Disbelief, Doubt and Mystery

I'd like for you to chime in on some musings I've been pondering.

What's the relationship between disbelief and doubt? Are they one and the same? Or are they separate entities?

What kind of doubt is appropriate/part of the human condition and what is not? For instance, if I am doubting God's goodness or his love, is that the same as not doubting that he will give me the new car that I have prayed to him for? Is one kind of doubt worse than the other?

Is simply the acceptance of the way things are (i.e. I have cancer and am dying)a faithless act and a form of doubt? Some believe so. I know of a family whose mother died of cancer and there was a consensus amongst some friends and family members that even attending her funeral was a form of doubting. They had faith that she would be resurrected. So, why attend the funeral? Needless to say, her resurrection has yet to come. Although we have hope that in the last day it will.

Then there is mystery. Sometimes people want to exercise faith by naming it and claiming it (whatever the "it" may be....could be faith in a healing, a new car, a better job or the healing of a relationship). Of course, God wants us to come to Him in faith for our concerns. But, he wants us to come to Him like children. No pretence. No pride. Without a desire to control or coerce His goodness. But, faith saturated with unfiltered naming and claiming seems. . .well, it seems like a really spiritual way of controlling God to get what you want. Sort of like using faith as a crow-bar that we use to pry and gain leverage over God. What ever happened to the mystery of God? If God is simply a cosmic candy dispenser that gives ME what I put in (assuming that what I put in is the the right thing)?

We may ask then, where does His sovereign will fit into my faithful prayers? I would argue that they do fit. But, any human attempt to figure out how this fits is futile. The bottom line is that we must trust God. We have faith. We pray, but ultimately God ways are still a mystery to man.

Sometimes it seems that people lose faith when they claim that they do not see nor understand God and are frustrated because they cannot nail him down. Yet, should not a large part of our faith assume that I will not see or understand the ways of the Creator? Shouldn't faith remind us that even in such confusing moments where there is no trace of Him, that He still is. That he still loves. And, He still is working to renew all things. . .including my present reality. Is our faith big enough to live within the mystery that is God?

As Friedrich Buechner put it, "To say that god is a mystery is to say that you can never nail him down. Even on Christ the nails proved ultimately ineffective".

If God cannot be nailed down either physically or spiritually, perhaps our faith should not be as much about mastery over Him, as humbly embracing the divine mystery that is Him.