If doubts are normal, don't you think that in itself is a problem to the Christian faith?
Over the past few weeks, after making this struggle public, I have heard a lot of comments such as "What your going through is perfectly normal," or "You know all Christians go through this." I've even been reading a few books on the Christian faith journey that speak of this as "the Wall" or "the Dark Night of the Soul." Others have admitted to me similar questions that they have wrestled with or are currently wrestling with.
I appreciate the comments from those who want me to see hope. But here is my reflection this morning: Doesn't it sound odd to you that we believers must fight doubt in our own mind in order to accept truth?
Some philosophers and theologians even say that we must have doubt and that faith is belief in the face of reason. Here is a quote from Soren Kierkegaard:
"The need for 'reasons' is already a kind of doubt – doubt lives off reasons. We fail to notice that the more reasons one advances, the more one nourishes doubt and the stronger doubt becomes. Offering doubt reasons in order to kill it is just like offering a hungry monster food it likes best of all in order to eliminate it. No, we must not offer reasons to doubt – at least not if our intention is to kill it. We must do as Luther did, order doubt to shut its mouth, and to that end we must keep quiet."*
REALLY?!?! Would we not state that if someone who believed some non-Christian viewpoint (such as evolution, Islam, Mormonism, etc) said this that they were only deluding themselves? I realize doubt does not prove or disprove reality in and of itself, but the acceptance that we all doubt and must "overcome" those doubts in this sense seems extremely suspect in any view of the truth to me.
* From Provocations, a free online e-book compilation of the Spiritual Writings of Kierkegaard found HERE. p. 77
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Faith, according to the author of Hebrews is defined as follows: belief in what s hoped for, and certainty in things unseen.
That said, doubt would be the leading challenge to faith. Faith says believe, even with inconclusive reasons. Doubt says, there's no reason to believe.
Are you simply saying that if faith and doubt are in opposition, how could it possibly be said that doubt is a necessary step in the path toward faith?
Hi hun, hey I asked Grandma Stocks, and Aunt Jackie to pray for you and they asked if something was wrong. I hope you dont mind that I shared a bit with them.
Grandma wanted me to tell you that she knows there is a God because of all he has helped her thru during the past years. She stated that even if there wasnt one that she would like to take her chances in believing. What hurt would it do, she would either be with God in the end (if there is one) or she would have lead a good life and not have hurt anyone with her beliefs (if there was not). She also sends her love to you, and knows that you will be on top of the world no matter what you end up believing, because she knows God is with you in this journey as he has been with all of your journeys.
Aunt Jackie stated that God must have great things in store for you. That God would never let you fall too far away. God loves you so much that is why he brought you to him to begin with, and there is no way he will let you faulter too far now, with all that you have done and can do in the future.
As your mom I agree with both of them. You have accomplished so much in your life. I just know that you are in for great things in the future.
And please know that I will be with you and there for you, no matter what your future brings.
Nate, Kierkegaard (and others) would answer that doubt is not the enemy of faith but the necessary counterpart to faith. In other words, if there were no doubt, there could be no faith. Similar arguments are out there for good and evil; love and hate; etc. Faith to him/them is a choice, not a rationale...in fact they'd go as far to say that rationality is in contradiction to belief.
Paul Tilich, theologian and philosopher has said that "Doubt is not the opposite of Faith, it is one element of Faith." Others say that "fear is the opposite of faith, not doubt."
I am saying that nearly all Christians can relate to times of doubting. Yet we press on and "convince" ourselves of the truth whether it is through prayer (which some would argue simply is an internal way to convince yourself) or some experience where we see God act (which some would argue is simply a situation or coincidence that we see what we want to see).
I think many of us walk through life - or some stages of life - like the man quoted in Mark 9: "Lord, I do believe. Help me with my unbelief" - as if truth is as much something we choose as it is something that is real.
My point is that if the Christian God is true, why would we all go through doubt like this as a normal thing?
mike, if the christian god is true, then you must also accept the role of satan in the world. and while doubt doesn't have to be the enemy of faith, it can certainly be used as an instrument to corrupt a person's faith.
it can also be an instrument to strengthen a person's faith.
it all depends upon whose hand we are allowing to control the instrument.
also -- i double-check the math in my checkbook. i triple-check it, too. i trust in my skills of addition & subtraction. i also trust in my calculator. but making sure i have all those numbers right is pretty darn important, so i just check again. i can say i trust. but clearly i doubt. does that mean i don't know how to do math or that i believe the calculator could be wrong? no. i just want to be sure. i think it's similar (although all analogies are weak & this one is the weakest of all) to my belief in god. it's a stinking important decision. i want to make sure. just one more time. let me go over the evidence...
I've been reading this blog and we talk pretty regularly, though I haven't written anything.
It pains me to say it, but throw reason out the window. We can't reason what we can't possibly know, and the foundation of life is something we just cannot know. "But, I've had strong personal experiences and encounters with God that would preclude me from believing that he doesn't exist." Good for you, I guess God hasn't found me or many millions of others special enough to enlighten in said fashion. Frankly the evidence for and against a Christian god, outside of personal experience and bias, is a push. Given the prior commentary on faith and doubt this could, quite possibly, be the way it was set up. Though, it doesn't much matter. Faith in the Christian god is not an exercise in logic and reason. It is a decision. It is one of those things where you need to get on the boat or get off the boat.
This is an extremely tough decision for you to make given your own personal experiences, the stakes, and the kind of man that you are; a straight shooter that doesn't like small talk or playing games. So the question really becomes: If there is a god and it is the Christian God, how much game playing are you willing to take? What is your ceiling on b.s., seeming injustice, and all around lack of logic and reason? And, can you stretch your tolerance? There most likely have been large quantities and there will be large quantities of instances, whether it was something that happened to you or that didn't happen to you, something you read in the Bible or didn't read in the Bible, etc., that will leave you scratching your head and thinking, "double u tee eff God?" Can you get past that?
I'm going to renege, for a moment, on my prior assertion that you need to throw reason out the window. If life is indeed a game, you can reason like it's a game. Step back from theology and philosophy, and think strategy. There is not a more solid, bullet proof play than your Grandmother's. Whether there is or isn't a god, whether or not it is truly good, loving, or just, there is no safer play than to believe in the almighty Lord God, god of Abraham, Isaac, and Billy Graham, and accept that the precious Jesus Christ is your savior. If life is indeed a game go all-in, because Christianity is pocket Aces. Unless, of course, you're not predestined for heaven, in which case you're SOL.
Take the blue pill, lift your feet up, let the inner tube take you down the river, and for the love of someone important or historically significant, enjoy the ride.
well said, kevin. reason and logic and intelligence should most certainly not be thrown out the window. however there comes a moment when you just have to suck it up and decide -- soup or salad? christianity or not? reason only takes you so far.
it's like deciding on a spouse. you can plan and think and go around and around in your mind, but there comes a time when you've just got to take the plunge & ask the other person to marry you. you're never going to have everything figured out. and waiting until you do ultimately means you end up old and alone and without a spouse. so in not deciding -- you decided.
Mike,
The reality for me, is that doubt is a condition, not a choice. I do not believe that one can simply "decide to believe".
However, there is quite a difference between truthful questioning and being intellectually obstinate. There have been times that I have gotten tangled in intellectual arguments because I was avoiding another problem. Instead of tuning in to the real source of my angst, I retreated into intellectual arguments.
However, if you are not throwing up objections to some hidden fear, anger, frustration, etc. then perhaps you are moving to something more authentic.
A past comment suggested that if the Christian God is true, then Satan must be as well. For me, (and only me as I absolutely do not want to that person's beliefs) I do not believe this is true. I do not think that doubt is a trick that will lead us astray, not if it is truly my present condition and not some issue of avoidance.
I do believe with my whole heart that if one continues to seek that one will find truth. In my case, the difficulty is being open to a truth that I may find strange, and somewhat frightening.
However, I believe with my whole heart.
Perhaps the key is to get out of our heads and back into the practice of living in the present. This may mean not abandoning doubts, but returning to a religious practice that has nurtured in the past. For me, it means attempting to live in the present, serve others, and accept the love of my friends and family.
without sounding theologically pedantic, the other brian's post, tho full of thought and pathos, is rather misguided. within a christian worldview, which IS inherently dualistic of sorts, you must believe in the existence of an antithetical agent (an anti-god or satan)as well as the reality of sin to justify the crucifixion of the son of god. sin, in hebrew, can be best defined as "missing the mark or an intended aim." the only reason one has doubt is because that perfect, edenic relationship with god in the garden was severed due to disobedience. it shall be restored, eventually, according to the bible,in heaven after the resurrection.also, it should be duly noted that the words god and good are indelibly linked as they are linguistically derived from the same origins. "good" however, used as an adjective, is (or would be)meaningless without an opposite extreme (evil or an anti-good)by which to compare. just as a fisherman's boat is deemed small relative to the size of more imposing seafaring vessels such as oceanliners, so too is good only infused with meaning in language alongside a polar opposite.
tho soren kierkegaard was an exceedingly profound thinker, i do not believe you can give credence to the notion that faith is a "leap" sans intelligent or deductive reasoning. a look into the etymology of certain words, I think, is the most cogent way to substantiate the aforementioned claim. belief and faith are synonymous. faith, philologically, is derived from the latin verb fidere, “ to trust.” and trust can be defined as: a reliance on the integrity or surety of a person or thing (i.e. confidence). rhetorically, I should then ask, “how can one believe in anything one does not know to some extent, so as to put his or her confidence in it?” furthermore, “doubt”, as he put it, functioned coincidentally with faith and was, in esse, an evidence of it. yet, doubt plagues the credulous and incredulous alike, and therefore cannot be a benchmark of the Christian life exclusively. belief should and must, however, function alongside doubt since we are finite creatures with limited cognitive faculties, and cannot know anything exhaustively. and, since most of us are Christians, I should emphasize that such kierkegaardian conclusions are diametrically opposed by sundry biblical passages, and refuted by orthodox scholarship.
however, if faith and reason can compliment each other as magisteria-two matters of weighty importance-to use gouldian terminology, what does such an odyssey look like from the auspices of understanding to espousing a particular worldview. and, furthermore, without the assistance of religion or preconceived ideological foundations, can we truly know anything so as to believe in something (if, indeed, epistemologically we can trust anything we think we may know).
since im sure most contend, unlike david hume, that we can understand certain things, be they abstract or sensorial, i feel that it would behoove me to speak freely about a lineal procession of reasoning that could lead one thru the existential quagmire of competing philosophies to an ultimate belief in jesus christ.
the kosmos can either be of old, eternal, with no beginning or end, or it had a point of origin. david hillbert avers that the universe cannot be eternal because, within that paradigm, an infinite number of moments would precede the present moment, and, therefore, today could never have come. infinite regress and the present tense are mutually exclusive ideas. hence, the universe had an incipience. yet, the law of conservation of matter states that matter cannot be created or destroyed. even if the big bang theory is introduced, the preexistence of a quantum singularity spawning such a universe cannot be rationally or logically explained viz a viz scientific law. a transcendent first cause (supernal artisan- as kierkegaard puts it)not held fast by governing dynamics is, consequently, the only basis from which a an argument for the existence of the universe can be grounded-this is the fundamental nature of the kalam cosmological argument.
the next time I blog, I will further treat of these considerations.
Since I've been slacking a bit, I'm going to post a few seperate replies here now. Sorry for the quick posting.
Meg: Your points on doubt being one instrument that can go either way is interesting. The analogy, however, is more as if I doubt that my money or the bank exist at all and needing to contemplate that. The balancing is more to me like trying to make sure I am interpreting what I know to be true correctly (i.e. theology). Rarely do I doubt there is a bank and that my money is accounted for there.
Kevin, you crack me up with your snide comments. I know where your coming from.
Let me try to quickly address the rationality issue that many have commented on. Rationality in itself is meant to point to truth. Jesus himself told us to know the truth (John 8:31-32), seek to use our minds (Matt 22:37; Rom 12:2), and claimed that he was truth (John 14:6). I think it is put most sucinctly by Paul in 1 Timothy 2 when he states "[God] wants all men to be saved and to come to a knowledge of the truth"
I think that if God is true, we cannot say that rationality does not play a part in knowing that truth. Further, if rationality (after taking into account our biases and perspectives) cannot lead to a confidence of the truth of God, I would argue that God may not exist. Know, however, that when I use "rationality," I mean all forms of gathering and assimilating information - not just a standard scientific observational method. I cannot prove my tiredness by that method, nor the fact of the holocaust as I can observe neither. However, both can be verified through evidence and rationality outside of someone's personal statement that they feel it to be true (for example that I am falling asleep at my computer or that there are remnants of camps and multiple sources of information about the holocaust).
If Christianity or God are simply a choice, there are much better philosophies to choose - such as mormanism where when I die I get to be a God and have my own world to control with a heram of wives...or hedonism where I get to live life however the heck I can get the most joy from it.
No, if God cannot be known through the reason he supposingly gave us, then I would say God is playing a sick game of hide and seek with our souls and that is not a God I'm interested in "choosing" to believe.
Brian M., man, you are using some big words. I love the philosopher in you.
I think you have made valid points about logic and knowing God.
To your first post, however, the only problem with defining the good of God with the exsistance of evil in Satan is that you would be saying the good is contingent on there being evil. If this is true, and we agree that Satan is a created rather than eternal being like God, then we must say that the good of God did not exist prior to the fall of Satan. However, that goes contrary to the unchanging nature of God in having been omnibenevolent in eternity. Is evil somehow also eternal then?
Just a philosophical conundrum to throw out there that has very little relevance in this post.
mike, just because you have never doubted the credibility of a bank or whether your money is there at all it is not fair to assume that no one has. i think that we have all heard stories about crazy old folks who keep their money in the mattress because they just don't trust banks. also, during the great depression (and apparently, this still happens) there were bank runs where people went to the banks and demanded their money because they didn't trust them any more. and sure, enough, their money wasn't there. just because you and i understand how banks operate doesn't mean that everyone does or that everyone believes them to be trustworthy institutions.
that's all the further i'm going to indulge this little analogy. because, as i've stated before, all analogies are weak & break down. they are just mechanisms to make a point.
I'm not sure how much you want me commenting here, but I thought I would give you some of my thoughts.
To add to the book-length e-mail I gave you before you left for the month (which I won't bore folks here with), there is a difference between giving your head to God and giving your heart to God.
Some folks come to God through a severe brokenness in their life and start by giving their heart to God and the rest follows. I would say that these folks have it easier than the folks who come to God the other way...
Some folks come to God through reason, finally deciding the same thing I mentioned before you left and that your Grandma also mentioned: If I follow Jesus and He does exist, I get to hear a "Well done, good and faithful servant". If I die and it turns out He doesn't exist, I lived a good life and put others before myself and hopefully showed others to do the same along the way. Getting the heart to follow may be more difficult in this case. You have to decide, at some level, to turn the head off and follow the advice in Philippians 4:8 "Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable - if anything is excellent or praiseworthy - think about such things."
At some point the heart has to turn off the head, or at least part of it. It has to be decided that the doubts are not noble, right, pure, lovely, etc. and that they aren't going to be dwelt on.
You still have my number if you want to chat.
T.J.
From Richard Dawkins "The God Delusion":
"The great French mathematician Blaise Pascal reckoned that, however long the odds against God's existence might be, there is an even larger asymmetry in the penalty for guessing wrong. You'd better believe in God, because if you are right you stand to gain eternal bliss and if you are wrong it won't make a difference anyway. On the other hand, if you don't believe in God and you turn out wrong you get eternal damnation...there is something distinctly odd about the argument, however. Believing is not something you can decide to do as a matter of policy. At least, it is not something I can decide to do as an act of will. I can decide to go to church and I can decide to recite the Nicene Creed, and I can decide to swear on a stack of bibles that I believe every word inside them. But none of that can make me actually believe it if I don't...but why, in any case, do we so readily accept the idea that the one thing you must do if you want to please God is believe in him? What's so special about believing? Isn't it just as likely that God would reward kindness, or generosity, or humility? Or sincerity? What if God is a scientist who regards honest seeking after truth as the supreme virtue? Indeed, wouldn't the designer of the universe have to be a scientist?"
Just checked back and read the comment from Brian M. responding to my post.
I appreciate his point, however I was speaking about my faith based on my experience rather than from a purely theological perspective. Therefore, if we were going to be making the argument based purely upon a philosophical argument, then I concede the point. My own personal doubt over the existence of a literal Satan as described in scripture (which is much more profound than my doubt about God)is more gut feeling than theological argument.
However, if I understand Mike's purpose for originally opening this conversation, then I think such philosophical arguments distract us from getting to the heart of the matter.
Like the post immediately preceding this one, belief is a state of being rather than a choice. As such, it cannot be found through rational argument.
In fact, in my own experience, my time spent trying to resolve my own rather profound doubts, have been inhibited by intellectual arguments, which serve to separate me over the pain of my lacking faith and which provide an illusion of control over my state of doubt.
Mike, you may find William James' Varieties of Religious Experience an interesting read as it details the numerous ways in which people have encountered your dilemma.
Hey, Mike...good stuff! I'm enjoying your journey, and reading the comments.
It occurs to me that faith isn't 'belief in the absence of evidence' but 'belief in the absence of full knowledge'. Faith in God isn't much different from faith in other areas of our lives, but we sometimes act like it's different. We have some information, and we can act on it.
The less knowledge we have, the more faith is required. The more knowledge we have, the less faith is required.
The Bible teaches us that without faith it's impossible to please God. That doesn't mean that we should remain as ignorant as possible...you've pointed out that we're taught to learn and study and ponder. It means that we're never going to have the absolute certainty required to eliminate the need for faith.
In other words: in this life, we're never really going to know for sure about God.
Like Descartes, I suggest that a seeker of truth might reduce his beliefs to what CAN be known and then make reasonable judgments, based on what is known, about what CANNOT be known.
Tony Scialdone
www.GodWords.org
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