How Doubt Influences Are Faith

Essay by PaperNerd ContributorHigh School, 12th grade January 2002

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Topic: How doubt influences are faith Doubt is a necessary journey that everyone must take at some point if they expect to grow as a person but it is definitely an addictive thing. Once a skepticism is cultivated, it most assuredly will never leave. I think what frightens people about doubt is that it makes no guarantees of happiness. In fact, it almost always guarantees the opposite, at least for a time. When doubt is introduced in faith the same effect occurs. You will see from the two poems I have chose, "Design" and "When I consider how my light is spent", how doubt in your faith can lead to unhappiness, at least temporarily.

In the poem "Design" by Robert Frost the author uses a contrasting of words and situations in order to bring the reader to a point of confusion or doubt. Frost makes you wonder if there really is a God.

If one had faith at the beginning of this poem, I am sure that afterwards they are faced with some questions of there existence. With this doubt introduced, it will lead to certain amount of unhappiness as you struggle with your faith in God. The author sets the scene in a manner that catches you by surprise at the end of the poem. By using the contrast between good and evil he raises the question of who is our creator. The beginning of the poem sets the mood by using lines like ""¦dimpled spider, fat and white, / On a white heal-all"¦" (1-2). By using the words "dimpled" and "fat", the author is setting a cheery frame of mind. The author even manages to make the death of the moth seem cheery with this line, "Assorted characters of death and blight / Mixed ready to begin the...