Last spring, newspapers around the world covered the controversy resulting from remarks made in a sermon delivered by California Rabbi, David Wolpe.  Wolpe is one of the Conservative movement's all-stars. He is bright, creative, and highly articulate.  His popularity as lecturer and author is well-deserved.  And yet, here he was in the heart of a bitter controversy. What did he say?

Rabbi Wolpe, in a sermon delivered to his congregation at Passover time, admitted to holding personal doubts as to the historical accuracy of the entire Exodus account.  Perhaps there was no exodus from Egypt. Perhaps we never were slaves to Pharaoh. Perhaps we didn't wander for 40 years in the Desert.  Perhaps the events at Sinai didn't take place as the Torah's second book describes.

All of these doubts are well-documented and supported by certain respected historians, archaeologists, and theologians.  They are by no means unique to Rabbi Wolpe.  But, if you could have heard all of the ire and dismay, the shouts of outrage and the accusations of heresy which that sermon evoked!

While it is true that no historical evidence has been found to support much of the Exodus saga, my own personal inclination has always been to take comfort in the fact that none has been discovered to conclusively disprove it either!  Besides, the values and ethos undergirding Passover are, in my opinion, unfailingly true and of inestimable worth for humankind.

So the only thing I would second-guess is Rabbi Wolpe's timing. I remember one of Atlanta's outstanding Christian ministers telling me, almost 30 years ago, "Sure, I have my doubts about virgin birth, but I don't discuss them in December."  So his timing, yes, but what ought not be attacked is Rabbi Wolpe's honesty and courage in expressing his doubts and sharing them in a reasoned, documented fashion with his fellow Jews.  Perhaps he just should have saved that sermon for November instead of April!

In theology as in every discipline known to humankind, the more you know, the less you know.  Scholars are not certain of even basic facts and developments.  Morons are sure.  Ignoramuses have no doubts.  Intelligenet people have theories.

Why are we so threatened by our doubts?  Certainly these are times when we seem to crave doubt-free leaders.  Let the President share his thoughts with us on stem cell research, and regardless of his logical contradictions,  let him come down on both sides,  but with certainty and conviction, and we are satisfied.  Bottom line--we do not want to hear of his doubts or his uncertainties.  We are intellectually lazy!

I wonder if we serve ourselves and our future well by demanding that all of life's thorny and big issues be served up to us in tiny neat little packages, our final answers in gift-wrapped boxes.

Genuine wisdom and insight are nowhere as simple and convenient.

For our people, from Abraham and Sarah to you and me, doubt has been a natural part of the Jewish faith journey.  Our doubting and our uncertainty is one of humankind's noblest powers.

Remember how, when someone asked Einstein how he hit on the theory of relativity, he replied, "I challenged an axiom."  So it was by doubting what others took for granted that Albert Einstein developed a new view of reality.

Sir Francis Galton, the great English scientist of the 19th century once wrote,

Do you see what he was saying? Truth is, we all of us need these fleas to nip at our consciences, to irritate our facile assumptions and to disturb our easy-going expectations.

Certainly, one of the foremost areas of our lives that ought to be well-infested with bothersome bugs is our religious faith. It's the ants in our pants of faith which bring us the itches and twitches of doubts that serve to keep our faith alert to new vision and understanding and moving us forward. It was that greater founder and architect of American Reform Judaism, Rabbi Isaac Mayer Wise, who once observed:

I must strenuously object when some Christian clergy go on television camera and unambiguously pass judgment on deeply complex, bio-ethical issues of our day, insisting that the law of the land, which also affects those of us who are outside of their theological purview, must conform to their faith's views of when life begins.

I want to say to them, "You know, there are some of us whose faiths differ with that assessment.  And there are many in America who are just uncertain, and whose doubts deserve to be respected every bit as much as your certainties."  For some of us, the old statement, "Who never doubted, never has believed," says it all.

Now, I have a note in my files dating back to July 1998 when, on a Sunday morning, I participated in the Centennial Anniversary Celebration of our good friends down the street at the St. Charles Avenue Baptist Church.  They had invited for that historic occasion as their guest preacher the Reverend Dr. James Dunn, and in his message that morning, he quoted the distinguished Dr. Browning Ware, who once admitted (listen to this):
 

When younger I thought there was an answer to every problem. And for a time I knew many of the answers:

I knew about parenting, until I had children.
I knew about divorce, until I got one.
I knew about suicide, until three of my closest friends took their lives in the same year.
I knew about the death of a child, until mine died.

I'm not as impressed with answers as once I was.  Answers seem so pallid, sucked dry of blood and void of life.
Knowing answers seduces us into making pronouncements. I still have a few friends or acquaintances who are 100% sure of most anything. And they are ready to make pronouncements on homosexuality and AIDS and marriage problems and teenage pregnancy, abortion and sex education, or whatever else is coming down the pike. But when we get shoved into our Valley of the Shadow, a pronouncement is the last thing we need.

A friend wrote recently [Browning goes on], "I, too, get Maalox moments from all those who know for sure."  I'm discovering that wisdom and adversity replace cocksure ignorance with faithful uncertainty.

More important and satisfying than answers is The Answer:  Thou Art With Me.

Now, did you hear that? I like that phrase, "Faithful uncertainty."

Sometimes in life, experience teaches me that if we hold on to our reason and respect our doubts, we will arrive with integrity. There is no shortcut, there is no by-pass to that wonderful day when we actually begin to doubt our doubts, and believe our beliefs. That day will come, but we must press on with the journey and the search.

Rabbi Wolpe, don't despair.  Just keep on keeping on.  And those of you who sometimes also doubt and wonder, don't you despair, either, because all thinking people have times of doubt, and go through seasons of questioning.  And for that, we should be grateful. . . grateful, for those pesky fleas of doubts, for they may very well be God calling...calling us, to live richer and deeper lives.