Reasonable Doubt
For most Christians, there’s great comfort in the feeling of choosing a belief system that seems solid, reliable, and for the most part, easily understandable. We don’t wrestle through sleepless nights over questions like…
- Should I murder?
- Should I steal?
- Should I commit adultery?
- Should I pray?
But what happens when more complex questions rise to the surface of our thoughts and collide with what we thought to be our unshakable faith? When we’re up at night fighting mental battles simple Bible verses don’t easily put to rest?
- What if God isn’t really all I’ve been thinking He is?
- Did God really say _______?
- If God is good, why did __________happen?
- It feels like God and the Bible can’t really speak into this problem.
- That so-called “worldly philosophy” really resonates - it feels truer to my personal experience than Scripture.
- What if another religion or belief system offers something better?
- Am I delusional for believing this stuff? Are my Christian friends?
- It feels like God never answers my prayers.
- I thought God called me to do this – why isn’t it easier?
- Where was God when_______?
- What in the world am I supposed to do with this crazy passage of Scripture?
- Is God even real?
Doubt is uncomfortable. When it catches us off guard and challenges paradigms we’ve been relying on, it can spiral out of control into feelings of panic. And panic makes us want to quickly snuff out its source.
If you’ve ever tried any of the following quick fixes, you may be aware they either don’t work, or don’t provide long-lasting relief:
- Telling yourself you should just have more faith
- Chastising your lack of loyalty to God
- Insisting you should know better
- Rigidly practicing spiritual disciplines apart from a relational connection with God
- Confessing… and confessing… and confessing the sin of doubt
- Frantically searching for facts to prove your doubt unfounded
Here’s why these strategies don’t help. Each is a way of depending on self to prove who God is. But only God can prove Himself. It makes no sense for us to depend on ouselves to overcome our doubt that we can depend on God. If that sentence feels weird, it’s because it is.
When the Bible says to not doubt (and it does many times), this is not a command to figure out for ourselves how to stop doubting – which usually turns into shoving it down or hiding it under the rug in hopes it will go away. Rather, the call to not doubt is an invitation to enlist God’s help so we can deal with it effectively (John 15:1-8, Matthew 11:28-30, and James 1:5-8).
Here are some ways to stop fighting doubt in our own strength.
- At the first hint of doubt, refuse to panic. It isn’t the deathblow to faith it can feel like. It is simply the surfacing of a problem all humanity has experienced since a mistrust of God was first embraced by Adam and Eve. We call this trust issue “original sin.” Accepting this reality is not the same thing as caving in to it.
- View doubt as an opportunity, not an obstacle. *Tim Mackey, the cofounder of The Bible Project once said, “When we come across hard things to understand, that’s not a problem to solve; that’s an invitation to unpack mysteries with God.”
- Take doubts directly to God and ask Him for help. (“I believe. Help my unbelief” Mark 9:24). We can ask Him to reveal whatever it is He knows we need to see, experience, or learn in whatever timing He knows is best to help us most effectively overcome doubt. We can set our questions safely in His responsible hands and take a break from stressing over them.
While our doubt may catch us off guard, it never catches God off guard. He knows it is reasonable for us to have questions about Him because he understands the following things…
- Original sin (or doubt) is our natural disposition.
- We can’t see God.
- He has chosen to reveal Himself in subtle, quiet ways so as not to overpower our free will and create a dictatorship.
- Our feelings of assurance and stability fluctuate because human bodies get tired, sick, out-of-balance, and suffer pain. All of these affect our minds.
- His thoughts and ways are higher than ours (Isaiah 55:8-9). We can’t even comprehend His ideas about how to handle the things we face. And a typical human response to things we can't understand is doubt.
Psalm 103:13-14 reminds us that, “As a father has compassion on his children, so the Lord has compassion on those who fear him; for he knows how we are formed, he remembers that we are dust.”
Every one of the following people have at least one or more accounts of times they doubted God recorded in Scripture:
- Adam & Eve
- Job & Friends
- Jacob
- Abraham & Sarah
- Elijah
- Moses
- Aaron
- Gideon
- Zechariah
- Joseph
- Peter
- John the Baptist
- Judas
- Mary & Martha
- The Twelve Disciples
- Paul
- Timothy
- And many more...
But in every one of their moments of doubt, God showed profound compassion, mercy, and understanding in the ways He helped them work through their challenging questions. We can be assured of God’s grace and longing to help us when we struggle with tough, but reasonable questions as well.
"And have mercy on those who doubt." Jude 1:22 ESV