Posted on 08/11/2015 6:28:18 AM PDT by metmom
Do you have doubts about the faith? “No,” you say, “I’ve been a Christian for years.” You don’t understand. I didn’t ask if you were a Christian or not. I asked if you had some doubts, perhaps a nagging question in the back of your mind, “Is this stuff really true?” It’s okay to ask that question. In fact, it’s normal.
For both the doubting Christian and the searching skeptic, let’s look at some prerequisites for faith as seen in the life of “doubting Thomas” (John 20:24-31). What was it about Thomas that caused Jesus to deal with his doubts?
Risk
Thomas was a man who was willing to risk. Thomas was not a mere dabbler in religion. He was a Christ-follower, and he was committed to following him to the death. He was willing to risk in order to discover. If you aren’t willing to risk, forget it.
Socrates, Plato’s mentor, had a student who came to him while he was kneeling by a stream. The student asked Socrates, “What is truth?” Without hesitation, Socrates grabbed the boy, held him under water until the boy began to struggle, pulled him up, and answered, “When you want knowledge the way you just wanted air, then you shall have it.”
If you don’t believe something and your disbelief doesn’t bother you, then forget about resolving your doubts. You don’t want answers badly enough yet.
Refuse
Thomas was a man who refused to run on someone else’s gasoline. If we had been around when the disciples said they had seen the risen Jesus, many of us would have said, “Oh, really? What a great experience. Can I vicariously share it with you?” But, you see, you can’t vicariously share anyone else’s belief or experience.
I know a man who became a Christian a number of years ago. What led up to his conversion illustrates my point. One day he went to his backyard, his Bible in tow, and looking up to the sky, said, “Lord, I’m not trying to put you to the test, but if you don’t speak to me, I’m going to take this Bible and throw it away.” Now that’s not an appropriate way to go before God, but his heart was right. He was saying, “I’ve been playing a game. I’ve been running on the gasoline of others. Now I have to meet you or I’m going to die.”
Question
Thomas was a man of questions. I believe that the only dumb questions are the ones that aren’t asked. God would say that too. Questions that concern your doubts do have answers, but when they aren’t asked, you won’t find answers.
Will Rogers once said that he believed in college because it took kids away from home just at the point when they started asking questions. There might be something to that, but if the home or the church can’t be open enough to any question that anyone asks, then we have a serious problem.
Verbalize
Thomas was a man who verbalized his doubts. One of the problems with the church is that when we are hurting—and doubt is one of the greatest hurts we can have—many of us play pretend. We keep quiet about it, never getting our needs met. That’s like going to the doctor because you have stomach pains and when the doctor asks you, “Where does it hurt?” you say, “I’m not going to tell you because you will think I’m sick.” How foolish! How foolish for those of us in the church who do the same thing.
If you have doubts, don’t go off in a corner and lick your wounds. Be like Thomas: verbalize your doubts, and let the church come to your side with some answers.
Accept & Act
Thomas was a man who, when he found answers, was willing to accept them and to act on them. The reason for speaking up about your doubts is to get satisfactory answers that lead somewhere—to a changed life. You ask questions, not to show how deep your philosophical nature is, but to get answers. The reasons you risk should have nothing to do with showing your courage, but they should have everything to do with finding the reality of God.
Jesus answered Thomas’ doubts exactly, precisely and totally. And Thomas didn’t even know Jesus had heard the question. Jesus met his doubts in two ways.
Jesus gave him an evidential answer. He showed Thomas his wounds and allowed Thomas to check them out himself. If you believe there’s no evidence for the truth of the Christian faith, then you believe a lie. The Christian faith is credible, evidential, it hangs together, and it is totally open to questioning.
One reason so many believers have such terrible doubts is that they’re afraid it may not be true. So they don’t probe and find out. They would rather hang on to what may be false rather than risk to confirm that it’s really true. If that’s you, I’ve got some good news for you. The Christian faith is true. Go ahead. Check it out. Truth never fears investigation.
Jesus gave him an existential answer. He didn’t just give the facts; he gave himself too. That is the magnificent fact of Christian apologetics. The evidence is there, but the One about whom the evidence speaks is also there.
I heard that C.S. Lewis said that every time he sat down to write, he felt someone standing behind him watching. He described the experience this way: “To say that I was searching for God was like saying that a mouse was searching for a cat.” Jesus comes, the evidence is presented, and then he says to both the shaking believer and the confirmed atheist, “Consider the evidence, but don’t forget that I’m here also.”
God doesn’t play games. He’s in the business of answering honest questions, meeting honest doubts, honoring genuine risk. When you go to the Father, expect answers to your questions, but if you don’t really want to know, don’t ask.
Time to Draw Away
Read 1 Kings 18:20-45 & John 20:30-31
What spiritual doubts do you have? Write them down and then begin to search for answers. Ask for help in your search from some trusted, mature and earthy Christians (the kind who won’t be threatened by doubt and who are honest about their own) who can come alongside you and point to some resources. But more important than that, go directly to God, praying for a strong sense of his presence and peace. He loves to answer that prayer with a “yes.”
ping
Doubt is an evil sin that should be repented of. It is not something to seek.
“Without faith it is IMPOSSIBLE to please God.”
“Lord, I believe; help my unbelief!” Mark 9:24
No one has perfect faith, but every time I have doubts, I think, “Where else can I go? Only God has the answers and He knows that I’m a weak vessel.”
I don’t think he’s talking about seeking it.
However, I think that he’s encouraging people to be honest with themselves about it. That everyone confronts it at some point in their lives.
There have been times when I’ve taken a step back and evaluated what I believe. I’ve had doubts about my salvation in the past. Several things have happened over the years that have removed that doubt, but still, especially for the new Christian, I don’t think it’s uncommon at all to have doubts.
But if they aren’t addressed, they will never be resolved.
When Thomas doubted, Jesus didn’t berate him.
He offered him substantial proof and encouraged him to believe and his faith was strengthened.
We humans see through a glass darkly, and sometimes it’s easy to struggle when what we know is not clear to us. Especially when walking through the valley of the shadow of death.
The thing is, you want to be right. The consequences of being wrong are too great to take the chance with.
I have heard this all before. It is a big love subject of the Emergent Church. Trust me. Turn and run. This may sound attractive to you at first but it will train wreck your faith eventually. It is the wrong road. It is unbiblical.
Run. Godly, biblical preaches and teachers speak of faith and all the reasons to have it. They don’t trumpet doubt.
Do a biblical word search on two words: Faith and doubt. Then compare what you read to what the author says. Don’t just fall for the way he frames the doubting Thomas story.
I see the tone of the article as how to deal with doubts.
Not to live with them and embrace them, but to be honest that the person has them and then deal with them so you don’t have them any more.
One thing I’ve learned over the years, is that if you don’t admit that you are struggling with something, it never gets resolved. It’s not like we’re telling God something He doesn’t know already. If someone is doubting in the secret place in their heart, God already knows it.
Verbalizing it isn’t for God’s benefit, it’s for ours. And being honest enough to admit something, CONFESSING it, IOW, is critical in my book to addressing it and putting it behind you.
I don’t believe that God wants us to doubt, any more than He wanted Thomas to doubt. So Jesus did what He needed to to alleviate Thomas’s doubt.
God knows we’re weak and don’t always see clearly and understand well.
On another note, I’ve noticed that people who have doubts are generally people who are struggling with sin that they don’t want to let go. But that’s just something I’ve noticed.
Except Wikipedia, which claims only that Thomas was accidentally shot with a hunter's arrow. According to Marco Polo, 700 years later.
Good Morning!
Once again, Steve addresses an issue that exists in nearly every Christian’s life, but nobody wants to admit. To even bring up the subject of doubt is offensive to many.
Did Jesus strike Thomas dead for his sin of unbelief? In fact, Jesus appeared to Thomas and invited him to actually insert his fingers into the holes left by the nails.
We are humans, sinners saved by grace, and fallible till the day we are taken home. We are always repenting of something, because if we say we have no sin, we are liars.
People sometimes have a hard time discerning between guilt feelings and the conviction of the Holy Spirit. This little guideline has always been a help to me:
1. If, when caught in a sin, one feels shame and sadness, and the need to seek out the forgiveness of God, repentance, a desire to “turn away” from the sin, a desire to confess, make restitution, and a desire to improve by God’s Grace, that would probably be the conviction of the Holy Spirit.
2. If you feel guilty for a sin (including doubt) and you hate yourself for it, see no way out, and think you can’t even approach God for forgiveness, it is probably NOT from the Holy Spirit, but from the “other one”.
That is why the bad guy is referred to as “The Accuser of the Brethren”. He skulks about like a roaring lion seeking who he may devour. If we are afraid to approach the Throne of Grace with our doubts, we are easy prey.
Steve’s style and demeanor are sometimes off-putting to traditional and sincere Christians. He is considered a “radical” by some. But he is a very smart man, teaches at a very conservative Christian seminary, and has been extremely helpful to my little ministry to some very “marginal and difficult” people. His heart is full of love for the lost and his outreach goes places traditional ministries sometimes ignore.
I fully understand how some of us here on FR might not be too receptive to Steve’s message, because he strips away all the accumulated traditions of hundreds of years of traditions and practice that define American Evangelicalism, and sometimes smashes the icons that we hold dear. It is a hard message but it really resonates with “hard people.”
Having struggled with doubt myself, I appreciate his addressing it.
Sometimes it’s the elephant in the room.
Yes.
:-)
I know they have a big shrine of St. Francis Xavier in Goa, India.
Doubt is sin. That is what the Bible teaches. Faith is the means by which we are saved, we grow, we get answers to our prayers....it is part of our armor (the shield of faith), it is the means of regeneration and sanctification; without it is impossible to please God....on and on.
Doubt was Thomas’s sin just as denying Christ was Peter’s sin. We are not exhorted to deny Christ as some process to not deny Him. Thomas’s doubt was not an example of everyone’s doubt. He was the one who doubted. Yes Jesus appeared to him so that he would stop doubting. But Jesus also said blessed are those who believe without seeing. He did not say good for Thomas that he doubted so that he could seek out his proof.
Christians sometimes doubt just like Christians sometimes commit other sins. But it is a sin. You do not cease from sin by dwelling on the sin. Just as “whatever is true, whatever is pure, whatever is right......let your mind dwell on these things.” You meditate on God, His Word, His Truth...you dwell on faith, not doubt. That is the way to not doubt.
As for verbalizing your doubt....all you will do is spread your doubt. Only in the sense that you confess your sins is it at all appropriate to verbalize it. It is to be repented of, not discussed so that you can seek the proof you need to satisfy your doubts. That only leads to more doubts. It sets a bad habit of doubt. Faith is believing what you do not see. We cannot touch the wounds of a resurrected Jesus and yet we believe He rose from the dead. THAT is FAITH. Thomas’s doubt is not an example to follow any more than Peter’s denials.
In other words, Socrates dodged the question and punished the student who asked it.
I clicked on your source and looked at the recommended books. Just as I suspected, it is mostly Emergent Church authors. Not good. They love doubt.
There are several good points in this article. One I think is important is that it’s difficult to address doubts or questions unless you express them clearly. What, specifically, do you think is untrue, or do you not understand? Without specificity on the questions, it’s not reasonable to expect answers.
The Spurgeon Archive. The following excerpt is from "The Three Witnesses," a sermon originally preached at the Metropolitan Tabernacle on Sunday morning, 9 August 1874.
I feel sick to death of the common talk about the healthiness of doubting and the beauty of "modern thought." This talk is only the self-praise of a set of concealed infidels treacherously lurking in God’s church.
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