The journey of doubt
Part 2
Therefore, what I have wanted through my life is a sense of certainty. I truly do love God, but I don’t want to be a fool and believe something that is false. In my own life, a sense of certainty is what I have now attained. I have an understanding of God and an appreciation of my faith which is, I think, now impregnable. It is like this precisely because I accept that the evidence for God’s existence is at best ambivalent, but I choose to believe in God. This gives me a degree of pleasure, to be able to sit on the edge between faith and, not simply doubt, but actually giving up faith, and choose faith. I understand the objections of atheists at least as well as they do, and I am able to agree with nearly all their objections. But at the end of the day, I can still say, “Yes, but…”. And I return to the validity of my religious experience of God, which is supremely precious to me, and – although I believe very happily in God as he is traditionally conceived to be – I can also adopt a very flexible understanding of God, faith and religion, which is, I think, immune to any attack. (Karen Armstrong has expressed this understanding extremely well).
Spiritual Devotion 