted with de­pres­sion and ha­rassed by doubts.

181:2.26And then Je­sus went over to Thomas, who, stand­ing up, heard him say: “Thomas, you have of­ten lacked faith; how­ever, when you have had your sea­sons with doubt, you have never lacked cour­age. I know well that the false proph­ets and spu­ri­ous teach­ers will not de­ceive you. Af­ter I have gone, your breth­ren will the more ap­pre­ci­ate your crit­i­cal way of view­ing new teach­ings. And when you all are scat­tered to the ends of the earth in the times to come, re­mem­ber that you are still my am­bas­sador. Ded­i­cate your life to the great work of show­ing how the crit­i­cal ma­te­rial mind of man can tri­umph over the in­er­tia of in­tel­lec­tual doubt­ing when faced by the dem­on­stra­tion of the man­i­fes­ta­tion of liv­ing truth as it op­er­ates in the ex­pe­ri­ence of spirit-born men and women who yield the fruits of the spirit in their lives, and who love one an­other, even as I have loved you. Thomas, I am glad you joined us, and I know, af­ter a short pe­riod of per­plex­ity, you will go on in the ser­vice of the king­dom. Your doubts have per­plexed your breth­ren, but they have never trou­bled me. I have con­fi­dence in you, and I will go be­fore you even to the ut­ter­most parts of the earth.”