We do not comprehend but can only trust that our heavens, as it was for the psalmist, are declaring for us the glory of God. And that glory is as far from our understanding as are the distant galaxies that swirl about in the infinite expanses of the universe.

But doubt is not the enemy of faith, a solely destructive force that rips us away from God, a dark cloud that blocks the bright warm sun of faith. Doubt is only the enemy of faith when we equate faith with certainty in our thinking.

Doubt can certainly leave us empty and frightened, but that is precisely the benefit of doubt: it exposes the folly that strong faith means you need to "know what you believe," that the more faith you "have," the more certain you are.

Doubt means spiritual relocation is happening. It's God's way of saying, "Time to move on.

Paradoxically, the challenges of our day-to-day existence are sustained reminders that our life of faith simply must have its center somewhere other than in our ability to hold it together in our minds.

All this is to say that a faith in a living God that is preoccupied with certainty is sin, for it compromises the gospel—personally, locally, and globally. But it need not remain so. As Jesus said to the adulterous woman, "Go your way, and from now on do not sin again" (John 8:11).

Andrew Perriman at "P.OST" (postnost.net).

Trust like this is an affront to reason, the control our egos crave. Which is precisely the point. Trust does not work because we have captured God in our minds. It works regardless of the fact that, at the end of the day, we finally learn that we can't.

Watching how the biblical writers looked at faith as trust rather than certainty helps us through our inevitable uh-oh moments from a different perspective. These moments are not proof that faith doesn't work, but only that a certain kind of faith doesn't work—one that needs correct thinking in order to survive (chapter 6).

Doubt signals not God's death but the need for our own—to die to the theology we hold to with clenched fists. Our first creeping feelings of doubt are like the distant toll of a graveyard chapel, alerting us that the dying process is coming our way.

Believing is easy. It gives us wiggle room to think our way out of a tight spot. But trust doesn't have any wiggle room. It explodes it. Trust is about being all in.

The way forward is to let go of that need to find the answers we crave and decide to continue along a path of faith anyway (as Qohelet would say). That kind of faith is not a crutch, but radical trust.