Jack Snowdon: The Place of Doubt

 Some recent grappling with doubt in my life has proven difficult, and it has led me to realize in hindsight where Lewis has written on the topic multiple times. I have already made reference to Elwin Ransom's struggle with doubt before his struggle against the Un-man, and during it, after he seems to have escaped and he is left to wonder why Maleldil has not yet intervened. Similarly, but in a different facet of the word, Aslan comments on doubt by encouraging Lucy not to doubt her own worth, and not to run from who she is. Furthermore, in Shadowlands, we can see that when Lewis experiences great sorrow from the death of Joy, only shortly after he had truly loved her, he too struggles with serious doubt in his life.

It can be incredibly difficult to deal with doubt, and to turn it into anything beneficial. It is something that I struggled with for an extended time some years ago, and it definitely took time even after the particularly intense period had ended that I realized where it had taken me, and now that I have been able to relax from that period I can see how beneficial that was. I thought often to a portion from Life of Pi, where Pi says, "The house of faith has many floors, and each has a room for doubt," and another, where he refers to Christ's agony around his crucifixion, and says, "If Christ played doubt, so must we. If Christ spent an anguished night in prayer, if He burst out from the cross, 'My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?' then surely we are also permitted doubt. But we must move on. To choose doubt as a philosophy of life is akin to choosing immobility as a means of transportation." I believe that this is an incredibly powerful statement. Recently, I also thought to go to someone who I have gone to with questions repeatedly in the past, and he quoted a master from the Zen tradition, who said, "Great doubt, great enlightenment; little doubt, little enlightenment; no doubt, no enlightenment." As difficult as it can be to struggle with things so fundamentally, it is surely natural, and an important part of the process.