Trusting your doubts

Photo by Clint McKoy on Unsplash

So often in life we find ourselves backing our judgment on things we felt were sure to work, and withholding action on things we doubted. How often we are wrong. So often things we were confident about didn’t work out, and the things we doubted actually worked well.

It seems one of the key challenges of life is in discerning action from inaction, within the nuances of timing and method and deployment. There are so many variables that determine whether our relationships and interactions will go well and whether the tasks we do will be effective or not.

There are so many mysteries in life
within the vagaries of time and relationships.

It’s impossible to be sure of ourselves all the time.

We can never be sure that our discernment is correct, and indeed we are helped when there is a thread of wise doubting we can call humility.

Where this godly principle uncouples from modern life, however, is in the fantasy of leadership. Leadership even within the church has become the practice of confidence and competence above character.

But it is within character that wisdom is formed.
And the sure sign of wisdom is humility.

In living the faith-life, then, we are challenged to lose whatever confidence and competence comes from pride, and to gain whatever character we can from the voice of our doubts; to take heed of the material of our doubting and to act prayerfully out of that rather than from the things we feel cocksure about.

Humility is endearing in the relational realm. It has trust and surety and safety about it. It offers other people vulnerability within which they can rest. There is a comfort offered in humble communication. There is an invitation to the other to be vulnerable also. Humility removes the pressure on the other person we are in contact with. They can be more themselves around us. Relationships need such space.

When we begin to trust in our doubting, not acting haphazardly on our doubts, but praying carefully through them, we begin to act in measured ways with others. Others always appreciate such care. Such care being the fruit of patience and gentleness and kindness and of self-control.

There is wisdom, therefore, in not discounting
our doubts, but learning to bear them.

There is wisdom also in thinking thoughtfully through all important matters. And truly everything when it comes to relationships has import.

When we steward our time in relationships to the degree that we move forward cautiously, others appreciate the beauty and care with which we move. They learn to trust us, because they see we are not fearful of our doubts, and they see that we are committed to the hard graft of making relationships work. They see us taking responsibility for what we can do. And they appreciate that, whilst we’re not perfect, we are trustworthy.

Trusting our doubts also means we don’t discount things we ought to reconsider, and in doing so we’re gifted the precious ability to reconsider those things we feel sure about that perhaps we should doubt.