A Culture of Chronic Doubt
And how the virtue of Faith can help us endure
Last year, Freya India wrote a moving essay entitled “Why We Doubt Everything” for her Substack, GIRLS (which I highly recommend). In it the article, she argues that it’s not so much that the younger generation has lost faith, but that they never were taught to have faith to begin with. She calls Gen Z “a chronically doubtful generation,” doubting God, relationships, identity, beauty, and so on. And entire industries are built to feed into this doubt, to prey upon it. India is a perceptive analysis of contemporary culture, and I think she’s correct. Young people in particular are plagued by doubts. I certainly don’t think it’s only young people, however. Uncertainty is a part of our culture. On the one hand we are made to feel uncomfortably doubtful about our wellbeing so that we feel the urgent need to purchase products and services, and on the other hand we’re promised relief from doubt by these products and services. We are kept in the liminal space between anxiety and safety. What exacerbates this problem is that so many of our institutions have been weakened through fallen or corrupt leadership. Our trust has been broken. So the doubts we have about our wellbeing are not relieved by appeals to institutions that can aid us, because the State, churches, corporations, and schools have all let us down. Even families have let us down. Relationally our trust has been broken. This is especially true, as India notes, for those who have experienced online dating. The number of people who have had their sexual imaginations disordered by pornography (especially violent pornography) is horrifying. So what does it mean to have faith in a culture of chronic doubt? It means having faith in a Person, the Person of Jesus Christ. And to allow that faith to give you the hope and courage to reasonably trust other people and confidently navigate this chaotic world.
As I said, I believe India is basically correct that we live in a chronically doubtful culture. I think there are market reasons for this, and I think there are other sociological reasons for this (the Catholic Church sexual abuse scandals or the numerous sexual abuse scandals in evangelical congregations for example), and I think there are ideological reasons for this (with the loss of a belief in shared reality, we are increasingly skeptical of everything). But whatever the causes, the effects are that people suffer from chronic doubt that prevents them from living flourishing lives, that makes them inhibited. They are afraid to venture out and date someone because what if they are abusive? They are afraid to apply for a job because what if they get rejected? They are afraid to commit to a friendship because what if they get betrayed? So this basic lack of faith keeps them from acting courageously.
But if this is a matter of faith, is it wrong? Should you have faith in someone else? Should you have faith that your spouse will never let you down? Should you have faith that your friend will never share your secrets? Should you have faith in fallible human beings? Should you have faith in yourself to be honest at all times? In his essay on “Faith” as a virtue, Josef Pieper argues that properly speaking, we are right to not have faith in other fallen human beings. True faith demands utter reliance upon a person. It demands that we put ourselves in their hands. That we believe what they speak.
Think about what a radical proposition that is. I love my wife and trust her immensely. But I don’t believe what she speaks as 100% reality. I know that she experiences reality from a subjective position and can only report her view at the best of times, and will sometimes unintentionally forget to mention things. I know myself and trust myself deeply, but I know that I am an unreliable narrator of my own experience. I know that I sometimes paint experiences in ways that flatter my ego or denigrate my self-worth, depending on my mood. The fact is, fallen humans are not worth putting our true faith in.
To truly have faith in someone is to believe what they speak. Who can we believe completely? Whose words are worthy of our faith? Who except Christ? Except God? When we have true saving faith, it is the work of the Holy Spirit in our lives moving us to accept Christ’s Words and believe in them. To believe not in the abstract idea of Christ as the Son of God, but the reality of the Person of Christ, and therefore to believe what he speaks, and to believe the whole counsel of Scripture.
How does that true faith affect our ability to arrest the chronic doubt of our times?
First, it grounds us in hope. Because we believe in the Person of Christ and his Words, we believe in his promises. And his promises give us hope for the resurrection and for tomorrow. We know his Father is working all things together for our good! That doesn’t mean that we should recklessly walk into broken institutions and be harmed by toxic leaders, or that we should jump into harmful relationships and expect God to protect us from harm. But it does mean that we can have confidence that God is sovereign and caring for us and that it is good for us to take risks and trust. We can hope all things because God is making everything new. This isn’t blind optimism, but a cautious, prudent hope that trustworthy people and institutions are worth trusting in! We don’t have to and we should not give into the vice of despair.
Second, and relatedly, we have reason to take courage. As we are confronted with opportunities to strike out and trust other people and institutions, we need to take a risk, be vulnerable. As I have written about before, it is worth taking this risk. We can have this courage and act confidently because of our faith in Christ. Whatever suffering we may or will experience, Christ will be with us. So we don’t have to be afraid. And if we are trusting people and institutions for the sake of the good, because we desire to build relationships and glorify God, then it is honoring to him that we do this work.
Third, I think we need to become the kinds of people who are faithful to each other. No, we can’t be worthy of true faith; only Christ is worthy of that. But I can be worthy of human faith from my wife by remaining faithful to my wedding vows. I can be worthy of faith to my children by being a safe and supporting and loving father who always points them to Christ. I can worthy of faith to my students by being safe and supportive and encouraging and knowledgeable and pointing them to Christ. And so on. One of the reasons Gen Z has so many doubts is that older generations have given them reasons to doubt. We need faithful adults. If you are not one today, become one, starting now. And the only way you’ll be able to do that is if you have true faith in the Person of Christ, who is the model of all faithfulness, the one who made you righteous, and the one who loves you.
If you found this discussion of the virtue of Faith helpful, you’ll enjoy my new book, To Live Well: Practical Wisdom for Moving Through Chaotic Times which is now available!
Also, I had the joy of being on the “Oh My Word with Katie” podcast. Take a listen.
Finally, two reviews came out for To Live Well:
Once again, if you have a chance to read and review the book, please do so. If you purchased it from Amazon, please leave a review there. If you purchased it elsewhere, please leave a review on Goodreads. Thanks.
I think part of believing in other people and trusting them when they don't deserve it, or believing in ourselves when we don't deserve it (as in, acting in the confidence that I expect I will actually try to do the things on my list when half the time I don't) is the practice of just choosing to do the correct thing on our own despite knowing there's no guarantee that others will also do the virtuous thing, without which society is never going to recover. We have to just do the next thing and solve the next problem ourselves and demonstrate to others, who are mistrustful, that we can be trusted, by trusting them, even if that harms us. Maybe this is me grandstanding from the cheap seats though, always taking the philosophical high road that doesn't require anything I don't want to believe in anyway.
This is perhaps just me trying to work whatever I'm reading currently into whatever I talk or think about whether it belongs there or not, but I am in the middle of Vogel's magisterial biography of Deng Xiaoping, and I think there's something very interesting to observe in the process of a thoroughly-traumatized China whose society at the elite levels even of the Communist Party had been completely destroyed in the Cultural Revolution beginning to move on from that and re-learn to take risks or extend any sort of faith without expecting betrayal. There's a lot of ways in which China hasn't recovered, but if we look at the level of societal breakdown in 1970 and compare it to China today, it begs the question of how the society recovered to the extent it has.