Is it pointless to live as a Christian if I'm not sure I believe?

[frail]

Would it be pointless for me to receive the sacraments and participate as a believer if I’m not even sure if it’s all true? Would it just be futile without faith?

 

[Michelle_Arnold]

If you are a Catholic who is already a member of the Church, participation in the sacraments may in fact be exactly what you need. Christ did not give us the sacraments, particularly the healing sacraments like confession and the Eucharist, as rewards but as divine assistance for the journey to heaven. Through reception of the sacraments, a person can offer up his doubts and fears to God and ask God that the grace he receives in the sacraments heal his doubts and fears. Catholic mathematician and apologist Blaise Pascal wrote in the seventeenth century:

You would like to cure yourself of unbelief and ask the remedy for it. Learn of those who have been bound [in unbelief] like you and who now stake all their possessions [on God’s existence]. These are people who know the way which you would follow and who are cured of an ill of which you would be cured. Follow the way by which they began; by acting as if they believed, taking the holy water, having Masses said, etc. Even this will naturally make you believe, and deaden your acuteness (source).

I also recommend that you read the spiritual memoirs of St. Therese of Lisieux, a nineteenth-century French Carmelite nun. She made her greatest progress in holiness during the last eighteen months of her life, a time when she was plagued by doubts and tempted to despair. Her example shows that it is possible to achieve holiness even in the midst of tremendous spiritual trial.

Recommended reading:

Story of a Soul by St. Therese of Lisieux