Philip Yancey in his book, Disappointment with God, tells of a letter he received from a woman who was struggling with life and her faith in God. He says, “A young mother wrote that her joy had turned to bitterness and grief when she delivered a daughter with spina bifida, a birth defect that leaves the spinal cord exposed. In page after page of tiny, spidery script she recounted how medical bills had soaked up the family savings and how her marriage had cracked apart as her husband came to resent all the time she devoted to their sick child. As her life crumbled around her, she was beginning to doubt what she had once believed about a loving God.” She wanted to know, “Did I have any advice?”
This young woman is not alone in her doubts. The writer of the biblical book of Psalms often struggled with doubt that came from God’s apparent silence and inactivity. He began to wonder if God really did care about him. He cried out: “Awake, O Lord! Why do you sleep? Rouse yourself! Do not reject us forever. Why do you hide your face and forget our misery and oppression?” (Psalm 44:23-24). There are many times when we are tempted to doubt God, but there is no more common experience than when life comes crashing down around us and things continue to get worse rather than better. We ask what it is that we have done wrong. We question whether we are really a Christian or not. We blame ourselves, and we even blame God. We begin to wonder if God cares, and then we begin to wonder if he is there. Fears begin to approach us that this whole God thing is some kind of hoax. The pain takes over our lives and we don’t seem to have the emotional energy for faith anymore. The pain of life can sometimes harden us. As Rich Mullins sings: “You who live in heaven / Hear the prayers of those of us who live on earth / Who are afraid of being left by those we love / And who get hardened by the hurt.” I know many people who seem to suffer more than their fair share of the pain of this world, and when that happens questions begin to arise. No wonder the Bible says, “Be merciful to those who doubt” (Jude 1:22).
Doubting is a common experience among Christians. If you have never doubted anything, it may mean that you have never thought seriously about anything. The only way to never doubt is to never use your mind to question and try to figure anything out. So, not only can you be a Christian and still have some doubts, but you can hardly be a Christian without doubting at times. After all, if doubting was not possible, faith would not possible either. The only way there can be no doubt is for there to be no alternatives or choices. Doubting does not mean that your faith stops, it means you are trying to understand your faith at a deeper level. Rather than being afraid of doubts, we should allow them to take us to deeper experiences of faith and understanding.
So the first thing we need to understand is that: Doubt can lead to faith. Honest doubt means that we are thinking and seeking to understand. The simple answers do not satisfy us any longer and we want to understand at a new level. Honest doubt seeks to know and understand. Dishonest doubt seeks to find reasons to stay at its present level of unbelief. Honest doubt wants to know more about God and experience him in new ways. Dishonest doubt seeks to question God at the most basic level in order to avoid coming closer. Honest doubt is seeking to come to a place of trust and rest in God. Dishonest doubt seeks to find excuses for not trusting God and excluding him from one’s life.
I believe that God honors our struggles to understand. I’m not sure God is very excited about someone who just passively believes because someone told them what they should believe. Better to fight with God than not engage him at all. Passiveness is not a spiritual attribute. In fact, all through the Bible it seems that it is those who struggle with God who receive his blessing.
I reached a crisis of faith recently when I realized once again that I did not have God all figured out. I actually became afraid of God and what he would do, because of a fresh realization that he was outside of my control. As much as I have attempted to know him, he is still unpredictable. He overwhelms and overpowers me. He is still God, and I cannot make him do what I want. He is wild and untamed, but this is also what makes him so exciting. Just when I think I know what he will do and how he will respond, he breaks out of the box in which I have put him. He is too big for any box. None of us have God all figured out. None of us have a corner on the truth. We can get into heaven without having all the right beliefs, but we cannot get into heaven without a heart for God. Make no mistake, the basic tenets of our faith are unchangeable and essential, but believing all the right things will not get you into heaven. There is a place for questions, but people who are after the heart of God ask those questions because they want to know, not because they want an excuse for not believing. They struggle with God.
Look at Jacob. His name meant “schemer.” He was a wheeler-dealer who schemed his way through life, and he even tried to do it with God. But God met him when he came to the end of his rope and could scheme no longer. They began to wrestle with each other, and Jacob came away from that experience a wounded, but changed, man. As a result, God gave him a new name. He had been Jacob, but he would be forever after known as Israel. He had been called a schemer, but now his name meant wrestler with God. Phil Yancey writes: “Is it any accident that God identified his chosen people as the children of Israel, ‘the wrestler’s children,’ the offspring of one who had grappled so fiercely through the night?”
Jesus said, “The kingdom of heaven has been forcefully advancing, and forceful men lay hold of it” (Matthew 11:12). The kingdom of heaven is for those who will struggle with God. It is for those who ask, seek and knock. It is for those who are willing to grapple with God. It is for those who struggle in order to understand. They question so that they might know. They don’t let the doubt rest; they think; they read; they study; they talk to others; they pray. Their relationship with God is too important not to struggle, because they know that doubt leads to faith.
The second thing that we need to understand is that: We will never have all the answers. It is important to struggle with God and seek the answers to your questions. But let me sound a note of warning. If you are waiting until you have everything figured out before you come to God, then you will be waiting forever. God is bigger than you, so get over it. If God came down and sat across the table from you and explained everything, you could not comprehend it. It would be like sitting in an advanced calculus class when you had trouble with high school algebra. You can’t wait until you agree with everything God does before you surrender your life to him. You can’t expect him to prove his existence to you. This is what faith is all about. Our belief in God may be based on intelligent reasoning, but in the end we have no proofs for anything. At last, it is all faith.
God is pleased with those who exercise faith. Faith is like a muscle; the more you use it, the more powerful it becomes. I want to be a person who believes God for great things. I want to trust him in the most dangerous and important times of my life. I want my life to reflect the fact that I believe in a big God. The Bible says, “And without faith it is impossible to please God, because anyone who comes to him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who earnestly seek him” (Hebrews 11:6). Faith involves risk. You have to be willing to take a risk as you place your faith in God and his Word. If you want to have all the answers and have God all figured out, you will never know the experience of faith. Your heart will be empty and so will your head, because truth is experienced through faith as much as it is through intellectual investigation. In fact, the two go hand in hand. Faith and Doubt paradoxically live together.
Henri Nouwen wrote, “So I am praying while not knowing how to pray. I am resting while feeling restless, at peace while tempted, safe while still anxious, surrounded by a cloud of light while still in darkness, in love while still doubting.” As long as we are in this world we will always live in the tension between faith and despair, but it is our love for God which allows us to outlive our doubts.
Frederick Buechner said, “If you tell me Christian commitment is a kind of thing that has happened to you once and for all like some kind of spiritual plastic surgery, I say. . . you’re either pulling the wool over your own eyes or trying to pull it over mine. Every morning you should wake up in your bed and ask yourself: ‘Can I believe it all again today?’ No, better still, don’t ask it till after you’ve read The New Your Times, till after you’ve studied that daily record of the world’s brokenness and corruption, which should always stand side by side with your Bible. Then ask yourself if you can believe in the Gospel of Jesus Christ again for that particular day.” Faith is a daily, ongoing exercise. It is a risk. Doubts arise. We struggle with God. And hopefully, faith grounded in the goodness of God triumphs — even when we do not have all the answers and life doesn’t make sense.
The third thing we need to understand is that: A cynical spirit leads us away from God. The best Christians in the world have had serious doubts. Abraham didn’t know if he could trust God (Genesis 15:8). Gideon did not know whether God would live up to his promise (Judges 6:17). John the Baptist questioned whether Jesus was the Messiah after all (Matthew 11:3). Some of the disciples doubted whether God really did raise Jesus from the dead (Matthew 28:17). Thomas doubted and demanded that he be able to touch Christ’s wounds before he would believe (John 20:25). But, ultimately, in spite of their doubts, all of them put their trust in God.
However, there is one kind of doubt that is deadly. It is cynicism. Cynicism questions but never attempts to resolve the questions. Cynicism questions merely to question. It is not a true quest, it questions to mock and jest. There is always a smirk on its lips. The cynic is pleased with doubt; looks for ways to doubt; delights in things which can be questioned. The cynic holds up experiences of being hurt by Christians, and uses them as an excuse to abandon the faith. They point to the failure of believers. They look for inconsistencies and find contradictions. They expect God to jump out of the sky and meet their demands and answer all their questions. (By the way, he tried that and there were many who still did not believe.) In the gospel of John we read: “Even after Jesus had done all these miraculous signs in their presence, they still would not believe in him” (John 12:37). Cynicism is dishonest doubt.
The Bible calls this hardheartedness. The Greek word is sklerokardia (Mark 16:14). (Sklero is used in arteriosklerosis, meaning “hardening of the arteries.” Kardia is used in “cardiac,” as in cardiac arrest, meaning the heart has stopped.) This condition of the hardening of the heart can be fatal. There is a cure for doubt, but cynicism is a condition of the heart which prevents genuine faith. It can always raise more objections than it is possible to answer. Cynicism resists surrendering to God. This is the problem. The Bible warns: “See to it, brothers, that none of you has a sinful, unbelieving heart that turns away from the living God. But encourage one another daily, as long as it is called Today, so that none of you may be hardened by sin’s deceitfulness. We have come to share in Christ if we hold firmly till the end the confidence we had at first. As has just been said: ‘Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts as you did in the rebellion’” (Hebrews 3:12-15).
Cynicism is fatal to spiritual life. Question if you will. Wrestle with doubts, and even with God. Investigate and look into things, but do not become cynical. Cynicism investigates, but with an eye to find errors rather than answers. It decides to doubt before the investigation even begins. It scoffs and mocks. It hardens the mind and heart.
When we ask something from God there must be a basic trust in God. The Scriptures say, “But when he asks, he must believe and not doubt, because he who doubts is like a wave of the sea, blown and tossed by the wind. That man should not think he will receive anything from the Lord; he is a double-minded man, unstable in all he does” (James 1:6-8).
At the heart of faith is the question of the character of God. For many people, it is not a matter of whether or not to believe in God, but what kind of God do we believe in? Will we believe in a God of love who wants to be near us and has our best interest at heart? Or will we believe in a God who plays games with us, and is ultimately cruel and uncaring? Will we believe in a God who stands beside us in our troubles, or one who is distant and difficult? Will we say, in the words of Rich Mullins, “You’re up there just playing hard to get.” What kind of God will we believe in?
John Updike has put it eloquently: “If there is no God then the universe is a freak show, and I do not experience it as a freak show. Though I have had neither the maleficent or the beatific vision, I have heard whispers from the wings of the stage.” The whispers are from the spirit world where we hear echos of laughter and the music of heaven. We hear strains of joy and gladness. The whispers are the warm breath of God blowing across our hearts telling us we are loved, and saying to us, “All is well.”
Because of whispers like those that Job overcame his doubt and said, “I know that my Redeemer lives, and that in the end he will stand upon the earth. And after my skin has been destroyed, yet in my flesh I will see God; I myself will see him with my own eyes — I, and not another. How my heart yearns within me!” (Job 19:25-27).
Rodney J. Buchanan
May 26, 2002
Mulberry St. UMC
Mt. Vernon, OH
www.MulberryUMC.org
Rod.Buchanan@MulberryUMC.org
