Quotes & Sayings About Questioning Faith

Doubt is a question mark; faith is an exclamation point. The most compelling, believable, realistic stories have included them both. — Criss Jami

I would argue that healthy doubt (questioning one's beliefs) is perhaps the best defense against unhealthy doubt (questioning God). When we know how to make a distinction between our ideas about God and God himself, our faith remains safe when one of those ideas is seriously challenged. — Rachel Held Evans

The path between faith and understanding demands both obedience and inquiry. If Christianity is true, if it goes to the center of the universe and explains every stone and leaf the way we Christians think, then the more we search it out and explore it the more reasons we will have to be confident in that truth. — Matthew Lee Anderson

Where belief tries to expel doubt, faith walks with it, offering no easy answers. Belief insists, while faith hopes and trusts. The one is demanded, the other freely given, and this freedom means that real faith is both difficult and stubborn. It involves an ongoing struggle, a continual questioning of what we think we know, a wrestling with issues and ideas. It goes hand-in-hand with doubt, in a never-ending conversation with it. And sometimes even in conscious defiance of it. — Lesley Hazleton

God's Word brought me peace and a desire for a relationship with Him. I found that questioning Him and searching for answers through Scripture helped me grow and gave me direction. Now my faith in Christ is what gives me confidence for the future. I know that through both good times and bad, He is faithful and will watch over me. — Clint Dempsey

Stop waiting for others to tell you what you can do. Start putting faith into your own strengths and talents. Instead of questioning whether you can reach your goals, move forward with conviction and confidence. — Jane Powell

I do have faith. I don't have faith that a God exists, nor do I have faith that one does not; I have absolute faith that I do not know, cannot know, am only human, am an infinitesimal creature packed onto a cramped planet crowded with seven billion bodies, and as many yearning hearts, and as many questioning minds. — Marya Hornbacher

My faith is a wounded faith, but my life is not without faith. I didn't divorce God, but I'm quarrelling and arguing and questioning, it's a wounded faith. — Elie Wiesel

I'm always talking to God about whether or not he exists - that's how I know I'm a theist. — Criss Jami

I'm so grateful for Living the Questions. These progressive voices offer less rigid and more expansive approaches to Christian faith, and make room for people who practice critical thinking and question the gatekeepers. They help us see that questioning the gatekeepers is exactly what Jesus was all about. — Brian D. McLaren

The spiritual energy of our time, as I've come to understand it, is not a rejection of the rational disciplines by which we've ordered our common life for many decades - law, politics, economics, science. It is, rather, a realization that these disciplines have a limited scope. They can't ask ultimate questions ... they don't begin to tell us how to order our astonishments, what matters in life, what matters in a death, how to love, how we can be of service to each other. These are the kinds of questions religion arose to address and religions traditions are keepers of conversation across generations about them. — Krista Tippett

Be careful of living your life based only on faith and signs, or you might find yourself standing in a South American jungle holding a glass of Kool-aid. Commonsense is the foundation of any good testimony. — Shannon L. Alder

You might tell me that you have been engaging in some deep questioning and theological rethinking.1 You can no longer live with the faith you inherited from your parents or constructed earlier in your life. As you sort through your dogma and doctrine, you've found yourself praying less, less thrilled about worship, scripture, or church attendance. You've been so focused on sorting and purging your theological theories that you've lost track of the spiritual practices that sustain an actual relationship with God. You may even wonder if such a thing is possible for someone like you. — Brian D. McLaren

So she went to mass every Sunday as a child, received communion, went to confession, and was confirmed, but because her mother never participated in any of this, Alice began questioning the validity of these beliefs at a young age. And without a satisfying answer from either her father or the Catholic Church, she never developed a true faith. — Lisa Genova

In ordinary times we get along surprisingly well, on the whole, without ever discovering what our faith really is.If, now and again, this remote and academic problem is so unmannerly as to thrust its way into our minds, there are plenty of things we can do to drive the intruder away. We can get the car out or go to a party or to the cinema or read a detective story or have a row with a district council or write a letter to the papers about the habits of the nightjar or Shakespeare's use of nautical metaphor. Thus we build up a defense mechanism against self-questioning because, to tell the truth, we are very much afraid of ourselves. — Dorothy L. Sayers

Religious belief, like history itself, is a story that is always unfolding, always subject to inquiry and ripe for questioning. For without doubt there is no faith. — Jon Meacham

Politicians are usually the first to forget that if you assume someone else is acting in bad faith, they will do the same to you. Questioning motives poisons the well. — John Sununu

Most of the characters I write with don't think an awful lot about their faith. They're not always questioning the church or feeling confined by the church or rebelling against the church. — Alice McDermott

All of this suggests that lack of religious belief is a side effect of doing science. And as repugnant as that is to many, it's really no surprise. For some people, at least, science's habit of requiring evidence for belief, combined with its culture of pervasive doubt and questioning, must often carry over to other aspects of one's life - including the possibility of religious faith. — Jerry A. Coyne

Fundamentalist religion is hell-bent on ruining the scientific education of countless thousands of innocent, well-meaning, eager young minds. Non-fundamentalist, "sensible" religion may not be doing that. But it is making the world safe for fundamentalism by teaching children, from their earliest years, that unquestioning faith is a virtue. — Richard Dawkins

There isn't any questioning the fact that some people enter your life, at the exact point of need, want or desire - it's sometimes a coincendence and most times fate, but whatever it is, I am certain it came to make me smile. — Nikki Rowe

Faith itself is a horrible mechanism that stunts the growth of ideas. It also stunts the act of questioning, and it does this by pushing the idea that you have to have faith - and that nothing has to be proven. — Joe Rogan

How liberating it must be to stop evading, questioning, or complaining about your trials and start embracing them as opportunities to draw closer to God, to realize that even if Jesus is all you have, He is enough — Colleen Carroll Campbell

Cradle of Solitude
For we know not why our tribulations
are given as such
our fragile forms
created from the dust ... — Muse

Pope is questioning my faith. I was very surprised to see it. But I am a Christian, and I'm proud of it. — Donald Trump

In its more authoritarian forms, religion punishes questioning and rewards gullibility. Faith is not a function of stupidity, but a frequent cause of it. — Wendy Kaminer

Both Yassi and I know that we have been losing our faith. We have been questioning it with every move. During the Shah's time, it was different. I felt I was in the minority and I had to guard my faith against all odds. Now that my religion is in power, I feel more helpless than ever before, and more alienated.' She wrote about how ever since she could remember, she had been told that life in the land of infidels was pure hell. She had been promised that all would be different under a just Islamic rule. Islamic rule! It was a pageant of hypocrisy and shame. — Azar Nafisi

Rashi was trained to wrestle with God like Jacob at Bethel, to bargain with him like Moses at Mt. Sinai. Rashi's people have an ancient tradition of questioning God "face-toface, as a man speaks with his friend." [Exodus 33:11] Conversely, I abandoned my faith because it seemed I had no right to question the difficulties, much less expect answers. I had been taught to accept ready-made dogma rather than to personally take my doubts to God.
Make no mistake; I do not blame the church for my lost time. I might well have fallen away no matter what. But it is just possible that several years of painful isolation from the Lord might have been avoided had I learned at an early age this simple truth that most Reform Jews know:
God loves an honest question. — Athol Dickson

One thing was for sure: I had no interest in questioning whether Islam was inherently a religion of peace or one of war, whether the terrorists had misappropriated an innocent faith or the liberal Muslims were only in denial of what Islam actually taught. I'd never claim to know what "true" Islam stood for; religions were too big to make it that simple, there was too much history and too many verses, and everyone just took the parts that they wanted anyway. For a prophet's message to become what they call a world religion, it'd have to be big enough to accommodate all kinds of personalities. Good ones, mean ones, greedy ones, kind ones, hard ones, soft ones, and they all own Islam as much as it owns them. The water has no shape; it's shaped by the bottle. I could see that as a Muslim, contrasting Qari Saheb's sweetness with that maniac Rushdie, and I even saw it with Catholics in Geneva, between sweet Gramps and that dickhead monsignor or Fat Ed. — Michael Muhammad Knight

Civility also requires relearning how to disagree without being disagreeable. Surely you can question my policies without questioning my faith or, for that matter, my citizenship. — Barack Obama

When we start using religion as a bludgeon in politics, when we start questioning other people's faith, we start using religion to divide, instead of bring the country together, then I think we've got a problem. — Barack Obama

We too often forget that faith is a matter of questioning and struggle before it becomes one of certitude and peace. You have to doubt and reject everything else in order to believe firmly in Christ, and after you have begun to believe, your faith itself must be tested and purified. Christianity is not merely a set of forgone conclusions. Faith tends to be defeated by the burning presence of God in mystery, and seeks refuge from him, flying to comfortable social forms and safe convictions in which purification is no longer an inner battle but a matter of outward gesture. — Thomas Merton

Dream young. Don't settle for old - for to be old is to be superstitious and without curiosity and always questioning your faith. And be ferocious in your dreaming - run like a sun's explosion, and skip across bluing waves, and dance upon tips of swan feathers. — Carew Papritz

The problem with certainty is that it is static; it can do little but endlessly reassert itself. Uncertainty, by contrast, is full of unknowns, possibilities, and risks. (65) — Stephen Batchelor

And the faith that grows out of questioning is stronger than the faith born of blind acceptance. It can withstand the shocks of circumstance. Only he who questions the universe and questions it in utter honesty can grow in his comprehension of the truth. — James Dillet Freeman

Sometimes the soul is questioning whether it [has] any patience, any faith, till God comes and puts him into an afflicted estate, where he must exercise this faith or perish. Then it [the soul] appears like one that thinks he cannot swim, yet being thrown into the river, then uniting all his strength, he makes a shift to swim to land, and sees what he can do. How [often] have we heard Christians say, 'I thought I could never have endured such a pain, trusted God in such a straight! But now God [has] taught me what he can do for me, what he wrought in me. — William Gurnall

Blessed is that Christian who can accept at the start by simple faith that which others reach only through years of questioning and reach it only then because they give up trying to analyze it and decide to accept it. — Vance Havner

Faith is a gift of spirit that allows the soul to remain attached to its own unfolding. When faith is soulful, it is always planted in the soil of wonder and questioning. It isn't a defensive and anxious holding on to certain objects of belief, because doubt, as its shadow, can be brought into a faith that is fully mature. Imagine — Thomas Moore

Certainly you will have doubts. There will be questionings and faith will return again. That is how faith is established. — Sarada Devi

Regardless of your faith, you can never escape uncertainty. — Shannon L. Alder

[..] I sensed it was finally safe to ask the question without seeming like an ingrate. God? Where were you? For 107 days where were you? Where were you in my unconsciousness and where were you in that hospital room when I wanted to feel your presence with fireworks and explosions of emotions and supernatural palpability? Where were you, God? [...] I was there, my child, [...] I was the peace, I was the breath, I was the comfort. — Lindsey O'Connor

Men accept without questioning that this world is real and important and worthwhile. This is faith. Philosophy is the ongoing questioning of this faith. — Josiah Royce

Knighthood. Was he even worthy? Just a little while ago, he'd have answered yes without a doubt, but now, facing the cross and his own desires, he wasn't so sure. Courage, loyalty, obedience, faith. If even a man like Ulric could act against those virtues, then they were not something one possessed, but something to be constantly guarded and reclaimed. — Aleksandr Voinov

I didn't know if I should put my faith in God or Satan. Was there really a difference at the end of the day, when we were all going to be dead souls anyway? — Jess C. Scott

Memory, faith, and the natural world as both witness to the cycle of human life and healer to a questioning heart are at the core of this lovely and lyrical collection of poems. The weather changes, people come and go from cities and towns, babies are born, grow up and depart from their parents' arms, but still, the countryside and its rituals sustain the people and creatures who know how to read the signs of the seasons. In these pages, Laura Grace Weldon shares those signs with us; her poems are the fruit of a wonderful harvest. — Eleanor Lerman

Credulity as a character trait is encouraged in every child who grows up with religious training, which invariably insists on the virtue of blind faith and the sinfulness of doubting and questioning. — Barbara G. Walker

Faith never stays put. It's always challenging always questioning. That's what makes it real. — Patrick Carman

If thinking minds, questioning minds, doubting minds, are talking about faith, their whole life will become fake. — Jaggi Vasudev

For under moonlight the forms of the earth were liquid and they passed in or out of his body who ventured, in solitude, some gesture of communication with those forms. Especially under moonlight, especially when his own breath was the purest liquid. Thus Aziz Khan. Sometimes almost bewildered as a bird, compelled to flick from the sides of his body, not knowing what it was he did, never questioning his own actions but performing them without realising that, ardent though was his faith in Islam, the god he was most devoted to was the cosmos. — Zulfikar Ghose

People tend to overlook the fact that North Korea's economy collapsed at about the same time as South Koreans lost faith in their own state. The late 1980s and early 1990s were a time when South Koreans were questioning the very legitimacy of their republic. — Brian Reynolds Myers

[T]he essence of belief is doubt, the essence of reality is questioning. The essence of Time is Flow, not Fix. The essence of faith is the knowledge that all flows and that everything must change. The growing man is Man Alive, and his "philosophy" must grow, must flow, with him ... the man too fixed today, unfixed tomorrow - and his body of beliefs is nothing but a series of fixations. — Thomas Wolfe