Facing Doubt

I’ve always been impressed how the Bible includes so many examples of doubt.  Evidently, God has some tolerance of doubt.  

Doubt and faith are intertwined. Where there is certainty there is no room for faith.  Honest doubt can be someone’s path to becoming a Christian and to growing faith.    

Feelings and Faith

 “Immediately the boy’s father exclaimed, ‘I do believe; help me overcome my unbelief!’” Mark 9:24 (NIV)

I think many Christians can identify with the father in this story. I know I can. Sometimes as Christians, we find our faith in the exact same place as this father’s. We truly believe, but we need help with our unbelief.  

Feelings are huge when it comes to faith. Faith is not just an agreement to a series of beliefs, but is a relationship with a living God. Feelings impact every relationship. For example, in a marriage of any length there are a whole range of feelings that have been experienced over time. But commitment to marriage binds two people to each other regardless of the feeling of the moment.  

We see the same pattern in the Bible in a relationship with God. Psalm 22 has words like: “My God, why have You forsaken me?” and Psalm 23: “The Lord is my Shepherd” back-to-back. Those two Psalms accurately express the changing feelings in a faith relationship.  

I Have Scary Doubts

Whenever we deal with something that is the foundation of our life as Christians, it makes sense that any doubt can worry or even frighten someone.  

In The Case for Faith by Lee Strobel, he wrote: “For many Christians, merely having doubts of any kind can be scary…they feel insecure because they’re not sure whether it’s permissible to express uncertainty about God, Jesus, or the Bible. So, they keep their questions to themselves—and inside, unanswered, they grow and fester…until they eventually succeed in choking out their faith.”   

Whenever they come, we must each deal honestly with our doubts. To ignore them is to flirt with trouble. But facing them can lead to a deeper faith.  

Where Do Our Doubts Come From?

There are three key areas where doubts come from. Sometimes it comes from people. From someone who identifies themselves as a believer yet gives an example that causes doubt.  

Sometimes doubt comes from wanting proof. Does religious faith make sense in a world of technology and space travel? Why doesn’t God just write something in the sky? Why can’t there be a dramatic interruption from above? Is this visible world around us all there is?  

Probably the biggest source of doubt is…pain. If a person has experienced great sorrow or disappointment, such as the loss of a loved one, or the loss of health, they can be led to doubt. 

The Bottom Line

Faith and belief can grow strong through doubt. The Bible books of Psalms, Job, Habakkuk and Lamentations show us that very clearly. God worked with people in their doubts. Jesus, when asked questions of doubt (which happened 153 times), answered with a question 147 times—an invitation to face our doubts and question them.  

What has helped me is to come to the conclusion that materialistic explanations of life are inadequate to explain reality. Love is much more than a mere biochemical attraction. In beauty and nature, the works of a genius Creator are obvious. In justice, generosity, and forgiveness there is a quality of grace that points to another world beyond this one. In Jesus, we have someone who lived those qualities so consistently and perfectly the world couldn’t tolerate Him and had to remove Him. This visible world hints and points to a lack of completion that can only be found in God and reality beyond the physical world.