Have you ever found yourself doubting that Christianity is true?
I have.
After an event like an earthquake killing over 41,000 people made in God’s image happens, I tend to get rattled. My wife and I were talking on Monday, and she said something that has stuck with me all week. Putting this in my own words because she said it differently but the thought resonates still. When a tragedy happens, normally these things are caused by people so it’s easy to let God off the hook. A mass shooting stems from a person doing the shooting. But when it’s an earthquake, or a fire, or a tsunami, or hurricane, no person can cause that. That’s something beyond our power or control. These things happen because of a higher or greater power.
So cue in the doubt. If God is in charge of everything, that includes these natural disasters. Why is God, who is supposed to be good and loving, letting people die like this? It’s easy to have doubts if you have a brain.
I don’t have a quick answer to this. If I did I’m not convinced an easy answer is a satisfying answer to this sort of question. So if you’re interested in reading on to learn and think with me and have our brains hurt a bit, let’s go.
Some Thoughts On Doubt
Sometimes I think doubt is something created by our own constructs. We tend to think of doubt as the opposite of faith. And because it’s faith’s opposite, it is opposed to faith or against faith.
So we’ll put them in these matter-of-fact categories: faith is this, and doubt is not this.
So either you believe wholeheartedly or you are an unbeliever. This thinking is very problematic, to say the least.
But the Greek word for faith has to do with trustworthiness. For example, if someone in Roman and Greek culture had faith, or embodied faith, they would be someone who was a reliable person. They were honest, they did not lack integrity, and they were true to who they were.
A postmodern equivalent of this would be how we often use the word authentic. Millennials and Gen Z can smell bull. We can tell if something isn’t real or authentic because we’ve been let down so many times by older institutions and older people.
Maybe the Christmas movie Elf is a deliberate social commentary on this. When Will Ferrel’s character Elf walks into the diner and says, “Congratulations! You did it! World’s BEST coffee” all because he read an advertisement on the side of the building that said “World’s Best Coffee.”
Later on that famous date with Zoey Deschanel’s character, Jovie, she replies “It tastes like a crappy cup of coffee…[eyes open to behold a diner quality cup of Joe]…It is a crappy cup of coffee.”
Millennials and Gen Z know that you can’t slap “World’s Best Pizza” on the front door of a lousy pizza shop to get us in the door. It doesn’t work. We can tell if you’re sitting on a throne of lies.
How do we know if a pizza place is good, and is operating in good faith? How is it trustworthy? Well, they make good pies with real ingredients, and by word of mouth that news travels far and wide and when you get there you just know it’s going to be good. The smell is there, the taste is on point. Maybe they have an original brick oven that’s been around since the 1920s. Like Pepe’s Pizza in Connecticut. Everybody on the East Coast knows it’s worth visiting. Heck, everyone in the world knows. When I went last year I met people from England trying it out for the first time.
I apologize for my tangent here but I love pizza. In my darkest of times, of questioning the existence of God I think it’s possibly an apologetic for the existence of God. If God doesn’t exist, then how come there is pizza!? As Ben Franklin once put it, “Beer is proof that God exists and wants us to be happy.” My creed is “Pizza is proof that God exists and wants us to be satisfied.”
Back to faith and doubt as constructs, I don’t view doubt as fundamentally opposed to faith.
Faith is composed of three things: knowledge, assent, and trust. There is a cognitive element to faith, but it’s not just that because even the demons believe that God exists and yet they don’t possess true faith. True faith has knowledge, agrees with that knowledge, and actually places personal trust in the object of that faith (in the Christian faith, that is in the person and work of Jesus).
So if we say that faith is more complex than merely believing, I think doubt can also have complexity to it.
Making Room for Doubt
In Matthew 28:17, we have this picture of people bowing down to worship the resurrected Jesus. And then we see, “but some doubted.” Even in the face of just straight facts, people still doubted. They did not personally trust that Jesus was really who he said he was and is.
Now to bring this into everyday conversations that people have in the church or about the church. We might hear people saying silly stuff like:
-You need to pray more, that’s why you doubt.
-You need to read the Bible more, that’s why you’re doubting.
-Is the Bible not good enough for you?
-Is there some unconfessed sin in your life that you’re not fessing up to? That’s why you’re doubting God. Repent!
And with these statements, people are pouring more and more blame on a person who is struggling and feels overwhelmed with doubt.
Ramming Bible verses down people’s throats will not fix a person wrestling with doubt. Saying, “You’re like that person being tossed to and fro that James speaks of, ye of little faith” “You just need to have more faith!” None of these weird responses or reactions have ever helped real people.
Don’t believe me? Let’s look at something that’s hard to accept.
It appears that one of the greatest reasons for doubt in and outside of the church isn’t because people are actively trying to find reasons to doubt Christianity. Contrary to popular belief, not everyone is trying to become an atheist (Only 7% of the world’s population identifies as being positively atheist/agnostic). Often it’s because people have been driven away from trusting the church because of harm that’s been caused to them by people in the church.
We have the Roman Catholic clergy sexual abuse scandals that everyone knows about—so much so that Hollywood made a movie to Spotlight it. We also have all of the sexual abuse scandals in Protestant circles, like when the Houston Chronicle reported over 700 cases of sexual abuse and assault within the SBC. Or the statistic that 86% of those who identify as LGBTQIA+ were formerly part of a faith community and 54% have subsequently left.
It’s this sort of data that has me thinking we have done a very poor job handling people who have expressed doubts.
How have we handled people who are wrestling with questions? Do we allow for any breathing room here? Do we make room for doubt?
Thinking back on James's comment and how it can be misused to compare a doubting person to be like a wave tossing that person into the sea…
Sorry, but we just can’t do that. The text won’t allow us to.
In his letter, James is actually picking up on a story that you find in the Gospels. It’s that story of the disciples who are in a boat, and there's this big storm that comes and Jesus is sleeping. And they rush to wake Jesus up in the middle of the night, and they're freaking out that the boat’s gonna sink or whatever, and Jesus just tells them, you know, basically, keep calm and carry on.
He says, “Take heart” or “Don’t be afraid. And I think what's interesting about this is people always focus on the “Oh, ye of little faith. Why did you doubt?” part when Jesus is using that older sense of the word doubt in this passage. Meaning he’s not speaking about them having a lack of conviction or lacking trust, necessarily, but of being full of fear.
So to sum that up, Jesus is not attacking the kind of doubt someone might have when we are just wrestling with serious questions or having questions about faith. I don't think the Bible is excluding people who are wrestling with things at all.
I think that instead what we find is an invitation. Much like with the story of doubting Thomas.
This is someone whose first name is now literally replaced with doubt. First Name: Doubting. Last Name: Thomas.
I mean, he's known for the rest of all time as being the doubter. But Jesus doesn't condemn him for doubting. Instead he has great empathy for this struggling man. I mean, sure Jesus says it's better if you believe rather than having to look at this, but he still invites Thomas to look at his his scars, at his hands, and at his feet. Very clearly he’s giving Thomas space to check these things out. That's an invitation.
And a final comment on this comes from a letter in the New Testament that probably nobody ever preaches on, and nobody really ever reads except maybe a single verse. But in Jude, verse 22 says, “and have mercy on those who doubt.”
There is a specific call for us to show mercy toward those who find themselves a Doubting Thomas in this world.
Jude says, “save others by snatching them out of the fire” and “have mercy on those who doubt…waiting for the mercy of Lord Jesus Christ that leads to eternal life.”
I mean, goodness gracious, show mercy to those who are wrestling.
Could it possibly be any clearer for us to be patient with people who have questions?