Interesting questions. One trend in evangelical responses to the post-whatever shift seems to have been to sing the praises of “honest doubt”. Most of the time it is even equated with “humility”. Now certainly there is nothing wrong with honestly expressing doubts which we may have from time to time. This expression is even welcomed by God. But I do think there’s something wrong when we in the “ambiguously emerging” circles are made to feel that lack of serious doubt indicates a malfunction of faith. It’s one (of a few) places I cannot follow the emerging trends. Not that doubt is an “emergent” phenomena, obviously. But praising the virtues of doubt seems to be, for the most part. When I read scripture, and when I listen to Christ specifically, I hear us called continually to faith and to leave our doubts behind. Doesn’t mean it’s always easy. But it is our calling and our distinguishing characteristic as followers of Christ.

In addition, I should say we need to be very careful about marking the distinction between faith in Christ and the veracity of his Word and faith in our ability to pefectly understand his word. Emerging trends have tended to ignore this distinction. It’s an important one to make.

peace.

I don’t know that doubt is a sin temptation with which we’re all afflicted, and though we probably are, it would certainly be quite likely to varying degrees, y’know? After all, the Parable of the Sower seems to be pretty clear on this.