Sullivan on doubt
Andrew Sullivan’s latest essay in Time, “When Not Seeing Is Believing,” purports to discuss the significance of religious doubt in the current global clash of fundamentalisms. Unfortunately, he bogs down his argument in a swamp of semi-coherent sentimentality:
If we have never doubted, how can we say we have really believed? True belief is not about blind submission. It is about open-eyed acceptance, and acceptance requires persistent distance from the truth, and that distance is doubt. Doubt, in other words, can feed faith, rather than destroy it. And it forces us, even while believing, to recognize our fundamental duty with respect to God's truth: humility. We do not know. Which is why we believe.
You can do better, Andrew.