The problem with accepting truth as it comes to us rather than truth as we divine it for ourselves is that it’s not worth dying for–and we don’t. It becomes a patina of ideas inside of which we live our lives without passion, without care.

This kind of faith happens around us but not in us–we go through the motions. The first crack in the edifice and we’re gone. The first chink in the wall of the castle keep and we’re off to less demanding fields.

Doubt, on the other hand, is the mother of conviction. Once we have pursued our doubts to the dust, we forge a stronger, not a weaker, belief system. These truths are true, we know, because they are now true for us rather than simply for someone else.

To suppress doubt, then, to discourage thinking, to try to stop a person from questioning the unquestionable is simply to make them more and more susceptible to the cynical, more unaccepting of naive belief.

It is doubt that is the beginning of real faith.

from Uncommon Gratitude