C.S. Lewis wrote, “Talk to me about the varied practices of faith and I will listen gladly. Talk to me about the challenges of faith and I will listen attentively. But don’t come talking to me about the certainties of faith or I shall suspect that you don’t understand.” Frederick Buechner said, “Whether your faith is that there is a God or that there is not a God, if you don’t have any doubts you are either kidding yourself or asleep. Doubts are the ants in the pants of faith. They keep it awake and moving.” Philip Yancey asks the right question when he wonders, “So why, then, does the church treat doubt as an enemy of faith? Why do so many of us feel as if we have to choose between being truthful traitors or loyal liars?”
In a book about writers and their faith, Katherine Paterson refers to the powerful image of God as wrestler. Just as Jacob persistently and painfully wrestled with God in Genesis, faithful men and women still care enough to struggle with God.
Paterson refers to a book by Robert McAfee Brown where the author points out that the Jews have always recognized that the Bible is as much a book about men and women questioning God as it is about their obeying God. “We Christians in some misguided definition of faith have seemed fearful of acknowledging this. Listen to some of the questions in Genesis alone: ‘Am I my brother’s keeper?’ ‘Shall I indeed bear a child, now that I am old?’ ‘Shall not the Judge of all the earth do what is just?’ ‘What is your name?’ As we go through the Bible, the questions become more anguished. Job, Jeremiah, the anonymous singers of the Psalms, Jesus himself wrestling with the angel in Gethsemane and crying from the cross the question of all who have trusted and not seen their deliverance, ‘My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?’”
I’ve got my doubts. How about you? When innocent children are scarred for life, when war ravages on, when natural disasters destroy people and property, when the world is filled with hunger and disease, when our prayers seem to go unanswered, when scientific findings seem to contradict our faith…there are thousands of reasons to doubt. Even John the Baptist (of whom Jesus said, “Among those born of women there has not risen anyone greater than John the Baptist”) doubted Jesus. “Are you the one who was to come or should we expect someone else?”
Faithful doubters doubt with faith. As Brian McLaren says, “…here’s where faith comes in—a faith that leans on God himself, and not on our own understanding, including our own theological understanding…I believe Jesus when he said he’ll never leave us nor forsake us—and that includes even when we question. Or as Paul said, even when we are faithless, God remains faithful.” If you have doubts, join the faithful cry of the ages for all honest seekers, “I believe. Help my unbelief!”
Dennis Lynn
Redwood Church
