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| Critical
Reasoning with Jim Leffel |
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Week Five: Doubt
The dilemma of doubt
What is doubt? "In two minds"
Range of meanings
Contrast with unbelief
Doubt is not the same as unbelief
Unbelief is usually a close-minded certainty, or a refusal to obey or respond to God.
Unbelief is the opposite of faith.
Relationship to faith
Doubt is not the opposite of faith.
Doubt is a crisis of faith. Fear is to courage what doubt is to faith. The opposite of courage is not fear, but cowardice
Relationship to knowledge
All knowledge involves faith
Authentic faith involves knowledge
There will always be some room for doubt in what we know
Doubt relates to our humanness and our fallenness
| Unbiblical reasons for doubt | Biblical reasons for doubt |
Demand for certaintyRefusal to believe unless all possibility of error is removed
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Humans are finite and fallen
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| Uncritical doubt Accepting faulty foundations of knowledge as a basis for doubt
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Healthy barometer of active faith Need for intellectual satisfaction Should not (can’t?) suppress doubts Doubt taken seriously is faith taken seriously. We are in trouble when we don’t work doubts through to resolution Doubts reflect a spirit of reflection and inquiry necessary for spiritual growth and discovery Doubt reminds us of our commitment to truth |
Cynical doubt
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Window to the heart Doubt shows us that something is wrong with us A problem of trust |
Doubts of the heart
The heart of the matter:
Often the source of doubt is not intellectual, but moral and spiritual
Doubt comes in after the heart’s attitude to justify our disposition not to believe God
Pride can blind us from seeing the truth
1. Doubt from ingratitude
The fallen heart: Pride and autonomy expressed by ingratitude
Genesis 3:5
Romans 1:21
"Rebellion against God does not begin with the clutched fist of atheism, but in the heart of a man for whom ‘thank you’ is redundant
." Os Guinness"If he is not stupid, he is monstrously ungrateful! Phenomenally ungrateful. In fact, I believe that the best definition of man is the ungrateful biped." F. Dostoevsky
Human memory is not like a computer. Our hearts shape memory
How doubt from ingratitude works—progressive deterioration of faith
Forget or take for granted the blessings of God in our life
Lack of urgency in faith and mission develop
Slowly our heart is divided by competing influences of the world—contentment found in material acquisition, security, etc.
A chronic sense of discontent with life—can’t live in the present
Subtle, sometimes unconscious, doubt emerges—confidence in God’s goodness and provision begins to fade
God seems distant, uninvolved, uncaring
Theological orthodoxy, practical atheism
Resolving the doubt of ingratitude
Remembering and expressing thanks are big biblical themes (Deut. 5:15, 6:4-12; sacrificial system…cf. Ps. 106:7,13; Hos. 13:6)
Recognize ungratitude as a central sin problem of doubt
Praising God is as much for man as God
Write out your testimony and relate it to your children
Identify something to be thankful for and verbalize it to someone
Primary focus of prayer
Result: peace of God that surpasses comprehension (Phil. 4:7)
2. Doubt from lack of commitment
"Therefore everyone who hears these words of Mine, and acts upon them, may be compared to a wise man, who built his house upon the rock. The rain descended, the floods came, and the winds blew against the house. Yet the house did not fall, for it had been founded upon the rock. Everyone who hears these words of Mind, and does not act upon them, will be like a foolish man, who built his house upon the sand. The rain descended, the floods came, the winds blew, and it fell, and great was its fall." Matthew 7:24-27
"Prove yourselves doers of the word, ant not merely hearers who delude themselves. If anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man who looks at his natural face in a mirror; for once he has looked at himself and gone away, he has immediately forgotten what kind of person he was. But one who looks intently at the perfect law, the law of liberty, and abides by it, not having become a forgetful hearer but an effectual doer, this man shall be blessed in what he does." James 1:22-25
Failure to respond to God’s will produces a lack of conviction and eventually, doubt—we will tend to doubt God, rather than ourselves
Consider a marriage proposal
When convictions are not acted upon, faith becomes unreal and unrelated to life. Nebulous doubt creeps in—you can’t put your finger on it—it all just seems unreal, unbelievable.
Sense of fatalism about your spiritual life sets in—you find yourself "going through the motions"
Convictions: a unique challenge in our day
Biblical convictions will lead us to act against the trends of culture. A sense of intimidation that biblical convictions are out of step with culture leads to inaction, and the erosion of conviction itself.
"What we suffer from today is humility in the wrong place. Modesty has moved from the organ of ambition. Modesty has settled on the organ of conviction; where it was never meant to be. A man was meant to be doubtful about himself but undoubting about the truth. This has been exactly reversed." G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy
Culture holds a false conviction that we should doubt the truth rather than ourselves.
In a relativistic culture, no one should hold on too rigidly to their convictions, at least where it affects behavior toward others.
Resolving doubt of inaction
"And if it is disagreeable in your sight to serve the Lord, choose for yourselves today whom you will serve: whether the gods which your fathers served beyond the river, or the gods of the Amorites in whose land you are living; but as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord." Joshua 24:15,16
What is God calling on me to do?
What is it about this decision that I find intimidating?
In what way does the action I need to take embody a biblical conviction? Principle: Must consciously connect convictions with actions
In what aspects of my daily life must I lean against my natural tendencies and act on Christian convictions?
Promise of action
Experience God’s provision and power—bearing fruit
Recognize God’s leading
3. Doubt from having to wait and not seeing results
This is just the opposite problem of #2: the doubt of activism
"The Lord said, ‘My Spirit shall not strive with man forever, because he also is flesh; nevertheless his days shall be one hundred and twenty years’… But Noah found favor in the eyes of the Lord… Then God said to Noah, ‘… Make for yourself an ark of gopher wood…’" Genesis 6:3,8,14
The believers’ dilemma:
a. What we do with our lives matters (2 Corinthians 5:10…)
True faith produces a zeal for action, motivation to make a difference for the kingdom
Christians’ lives are tied to "redeeming the time"
b. If you’re into God, you’re into waiting (Hebrews 11:8-13, 39,40)
Results and timing are not up to us, but God
We have no assurance that we will ever see the results of our labors in this life
Doubt that comes from waiting is the worst sort of thing for the activist
"The corrosion of waiting eats first into the sense of total involvement with our work. We are forced to stand back and think about it rather than do it. Waiting eats next into the timetables we have set for ourselves, delaying them, setting them back, making us wonder if they are feasible. Soon it is eating into the worthwhileness of what we are doing. Before long the corrosion eats into our souls and we ourselves are called in question." Os Guinness, In Two Minds
Frustration, due to awareness of urgency—why no results?
Questioning the value of our vision
A sense that God is not interested in our contribution
A sinking feeling that my life will not count for God
Dealing with the doubt of impatience
The problem of individualism and calling vs. individual calling
"God’s method is men"—those who will rely on him
Is God attempting to make me qualified for his vision for my life?
Faithful, zealous obedience in the present will produce a growing sense of vision and direction for the future
Don’t sell God’s vision short—be ready
Doubts of the mind
The mind is a spiritual battlefield
Don’t be quick to attribute intellectual doubts to sin
Growing faith requires a satisfied mind
If there is no reason "why" when faith is present, there will be no reason "why not" when doubt arises
Apologetics is at least as important for discipleship as it is for evangelism
Serious intellectual doubts require a process of honest, in-depth investigation—doubt persists not with inquiry, but with the lack of it
Productive investigation into our doubts can not be done in a vacuum
Doubt from troubling, unresolved questions
Range of perennial intellectual doubts: suffering, trinity, incarnation, judgment…
A framework for resolving intellectual doubts
Define the problem as clearly as possible
Solution is only as clear as the problem
The dilemma of evil:
If God is all loving he would desire no suffering and if God is all powerful he would be able to protect us from evil
Terrible evils exist
Either God is not all loving or he is not all powerful
Why and to what extent is this a problem?
Goodness and omnipotence of God are central, deep Christian beliefs, making the biblical view of God implausible
How can I go on serving God without some measure of resolution?
Coming to terms with the doubt
What is the basis for my doubt?
Often philosophical presuppositions are left unexamined
E.g.: Scientism and skeptical doubt
What can I affirm without serious doubt?—narrowing the field of doubt by putting it into a broader perspective (don’t throw the baby out with the bath water)
Reality of my experience of God
Level of conviction that God exists, the authority of the Bible…
To what extent is my doubt answerable? What am I willing to live with—short of complete certainty
Meet the logical argument, but still wrestle with it on a personal level
The dilemma of evil:
God can not both be omnipotent and prevent free creatures from abusing their freedom
God is not indifferent to suffering, as the ministry of Jesus Christ illustrates
Logically unresolvable
Mystery: the question is by definition beyond the ability of humans to fully grasp, though not obviously self-contradictory
E.g.: Trinity, hypostatic union
Suspended judgment: My doubt can be answered only in part, and I’m willing to move ahead spiritually, waiting for more answers
E.g.: God’s judgment on those who haven’t heard the gospel
"I believe that anyone who is either born or ‘born again’ into the conservative-evangelical thought world, and who has a questioning mind, will find that he has to face challenges to the belief system within which his Christian faith was first made available to him, and that he will almost certainly be led by rational or moral considerations to modify or discard many of its elements." John Hick, God Has Many Names
Too many reasons for faith apart from this issue
This issue is a "biggie" and will take a long time to work through
What are the alternatives?
One way to live with ambiguity is to recognize the lack of plausible alternatives
The dilemma of evil:
There is no God: suffering is pointless, as is pleasure and life in general
Pantheistic view that God is both good and evil/beyond good and evil
God is impotent and cruel and life is a terrible joke
Personal process
Doubts like the problem of evil will continue to be personal issues—it takes time to recover from suffering
Approaching God
We can believe that God is trustworthy even though in this situation we may not understand
The absurdity of evil is that there is no "one to one correlation" between suffering and explanation
Faith is not repression: distinguish the "why" question from that "that" question
Guard yourself from doubts of the heart
"All that stuff about the cosmic sadist was not so much the expression of rational thought as of hatred. I was getting from it the only pleasure a man in anguish can get; the pleasure of hitting back." C.S. Lewis, A Grief Observed
