Doubt: Splinter in the mind Flashcards
What is behind our doubts? What feeds it?
Behind the curtain of our doubts reside unanswered questions, such as “How could a loving God allow so much evil and suffering in the world?” Like a river fed by tributaries, this giant mystery is fed by other apparent
mysteries that leave us puzzled about our faith:
What does a lack of doubt indicate?
Shallow Christianity
- not thinking deep enough about issues of faith
- not reading wide enough outside of the box of fundamentalism
The inability to give reasons for your faith, in a world that is filled with skeptics, will result in us becoming irrelevant, and ineffective in reaching people
Doubters in the Bible
Sarah: doubted God’s promise of her bearing a child in her 90s
John the baptist: Doubted whether Jesus was the messiah
Habakkuk: Doubted God’s justice
Zechariah: doubted God’s promise that his wife would conceive
Thomas demanded evidence that the Risen Christ was indeed Jesus
Some of Christ’s disciples doubted him even after he appeared to them.
Jesus himself: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”
Are saints people who never doubt?
“the great saints are… not people who were always free of doubt, but rather people who were able to deal with their doubts and act decisively in spite of them”
That’s what these characters learned. To
proceed faith-ward even in the face of their doubts.
The emotional effects of doubt
Doubt often leaves its victims in a state of desperation. There is an inner aguish associated with doubt. like a lingering headache, it pounds with every beat of our heart, enslaving us with inner turmoil. Doubt can leave us
emotionally wasted. Lonely, Confused, Depressed, Feeling hopeless, Wanting to give up. It can even lead once sold-out believers to contemplate suicide as they abandon all hope and embrace nihilism.
Doubt’s lingering effects drain and deplete our intimacy with Jesus, making us feel fake around more
confident believers. At times we even feel hypocritical as we doubt in the dark, away from possible ridicule or condemnation. Doubt can suffocate us.
How do doubts paralyse us?
Sometimes the doubts are statements that electrocute my mind
and belief, such as “You’re wasting your time.” Or “You’re
believing a fantasy” and “It’s only a part of your brain that
makes you believe.”
Do Pastors or Apologists sometimes doubt?
Believe it or not, these people may struggle more than non-pastors and non-apologists because their full-time job is to wrestle with the most difficult questions posed against Christianity.
Andrew Hoffecker, professor of church history at Gordon-Conwell, put it like this, “Apologists are no different from others who live under effects from the Fall. Athletes choke, writers suffer from blocks, and apologists doubt.”
What is the price that apologists pay?
You cannot give a rational answer for
Christianity without facing the hardest questions raised against it.
To ignore these questions is to remain naïve and useless in any attempt to help fellow doubters.
Struggling with these questions, often results in doubt within the appologists themselves.
Is doubt exclusively a Christian problem?
doubt touches
every faith and belief system. Doubt is not merely a Christian problem, it’s a human problem. It affects us all. The question is, which faith can support itself with substantive evidence?
Which faith earns the right to have people
place their trust in it?
Why will we never have all the answers?
Because of our finitude, because we are not God.
