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.
Were it only to learn benevolence to humankind, we should be merciful to other creatures.
She was here on earth to make sense of its wild enchantments.
I stand four-square for reason, and object to what seems to me to be irrationality, whatever the source. If you are on my side in this, I must warn you that the army of the night has the advantage of overwhelming numbers, and, by its very nature, is immune to reason, so that it is entirely unlikely that you and I can win out. We will always remain a tiny and probably hopeless minority, but let us never tire of presenting our view, and of fighting the good fight for the right.
Religion is capable of driving people to such dangerous folly that faith seems to me to qualify as a kind of mental illness.
...like a magnetic compass turning north, I always tried to head in the direction of the better, which is the direction to God. ...the directions that appeared to lead away from Christianity led me deeper into it.
The price of anything is the amount of life you exchange for it.
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