Is doubt a bad thing?

Many Christians think that doubting is a sin. That to question scripture is to be unfaithful. But this is to oversimplify the matter. Merely Questioning scripture is not the issue, in fact questioning scripture is necessary for growing in faith. Allow me to explain what I mean; imagine a Christian studying scripture and coming across a contradiction. What should the Christian do? Simply ignore the contradiction? Certainly not, the Biblical way to approach the issue would be to research the issue while being open to there being an answer. This includes meditation, prayer, and researching scholarly commentaries. This is Biblical doubt. Damaging doubt would be to say something along the lines of, "How could God confuse me in this way? Surely God is cruel to have done this!" See the difference? One has hope that God will allow us to find an answer, the other is without hope in Christ. Oddly enough such worldly doubt can and most often is brought about by blind faith. When we think that we must not ask questions for the sake of our faith we block ourselves off from the understanding such inquiries would bring. Thus in doing so we damage our faith instead of preserving it.