Over the years, I’ve had a number of Christians tell me that
they’ve struggled with doubt, often for long periods of time. This doubt could
have come for any number of reasons; a prayer of theirs seemingly went
unanswered; they felt God had abandoned them during a time of trial; or perhaps
someone leveled an intellectual objection at them that they could not answer
and it caused them to question their faith. But while the circumstances for the
doubt may vary, the end result is usually the same: they feel as though they
are a weaker Christian for having doubts. Thus, our initial cause for doubt
usually creates a vicious cycle of doubt in which we pile doubt on top of doubt
to the point where we wonder if we have any faith left at all. But while we
often let our doubts paralyze us, what does God
think of our doubts?
To get an answer to this question, the first place we should
look is in the Gospel of Mark. In the ninth chapter, we meet a man whose son
was possessed by a demon that had been tormenting him all his life. The boy’s
condition was awful; “Whenever it seizes him, it throws him to the ground. He
foams at the mouth, gnashes his teeth and becomes rigid.” Like any loving
father, he almost certainly consulted numerous doctors and physicians; but to
no avail. No one could help the boy. Then, probably as a last resort he hears
of the miracle worker Jesus and His disciples and thinks maybe they can succeed
where everyone else has failed; after all, what did he have to lose at that
point?
So he brings the boy to the disciples; and this too is met
with catastrophic failure. They were unable to help the boy’s condition.
Imagine how the father must have felt when one after the other, the disciples
tried to heal him and could not. He probably shook his head in disgust thinking
these supposed miracle workers were no miracle workers at all. He probably
thought they were just a bunch of frauds and that the claims he’d been hearing
were bogus. So then he goes to Jesus and says “Teacher, I brought you my son;
he has a spirit that makes him unable to speak; 18 and
whenever it seizes him, it dashes him down; and he foams and grinds his teeth
and becomes rigid; and I asked your disciples to cast it out, but they could
not do so.”
The response of Jesus is shocking and direct. He says “You
faithless generation, how much longer must I be among you? How much longer must
I put up with you? Bring him to me.” Now notice how He doesn’t condemn the
father for his faithlessness and doubt; instead He speaks of the whole
generation, and indeed, what He said could also apply to our generation.
Perhaps the root of our unbelief begins with our own
predispositions. All too often we claim to believe in God, we claim to have
faith, and yet we default to the position of philosophical naturalism. We
believe in a God who is there, but yet we would handcuff that God behind the
natural order of things. This passage of scripture shows that things were no
different in ancient times; the father doesn’t believe his son can be healed
because he probably doesn’t believe in miracles at all. Even when we claim to
believe in God and to have faith; it’s so hard not to think that we live in a closed system in which God cannot or
does not act and miracles are simply impossible.
But as Christians, we have to reframe that mentality. As an
avid gamer, I’d like to challenge you for a moment to think of our reality as a
Massively Multiplayer Online (MMO) game. MMO’s are known for attracting
thousands of players from around the world and putting them into a virtual
world that seemingly runs on its own. MMO’s have their own cities and
inhabitants, their own governments and economies, wildlife and monsters. They
are meant to be a totally immersive experience, and they usually are. I’ve
certainly been addicted to playing a couple of them!
And yet we know that these games run on servers, and that
the developers are frequently changing things in the game world. They put in
innumerable updates and patches to improve the experience.
Now we know that God created our world, we know that He
created the natural order; so if He is the developer, can He not act within His
own system? Can He not interject “updates” and “patches” into the system as He
sees fit? This is how we should look at the very Incarnation of Jesus Christ;
it was not merely a patch; it was an overhaul. It was an invasion. With the Incarnation, God changed the natural order. The Kingdom; this unseen (greater)
reality was made known in the person of Jesus Christ, and the power of that
Kingdom that He implemented continues on to this day. The same force that would
later heal this boy possessed by demons is still with us. So while we cannot
always know the will of God; we must never assume that God cannot or will not
act in decisive and powerful ways in our own lives today.
With that said, perhaps the root of our unbelief goes much
deeper than our predispositions. Perhaps our predispositions are actually the
‘symptoms’ of a greater ‘illness.’ I would argue that unbelief is part of our
fallen human nature and that because of our fall in the garden we are “children
in whom there is no faithfulness” (Deut 32:20). We have layered doubt upon
doubt from the very beginning when we tried to hide our faces from the Lord while He
searched for us in the cool of the afternoon. In short, we doubt because we
cannot help ourselves. By nature, we would sooner lean on anyone or anything
rather than the Lord. By nature we would forsake the Fountain and grasp for
“cisterns which have no water.”
So rather than hate on yourself because you have doubts, you
should instead realize that it is only natural to have doubts and that our
doubts will never fully go away until the Kingdom is finally realized in full.
Having doubt does not make you a weaker Christian; it just means that you are
human. And you would do well to remember that you are in pretty good company!
For example, in Hebrews 11 it talks about the Heroes of
Faith. Every one of those heroes experienced periods of great doubt. Abraham
didn’t trust God that he would have children, so he lay with his servant. Moses
thought he was too old and not a good enough speaker to liberate the people of
Israel. David slew Goliath and yet he was terrified that Saul would kill him.
Elijah brought low a whole horde of false prophets and yet he hid from Jezebel
in a cave. Doubt is simply a part of who we are, and we must learn to accept
that fact. While doubt can be a painful process, it is an important part of our
spiritual maturation.
As one writer put it, “many Christians fall into the trap of
assuming that faith and doubt are mutually exclusive. They imagine that a real
believer would never question the grounds for his faith and if one experiences
doubt, his faith isn’t true. When confronted with arguments against
Christianity they are thrown into a sea of doubt, believing that every
plausible objection must be answered before they can rest in their faith.” But
the story of the desperate father in Mark chapter 9 shows us this is not the
case.
The father says to Jesus: “if you are able to do anything, have pity on us and help us.” He
says if; if you can do something. This
shows us that even a weak prayer, a
prayer full of doubt is better than
no prayer at all. So rather than falling into the abject defeatism of our
doubts, we should be bringing them to God in prayer. He can hear us whether we
are full of faith or full of doubt.
Jesus tells this poor father that anything is possible if he
would just have the faith, and that is when he cries out with those famous words:
“I believe; help my unbelief!” In this powerful statement we see that
he has the foundation of belief; he has a kind of faith. His faith is like the
poster that hung on Special Agent Fox Mulder’s wall from the X-Files; his faith
said “I Want to Believe.” He just needed a little help to get there, and so do
we. Don’t stop praying because of your doubts; pray through them, pray about them. Say as this father said:
“help me in my unbelief.”
It is in times of doubt that we need to draw near to the
Holy Spirit. John 14:26 says “But the Comforter, even the Holy Spirit, whom the
Father will send in my name, he shall teach you all things, and bring to your
remembrance all that I said unto you.” The Holy Spirit is our comforter; it is in Him that we can find
rest from our troubles. And moreover; He is our teacher. He testifies to our hearts the Truth of the Gospel, a truth that the world cannot understand, a
truth that the world designates as “foolishness” (1 Cor 1:27-28). It is the
Holy Spirit who will help us to overcome the obstacles of belief.
You see, I think there are times when we misunderstand what the
Holy Spirit is or does; we may think of Him as a force or as a presence, but
He is a Person. We can pray to Him,
speak to Him directly and be assured that He will help us in our doubts, for “the
Spirit helps us in our weakness. For we do not know what to pray for as we
ought, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for
words. And he who searches hearts knows what is the mind of the Spirit, because
the Spirit intercedes for the saints according to the will of God” (Romans
8:26-27).
And in your time of doubt, you would do well to know that
the Holy Spirit is probably already present
within you. Have you ever thought “God exists”, “I am reconciled to God” or
“Jesus Christ loves me”? If you have believed
such things, now or in the past, it is the Holy Spirit that has revealed it to
you; He is the Source of all Truth He has already planted the seed of wisdom
within you, or else you would have never believed Christianity to be true in
the first place. I have argued on these blogs that the Christian God exists and
that there is evidence for that belief; but ultimately, as others have pointed
out; our faith is not dependent on
such argumentation and evidence. Our faith is dependent upon the inner witness
of the Holy Spirit.
So when you go through times of doubt as you naturally will,
it is to the Holy Spirit that you should pray, so that He can ease your mind, answer
your doubts and convict you of His eternal love for you. Holy Spirit we
believe, help us in our unbelief.
PRAYER TO THE HOLY
SPIRIT
Come, Holy Spirit,
fill my heart with Your holy gifts.
Let my weakness be penetrated with Your strength this very
day
that I may fulfill all the duties of my state
conscientiously, that I may do what is right and just.
Let my charity be such as to offend no one, and hurt no
one's
feelings; so generous as to pardon sincerely any wrong done
to me.
Assist me, O Holy Spirit,
in all my trials of life, enlighten me in my ignorance,
advise me in my doubts, strengthen me in my weakness, help me in all my needs,
protect me in temptations and console me in afflictions.
Graciously hear me, O Holy Spirit, and pour Your light into
my
heart, my soul, and my mind.
Assist me to live a holy life and to grow in goodness and
grace.
Amen.
