Cardinal Manning, the English churchman, authored a book called Confidence in God! One day, wanting a copy of the book for his own use, he called the local book shop for it. The clerk yelled downstairs to the keeper of the storeroom. “One copy of Manning’s Confidence in God!” In a few moments, the answer came up the stairs: “Manning’s Confidence in God! all gone.”

We pray to God, we “believe” in God, we talk about God…but what happens when we have doubt? What happens when our confidence in God wanes? How can we believe that God is One and doubt at the same time?

So much of what happens in our complicated world would seems to suggest that there is no God. All the war, the death and destruction, the “natural” disasters are evidence that point to an atheism as opposed to a theism (any kind of theism). At the very least, for those who believe, it would seem that these events cause us doubt. What shall we do?

The Jewish philosopher, Steven Katz taught, “As for the mystery of God….If I could understand God, I would be God. The Kotzker Rebbe once said:
‘A God that any Tom, Dick or Harry can understand, phooey. I don’t need such a God.’”

To say the least, God is a complicated matter. We live in a society in which many take a much too simplistic view of God. The fundamentalists of all types and religions do God an injustice by being so self righteous and self assured of the complicated matter of divinity. Our God and God of our fathers and mothers is a God whose nature is elusive, whose depth is beyond that which we can dive and whose presence is sometimes felt and yet sometimes absent.

A Holocaust survivor once said, “You’ve got to be very close to God, you have to know Him very well to blaspheme Him. Only a deeply religious person can despise God, shake his fist at God and abuse Him. A blaspheming Jew is a believing Jew.” His point is that part of the definition of being a Jew is struggling with the role God plays in one’s life. God may be One, but God is called by many names. And sometimes God is even called names.

I live with doubt every day of my life. I live with self doubt, with professional doubt and with spiritual doubt. My process as a Jew is to navigate myself through the waters of life, keeping my head above the water – sometimes swimming free style, sometimes appreciating the beauty of the butterfly and yet sometimes getting caught on my back is the only option. In any case, being in the water is what keeps me afloat. Being Jewish keeps me afloat. I wonder if the splashes that life throws at me is God trying to communicate something to me. At other times, when I feel like I am drowning, I wonder where God is to save me.

If God is everything, then God must also be doubt in God. Judaism is not a dogmatic religion. It is a religion that encourages us to ask, plead, contemplate and doubt, for in the end, those actions define faith. As Jews, when we wrestle with God, we come out stronger, more mitzvah centered and more faithful to the vision set for us.