As human beings, we experience doubt in several areas of life, including matters of faith.
Those who experience faith-based doubt are in good company: Abraham and Sarah, Moses and John the Baptist all experienced some serious doubt in their lifetimes. If they experienced doubt, I think we can, too.
Since faith-based doubt is normal, why don’t we talk about it more? Unfortunately, fellow believers have been known to chastise those who admit to doubting their faith in some way, so by and large we tend to conceal it. Exactly the wrong thing to do.
Let me tell you a story of two young people who were raised by fathers who were “larger than life” in the eyes of many Christian believers. Sean McDowell is the son of Josh McDowell, who is not as well known by the younger church community today as he was a generation ago, but trust me, in the seventies and for the next three decades or so he was one of the preeminent experts concerning “reasons to believe.”
When Sean was a teenager, he experienced a period in which he had lots of doubts about his faith. Talk about a stressful situation: He did not want to disappoint his father, but he did not want to discount his feelings, either. Josh approached his son’s doubt in a very graceful and wise manner, however: He encouraged Sean to investigate Christianity’s truthfulness from every angle, including the skeptical viewpoint. Josh did that because he knew that his son would see that Christianity “passed the test” and would show itself to be truthful. Today, Sean is a well-respected professor at Talbot School of Theology and is a prolific author as well.
On the flip side, the daughter of another highly accomplished Christian speaker went through a period of doubt in her youth, but instead of showing grace and love her father became greatly upset, and a great rift grew between them. To this day, his daughter has remained a very vocal atheist and skeptic of all things Christianity.
So, how do we deal with doubt?
Perhaps most important of all, do not fear it. A religion professor from my undergraduate days once told the class that, when it comes to investigating difficult faith issues, there are two types of people in this world: “Mystery solvers” and “mystery accepters.” Try not to get too upset if you cannot figure out some great conundrum or “mystery of faith.” God inspired Moses to write that, “The secret things belong to the LORD our God, but the things revealed belong to us and to our children forever” (Deuteronomy 29:29).
There are some things that we will never understand, at least on this side of eternity, but God has given us everything we need to know in this life. Additionally, pray for God’s guidance and study the scriptures for insight.
Let me share one final story. In 1987 I was a radiation therapy student in Rockford, Ill. I was an unchurched skeptic, and I struggled with “the problem of pain,” as C.S. Lewis called it. Unfortunately, I was working with people who were experiencing pain in every way – physical, emotional, and (perhaps most stressful of all) existential. And some of those people were young children.
After one particularly tough day, in which I saw a 10-year-old patient failing in his fight against brain cancer, I returned to my dorm room and proceeded to scream at God. “God, what is your deal?” (Pretty arrogant, right?) But somewhere in that process of wrestling with the seeming unfairness of life, God moved within my spirit, and I came to realize that there is a lot I do not know.
But God does. I had to learn to accept that, and to make a long story short, that was an integral step in my journey to faith.
Now let us fast forward to 2022. I was working part-time as a hospice chaplain, in addition to serving First Baptist Church as pastor. While visiting a lady in a nursing home for the hospice I served, I found myself once again wrestling with the problem of pain. This lady was about my age, yet she suffered from an especially aggressive form of dementia that left her bedridden and unable to communicate. I found myself once again struggling with the same questions that flooded my mind in 1987. This time, however, I had the benefit of being a believer, but it was still tough to witness. (Even pastors wrestle with this stuff.)
I leaned heavily into the words penned by the great King Solomon: “Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding” (Proverbs 3:5). There are simply some things that go beyond human understanding; it’s okay to be a “mystery accepter.” We are finite creatures who, compared to the Infinite One who created all, know “next to nothing.” Lean upon the One who knows everything.
Randy Hroziencik, Pastor
First Baptist Church, Kewanee
The opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of The Kewanee Voice.
***This column is sponsored by the Kewanee Ministerial Association
