You cannot be a man of faith unless you know how to doubt.
Interpretation
Doubt is a necessary component of faith, as questioning beliefs can lead to a deeper understanding.
This quote by Thomas Merton emphasizes the relationship between faith and doubt, suggesting that true faith is not simply a blind acceptance of beliefs, but rather a thoughtful and critical engagement with them. By acknowledging doubt, an individual can explore their beliefs more deeply, leading to a richer and more authentic faith experience.
In practice
During a sermon discussion on the complexities of belief.
The devil is no fool. He can get people feeling about heaven the way they ought to feel about hell. He can make them fear the means of grace the way they do not fear sin. And he does so, not by light but by obscurity, not by realities but by shadows; not by clarity and substance, but by dreams and the creatures of psychosis. And men are so poor in intellect that a few cold chills down their spine will be enough to keep them from ever finding out the truth about anything.
Our vocation is not simply to be, but to work together with God in the creation of our own life, our own identity, our own destiny....To work out our identity in God.
Conscience is the light by which we interpret the will of God in our own lives.
You are made in the image of what you desire.
But if you want to identify me, ask me not where I live, or what I like to eat, or how I comb my hair, but ask me what I think I am living for.
I have the immense joy of being man, a member of a race in which God Himself became incarnate. As if the sorrows and stupidities of the human condition could overwhelm me, now that I realize what we all are. And if only everybody could realize this! But it cannot be explained. There is no way of telling people that they are all walking around shining like the sun.
There's a notion I'd like to see buried: the ordinary person. Ridiculous. There is no ordinary person.
It is characteristic of ideology to impose self-evident facts as self-evident facts.
Dogs are a really amazing eye opener for us humans because their lives are compressed into such a short period, so we can see them go from puppyhood to adolescence to strong adulthood and then into their sunset years in 10 to 12 years. It really drives home the point of how finite all our lives are.
Cynicism and naivety lie cheek by jowl in the American imagination; if the United States is one of the most venal nations on Earth, it is also one of the most earnestly idealistic.
I am ashes where once I was fire.
But in general, take my advice, when you meet anything that is going to be Human and isn’t yet, or used to be Human once and isn’t now, or ought to be Human and isn’t, you keep your eyes on it and feel for your hatchet.
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