Hold On to Faith amid Doubts

Mike Kruger
Well, good afternoon, everyone. Great to be with you. I showed up today to this event and realized that my own wife was introducing me, which I did not know in advance. And it’s a it’s a little sweet and scary at the same time when your spouse introduces you wasn’t sure quite what to think. And then when I found out she forgot what I did for a living, that’s not helping. So no, she, she’s basically running this conference. She’s so tired. If she forgets my name, I’ll give her a grace for that. But it’s great to be with you. Thanks for coming out to this session. I know what’s going on with you right now. It’s coming up on four o’clock on day two of 75 talks you’ve heard and you’re thinking, how can I make it through one more, but we’re glad you’re here. Let me say a word of thanks to reformed Theological Seminary. Yes, Melissa, that is the place I work if you’re still here. RTS is hosting this micro event. And we’ve had a number of great speakers and a microphone, I just am one of the speakers you get to hear today and thrilled about what RTS is doing, you can come check out our booth. Of course, in the main book area, we’d love to talk with you more if you’re thinking about seminary, or know someone who is thinking about seminary. Now the topic before us as the title indicates, and as you already know, if you’re in the right place, is this very difficult question of doubt. Whenever I decided to do this topic for the conference, I always think to myself, you know, what, what is on people’s mind when they come to an event like this where the main topic is doubt, I imagine it varies for all of us. Some of us might be in a doubt crisis. Even as we speak, you may be here and you may be a doubter, you may be wondering about your own faith. Others show up because they know someone that’s doubting. And you’ve shown up really out of love and care for someone in your life that’s struggling with what they believe. And you’re here, hopefully, to take a few things away, and maybe back to that loved one. And still others are just here, because you look at a world that’s filled with skepticism and doubt. And you’re not so much thinking about your doubt or someone else’s doubt you’re thinking about how do I reach the last and those who have questions about the faith? Whatever your reason is, for being here. Dow is one of those subjects that I think we talk to little about in the Christian life. And the Bible talks about quite a bit. And actually can be an avenue if handled properly to encouraging strengthening and building our faith and reaching the world for Christ. And that’s what my hope is today as you work through this topic. So on that note, I’m going to say a word of prayer. As we get going. Let’s ask God to bless our time as we think about this very tricky topic of Tao. Lord, we think of the person that you met, whose daughter was sick, and he said, Lord, I believe Help my unbelief. Or we often feel like two people, people who believe and people who doubt, Lord, we pray that you’d help us to navigate those complexities. today. We pray this in Christ’s name. Amen. All right, so here’s a question for you. And we’ll get rolling today. Have you ever had a moment in your life where you had that deep sense, maybe even a pit of sort of tension in your stomach where you wondered whether, in fact, everything you believe might in fact, be a lie? I happens at some point in your life, I talk to Christians all the time about doubt. And I say to them, if you never had that moment, just wait. It’s coming. No matter whether you’ve been a Christian for five years or 50 years, the day eventually comes where you have that moment where you wake up and think Is it possible that that everything I thought was true mate may actually be untrue? Is it? Is it possible that that I’m simply wrong about everything I believe, and then I thought what I believe was true. And maybe it’s simply the case that what I believe is false. And maybe all those people that I thought were as wrong as they possibly could be. Maybe they’re the ones that are right, and maybe I’m the one that’s wrong. Still remember now nearly 30 years ago, where I had that exact experience. I was 18 years old, sitting in a religion class at University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill, not showing up to college fairly convinced that I was a strong believer and I grown up in a Christian home and had a good youth group. And my parents loved Jesus and taught me the gospel at a young age. And there I was at this big secular university thinking, oh, yeah, I’ll be fine. I need to take a religion class to get my little credit. And I’ll check the box. And once I checked the box, no problems here. And the very first day of class, the professor stood up. It’s very clear very quickly that he was very bright, very sharp, very dynamic. He says, I want to tell you about an ancient teacher in the Mediterranean world. He traveled around and had a band of disciples and followed him. He had amazing teaching and did amazing miracles. And after a number of years of ministry, the authorities were upset and they put him to death and later he rose from the dead. And that man’s name was, and I sat there as a student dutifully taking notes. And I wrote on my piece of paper when he said that man’s name was I wrote Jesus but then the professor said, and that man’s name was Apollonius of Tiana. I thought to myself Who in the world is Apollonius of Tiana. And I realized I had sort of been set up by this professor, right? He wanted me to realize that what you think you know about Jesus, you don’t really know about Jesus, what you think is original about Jesus isn’t really that original at all. And there were other great teachers in the Mediterranean world who did amazing things and had followers and miracles and even were thought to have risen from the dead. And Apollonius of Tiana is one of those. And at that very moment, I realized man am I in for a long semester, right. And, of course, he proceeded to do what I thought he would do, the entire semester was spent with attacks on the Gospels, and why they are fabrications and why the authors aren’t, who we think they are, and how they were not reliably transmitted over time, and on and on when. And then is when I had that feeling in your stomach, where you think yourself, maybe everything I believe, is a lie. Now, did that make me suddenly a non Christian, that I suddenly, quote, lose my faith at that moment where now I’m sort of outside that kingdom, what I experienced at that moment is what we all eventually experience at one degree or another. And it’s the word we call doubt, where you begin to waver. And my job today is simply to unpack this concept for you to give you some biblical categories for how to think about it, and then most importantly, how we can battle it. Let’s start where we need to start though with this idea of definition. The word Dow gets thrown around a lot, right. And I think the word doubt is so multi dimensional, and has a quite a wide semantic range that it can really refer to many sort of states of mind. For people it can refer to just worry, fear, uncertainty, anxiety, questioning, despair, unbelief, and the list goes on. And everyone experiences these at some level and other to other degrees. But some scholars have offered definitions, and there’s a couple I found helpful. One by Gary Habermas and his book on doubt, this is what he says, I think it’s a pretty good definition. Doubt is a lack of certainty about the truthfulness of Christianity, one’s own faith, or how it applies to real life situations. Okay, notice what he did there. It can be about the truth of Christianity, but you also have doubts about your own status, and your own faith. So it’s not so much doubting whether Christianity is true, but you may doubt whether you’re a Christian, which is part of the whole matrix of Dow. But the definition I really like is the one from Oz Guinness. Here’s what he says about Dow. And he’s got a wonderful little book on doubt, if you haven’t read it. He says, doubt is a state of mind in suspension between faith and unbelief. So that it is neither of them holy. And it is each only partly, I love that definition. Because it really captures the sense of what doubt is, right? Doubt is, is finding yourself in a point of wavering a middle ground caught between two sort of spectrums. It’s like the man I quoted in my prayer, and Mark chapter nine, Lord, I believe, help my unbelief. Of course, you’ll notice in that scene, Jesus didn’t say, Well, which one? Is it? Right? And do you believe or do you not believe pick one? Now that’s not what happened, what we realized. And I will say this more in a moment, Jesus is remarkably compassionate, and patient, and merciful, on those who doubt. And I think that whole concept is, is something the church needs to recover. And I’ll talk more about that, momentarily. So if that’s the definition of doubt, let me talk Secondly, here about two, what I call mistaken approaches to doubt. These are two extremes out there. And as I lay out these two mistaken approaches, I’m, I’m gonna guess that most of you will be familiar with both of these quite readily. And I want to take a pathway of neither of these, because I think neither of these is biblical. And neither of these is helpful when it comes to what we need to do with doubt. Let’s start with the first mistake in approach. First mistaken approach is what I call doubt shaming, doubt, shaming. Doubt, shaming is just what the title suggests, right? Which is this idea that when you, when you have doubts, and you bring your doubts upfront, and you bring them to a friend, or a church or a pastor, that you’re, in one sense, made to think that you’re a second class, Christian, maybe even a potential enemy of the gospel, you’re in a place, perhaps in a culture where questions are allowed. And if you have doubts about something, well, you just keep those to yourself around here, we just believe. And if you raise doubts, that means you’re probably a threat to the health of the church, and you just don’t want to stir up the sense. And we don’t allow those kinds of questions here.

Some of you hear that sort of doubt shaming culture, and you think, wow, that’s maybe the church I grew up in, right. And sometimes we have a church culture where we’re wanting to encourage faithfulness, which is a good thing, but what about the people sitting in the pew who struggle and they don’t really know what to do with their questions. Maybe they hear a sermon. They’re like, I don’t know if I think that’s true. What do you do with that? those kinds of doubts are actually very common. But in a doubt shaming culture, they’re not allowed. No room for questions, no room for dissent, no room for inquiry. It’s sort of a take it or leave it all or nothing. Now, I’ll say more about that approach later. But you can already see what happens if you have a culture like that. You have doubts in a culture like that they’re never allowed to be expressed, and someone just sits on them. And then are we that surprised when maybe a young person has doubts and they never express they go off to college? What happens? They never were allowed to express their doubts, and they never got answers to their doubts. And then they find themselves in college, never having heard the answers, and many of them end up walking away from the faith entirely. So what do we do with this doubt shaming approach? Well, I think the Bible hits it this head on time and time again, in Scripture and in the history of God’s people, you’ll know and see that this is not the approach that the Bible takes, nor is it the approach that we should take to people in pastoral situations, time and time again, Jesus had compassion on doubters. Think about the person of Thomas right, what we call Doubting Thomas as well. I’m not going to believe until I touch his side and see his scars. Myself. Jesus doesn’t chide Him, Jesus doesn’t sort of get angry with him. Jesus says, Well, I can’t believe you know, Jesus is patient with Him. Jesus is compassionate. Jesus is inviting Come, come and see, touch my side. And believe, I think about the story of John the Baptist, which we don’t really think much about the John the Baptist had a period of doubt. I mean, is there anybody on the planet when you think about the gospels that seems more confident the John the Baptist, right? This is the firebrand preacher. He’s out in the desert. He’s rebuking the Pharisees. If there’s anybody you want on on your side, in a debate, it would have been John the Baptist. And so John the Baptist does all this prepares the way for the Messiah, but then later, he’s arrested and thrown in prison. And then he sends a message to Jesus down the road. Do you remember this? Find out in Matthew 11, the John the Baptist says to Jesus, Are you? Are you really the one? Are you really the Messiah? You can see what’s happening here. John’s languishing in prison. Previously absolutely convinced he’s the Messiah, Behold the Lamb of God. It takes away the sins of the world that imprisoned us later. He’s like, are you really who I think you are? You realize even John the Baptist had a moment of doubt. Think about Elijah’s despair in First Kings 19. Just coming off the Mount Carmel event with all the success you could possibly want. I mean, talk about sort of a great showing of God’s faithfulness, right. The prophets of Baal know fire from heaven, the altar, set up the Yawei fire from heaven. You think anybody should be as confident and as a high on a cloud as it can possibly be? It’s Elijah, but just moments later, he wants to die. Absolutely despair, that there’s no hope, no certainty in God’s plan, God won’t accomplish his purposes and all his loss. By the way, that’s a form of doubt. Doubting is not just simply doubting the truth of God in the abstract. Sometimes doubting is doubting with a god to really do what he says he’s gonna do, and whether God is really strong enough to do it. Of course, Jesus has compassion on doubters is picked up in Matthew 12, a smoldering wick, he will not snuff out or broken reading will not break. Notice Jesus doesn’t come to doctors and say you get your act together. What’s your problem? Now Jude 22, captures it perfectly. Have mercy on those who doubt. If you’re here today, and you’re doubting or know, someone who’s doubting one of the things I really want you to take away here is that God is patient and merciful and compassionate on doubters, part of the fallen human condition. And our limited knowledge and the challenges we face is to be wrestling with what we believe. We don’t have time to do it. But the history of the church is filled with people who we considered the big sort of pillars of the faith that struggled without a mentally ch Spurgeon, hero of many for great reasons. One of the greatest preachers ever had a massive bout of bout of doubt in his life. He talked about it later. Here’s Virgin’s own testimony. Right? This guy stands up and preaches every week like he’s the most certain guy on the planet. Here’s what he says. On a sudden, the thought crossed my mind, which I have heard, but could not conquer that there was no God, no Christ, no heaven, no hell that all my prayers were but a farce and I might as well whistle to the winds are spoken to the howling wave. Even Spurgeon doubted you can say the same for Luther and many others. Okay, so problematic approach number one is the doubt shaming. The Bible doesn’t fit there. That’s not the appropriate pastoral move, nor does it fit with historical realities. Here’s a second trend that’s equally mistaken on the opposite end. And boy, we’re gonna resonate with this today. These are what I call doubt celebrators. Okay, I love that doubt celebrators. There’s the doubt shamers on the one hand, they’re like, oh, you can’t doubt Shame on you for doubting and you’re probably second class Christian. The doubt celebrators are on the opposite end of the extreme. Now in some Christian circles, where a doubt is now treated as the most desirable Christian virtue, right? The thing that you should do in your life above anything else, and just question everything, doubt everything, be skeptical of everything. You absolutely can’t be certain of anything. And if you think you’re certain of anything, then you’re just arrogant. You’re just condescending, you’re just, you’re just a No at all. There’s a book that came out a few years ago, advocating for this approach. The title of the book was called the sin of certainty. The sin of certainty. You might think, well, that’s a pretty bold title. And it is, and it’s a pretty bold book. The sin of certainty basically argues that if you’re if you’re certain about very much, then there’s probably something wrong with you. Because anybody who’s an intellectual knows better, right that you’re really smart. You’ll know that you really can’t know anything. No, of course, you know, that implodes on itself eventually, right? If you can’t know anything, when you can’t even know did you can’t know anything, but that’s a whole nother conversation. So the sin of certainty is the doubt celebrators where you you stir up doubt? You foment it, you encourage it. Now, by the way, I will say this, there’s one thing that owl celebrators do get right? They do. They do recognize that not all our beliefs are equally certain. Not all our doctrines are equally core. Right? Even the Westminster Confession of Faith, which I affirm makes it clear that not all doctrines are as clear as others. So someone is as equally certain about their eschatological view as they are that Jesus rose from the dead, I might say, Well, you may need to reread these historical statements about that. So not everything is as equally certain as anything else. But the core beliefs, we can be absolutely sure are true. And this doubt celebrating undercuts that. Jesus time and time again, actually challenges the lack of faith and his disciples. He wants them to believe he wants them to be certain. We also think of James one, six, But let him ask in faith with no doubting for the one who doubts is like a wave of the sea that is driven and tossed by the wind. Here’s what I want you to realize. On the one hand, doubt is sort of normal. Doubt is not to be shamed, on the other hand, doubt left unchecked, can do real serious damage, doubt left undealt with can do real serious damage. And this is one of the reasons why I think we need to think about our church cultures and ministry cultures. One thing I appreciate about the gospel Coalition, which we’re at here right now is that I think they’ve they’ve created space for people to raise tough questions and get good, good answers to those tough questions. The fact that we’re even doing a session like this is evidence of that. So because once you can get those doubts out, then you can get those doubts addressed. Okay, let me move on to a third thing is you make our way through this doubt, discussion. And that is the various causes of doubt. If we’re going to solve the problem of doubt, to some extent, we need to work backwards to some of the causes some of the reasons that we do doubt. Now, this is almost an endless list of things. In terms of the causes of doubt, I’m gonna lay out what I think are some of the most core reasons that people struggle with their faith Majan they’re probably reasons that some of you even hear if you’re in a mode of doubting, have struggled with your faith. And these can be helpful sort of laying out the proper categories of the way to think about doubt. So what are some of the various causes of doubt? Let’s run through a few of these first unanswered questions, unanswered questions. Here’s the thing about doubt, sometimes doubt is actually more simple than we think. Now, lots of times it isn’t. And I’ll get to that in a moment. But sometimes it actually is relatively simple. I’ve talked to so many people who seem to have doubts because they are convinced of a certain thing that’s true. And when they found out it isn’t actually it’s remarkably helpful to them. All right. They may not even know what the evidence is or that they’re unaware of for Christianity. This is exactly what I faced when I was at UNC Chapel Hill. As I sat there under that professor and had all those challenges and, and stuff thrown my way, I realized that I needed to see if there were answers to those questions. And part of the solution to doubt that I faced was go out and dig in and find out whether the objections I’m hearing have been raised before.

Because I didn’t realize it at the time that the professor at UNC, would turn out to be one of the most famous critics of the Bible. It was Bart ermine, who now has written well over 30 books, and is probably one of the most notorious sort of critics of Christianity. But at the time, I didn’t know that and honestly, he didn’t know that he was a totally brand new professor at the time. But as he threw myself my way, I thought to myself, Okay, surely this isn’t the first time this objection has been raised. So I did the research and I realized now had these objections been handled before, they’d been addressed many times before. And they’d been addressed excellently before even some of them from the very beginning of the church back in the second century. But yet they are presented as if they were brand new things that you’d never heard before. So unanswered questions is a key category for doubt. Some people just don’t know. I was in a session yesterday on the origins of the New Testament canon, which some of you may know is an area I’ve spent a lot of time in. And that is a good example of this. People think I can’t trust the Bible. I don’t know whether it’s true. And they’re in doubt, right? They’re in uncertainty, and they just may not have the right information. They may, they may have a lot of misconceptions. In fact, my talk yesterday was about six misconceptions about the origins of the New Testament canon, because I think people languish under these misconceptions. And if we can help them, uncover them all the better. Here’s why. I think churches need to do a good job, maybe a better job than we have been, and dealing with helping people face the intellectual dimensions of their of their faith. When not when I think about my own college experience, I asked sometimes why wasn’t I ready? mean, I had a good Christian home? Why wasn’t ready. And I think because we don’t know that we think of preparation. Intellectually, we think of preparation morally. Right? If you go off to college, don’t go, you know, jumping to the party crowd or the party scene, what have you. But we don’t think about it intellectually. Some of you are pastors, some of your Christian leaders, whatever your church or ministry is, there’s a there’s a place for generating deep reflection and thought over those key objections. And I think we need to do better to sort of nip doubt in the bud before it can flourish and grow. Now, by the way, one clarification on this. Some some, some unanswered questions aren’t really as honest as they seem. I’ve had many people throw out intellectual objections. And I really call this sort of smokescreen objections, right? Where they don’t really want an answer. They just sort of throw out an objection. And then the objection is sort of supposed to stay there and they don’t really want it solved. Because the objection is all they really want to put out there so they can continue to sort of live their life, how they live their life. I see this a lot in conversations I get on airplanes. I always get in conversations on airplanes. I mean, when you sit down an aeroplane, right, you sit next to someone, Hey, how are you? How are you? And then they ask that question. You don’t want them to ask. So what do you do for a living? And I’m like, oh, no, here we go. Right. So I tell them what I do for a living in the next five minutes. They’re telling me they’re sorry, they haven’t gone to church more. Right? So we’ve got that whole conversation. Like, really? It’s okay. You don’t need to tell me that on the plane. Right. And then after the confession is over, we get into a conversation. Well, why don’t you go to church? Well, I’m not sure I really believe why don’t you believe? Well, because the Bible contradicts itself. Oh, okay. The Bible contradicts itself. Now. And one one says, maybe this person is really struggling over a contradiction, and I can help them. Okay, that would be the intellectual side. But usually, when I get asked that question, I say, Well, tell you what, tell me the, the apparent contradiction you’ve really studied and researched and tried to solve but couldn’t solve maybe I can help you. And then the answer almost universally is the same as a why I don’t I can’t name one. I haven’t studied one. I haven’t looked at one. And you realize, wait a second. Is it really an intellectual objection? Or is it just a smokescreen? Objection. Okay. So there’s genuine intellectual doubts, and we can solve those through intellectual inquiry. But be aware that there’s some that aren’t as honest as they seem. Here’s the second reason that we doubt and this is a big one. Arguably, this is the biggest one. Personal suffering is one of the biggest reasons people doubt. Remember, a moment ago, I said to you that if you’re if you live in the Christian life, and you haven’t doubted yet, at some level, not every bit, not everyone doubts for the same degree? I know. One of the reasons people haven’t doubted yet is typically because they haven’t experienced real suffering yet. And that’s not suggesting everybody who experiences real suffering doubts, no, that’s not true. But oftentimes one of the most poignant causes for doubt is a personal moment of real tragedy and suffering. Someone can live a Christian life, very joyful, very happy, very certain, for 45 years. And they can get absolutely plowed over and thrown into a turmoil of doubt in one moment. Whether it’s a car wreck, or a phone call, or whatever it happens to be and suddenly they’re not so sure anymore. Remember, John the Baptist? No doubt His was a moment of suffering that led to his doubts. Elijah was basically hunted down by by Ahab and Jezebel and a mark was put on his head, no doubt that was part of his doubts. So personal suffering is real. If we’re going to deal with problems of Dalits and people’s lives, we’ve got to deal with that issue. You, which is going to involve very keen pastoral care, but also a deep dive into theological issues like the problem of evil, the sovereignty of God, why there’s suffering at all these are important matters that need to be given their due attention. By the way, this is also one of the reasons why we should have deep compassion on doubters, okay. Now, some doubters, who are more on the rebellious data phase, and maybe they weren’t a little bit less compassion, but on the personal suffering, doubting, we can walk alongside those people patiently walking through their doubts, because we know that God is patient with them, and their doubts. Here’s the third reason for doubts that we need to pay attention to if we’re going to address this issue in our churches, and ministries, and that is corruption in the church. Corruption in the church has been historically, for 1000s of years, one of the main reasons people doubt the truth of Christianity because it looked at the church. And they ask themselves, why does it sometimes seem like the church doesn’t actually believe what it’s teaching? Why is it that there’s so much fallenness? Why is there so much corruption? Why is there so much scandal? Don’t forget that Martin Luther when when he was beginning his path down the Reformation, this is the thing that bothered him the most. He traveled to Rome, the great city of light, and the great place where all the saints were buried. It was the it was sort of the pinnacle of a city on a hill. And he got there he was absolutely distraught and disgusted by the corruption not just in the people, but in the clergy. And said, That can’t be and that led to him, of course, to want reformation. But some people see that corruption and they think, well, Christianity, maybe it’s not true. Now, there’s theological answers for that. I’m sure if I asked you today, whether that’s a good theological argument, I see corruption in the church, therefore the church can’t be real. Is that a good argument? Well, it’s got holes, because we have explanations for why the church gets that way. Because people are sinners, and are fallen, and on and on it goes. But there is some link, if you think the spirits at work, if you think Jesus is doing things, shouldn’t the church be different than the world and that can start gnawing away at you. It’s a very famous quote by John Chrysostom, one of the early church fathers, this line will haunt you, if you think about it very long. This is what he says Christians damaged Christ’s cause more than his enemies and foes. Ouch. Now, part of that is to realize that if you want to help a culture of skepticism in our world, then this is a place we need to pay attention to. You know, one of the things that’s happened in our current cultural moment, because of doubt is this sort of rash of deconversion stories, I’m sure you’re paying attention to this, over the last five years. Plus, we’re now there’s a whole stock industry of D convergence, where you leave the faith, you create a website, and a new, I’ve left the faith twitter handle or whatever happens to be and then you’re recruiting followers to your new I’ve left the Faith Mission. And now it’s a whole industry. And if you read those folks, and look, there’s there’s there’s lots of things in what they write that are very troubling and problematic. And I would disagree a lot, but one of the things they do say, is part of that motivation for the deconversion is the the corruption and abuse in the church. And so that has to be handled, what do we do as a church? Well, we need to pay attention to that right, but need to be part of our apologetic the holiness of God’s people as part of our apologetic. Here’s a fourth thing that causes someone to doubt. It’s politically in their personal life. And this is one that will also be very relevant for you if you know someone doubted you, and that is unrepentant sin. If someone is a Christian, or at least a professing Christian, and they grabbed a hold of some sin pattern and won’t let go, almost inevitably, it leads to doubt.

Time and time again in pastoral situations I’ve been in and I know that some of you are pastors, you’ve probably seen this where someone comes to a pastor and says, you know, I don’t know if I really believe the Bible anymore. I’m, I don’t know if this whole Christian anything’s really, for me, and then you dig around a little bit and realize Hold on a second, it’s not really about that at all. It’s about some sin pattern that you are holding on to and won’t relinquish. Here’s the theological truth for you. You need to let sink in today, both on a personal level and on an institutional level. And here’s what it is. As sort of historical Orthodox Christians, we believe that what we believe affects how we live and that’s true. Our doctrine affects life, but don’t miss the fact that it happens in reverse to our life affects what we’re willing to believe. Our life affects our doctrine. Have you thought about that? Doctrine affects life but how we live affects our doctrine, because if we’re doing things in our life that are inconsistent with sound doctrine, then sound doctrine will look less appealing to us. And pretty soon we’ll look at it and think that doesn’t sound that persuasive anymore. So it cuts both ways. And that’s a key pastoral angle but it’s also a key personal line. goal. Here’s the last thing I’ll say, by way of causes of doubt. And by the way, this is not an exhaustive list, you may in your mind think I’ve got 11 more for you, Mike. And you can come share me that list when we’re done today. But here’s one last one that I think is a cause of doubt for some people. And it’s simply that some people are just irrational warriors. Maybe that’s you, I met people that sort of fit this category in there. When I say irrational worries, warriors, that’s not a slam or a day, it’s just a reality of some people’s sort of disposition. Some people just worry about everything, right? If you worry about what you’re gonna lose your job at work or worrying about how you’re going to pay your bills, or if you’re worried about whether you’re going to get cancer and die are worried about if your plan is going to crash on the way home from the conference. If you’re worried about whether your kids are gonna grow up and follow Jesus, if you’re worried about everything, eventually going to worry about your faith. And eventually, you’re gonna doubt that too. And so if you’re anxious about everything, eventually be anxious about your faith. This is not uncommon. And actually just part of the fallen human condition, right part of the fallen human condition is a recognition that we’re just sort of weak, frail people who are just trying to plow through this life. And if you just find yourself as a worrier, eventually you’re going to also it’s going to dawn on you at 2am. What if Christianity is not true? And now suddenly, you’re worried about that? Right? Yeah, that you’re losing all the other things to worry about. And you realize that you can add anything to that list, if that’s something that we struggle with, and many people do. Okay, so those are the beginning of the solution. Part of the solution, both corporately, individually to doubt is to think through the causes, right, and how to assess those. But here we move into my last point, together this morning or this afternoon. What day is this? I don’t even know. My wife didn’t remember my name. I don’t know what day it is rough day for the Cougars here. So how do you battle doubts? This is my last section here I want to talk with you about now part of what we’ve done is already begun that process right part of of understanding the causes of doubts cannot be battling. If you if you include your closet that is genuinely intellectual, it’s helpful to know that the man has an intellectual solution. But I’m gonna lay out some broad principles here, though, for how to think about doubt. And this can be applied to you or the person that you are concerned about several things to mention here first, most importantly, number one on the list without a doubt, the very top thing. Don’t go it alone. don’t deal with your doubts alone. This is what I refer to as my horror movie advice. Okay, so stick with me here for a moment. So I love scary movies. Just what I do probably makes me a bad Christian. Okay. But I love scary movies. And if you watch scary movies, you’ll notice that the protagonist in scary movies always makes the same mistake, right? So there’s, you know, haunted house or whatever happens to be and the protagonist says, I think I’ll go into another room over there by myself in the dark, and leave the group behind. And that’ll be a great decision. And you’re always yelling at the TV or whatever. What are you doing, right? Why is it that every horror movie person goes off alone in the dark? seems common sense to us, but apparently not to them. Now, that is the advice you scream at the TV and a horror movie. But it’s also the advice I give you here. When it comes to dealing with doubt. When you deal with doubt, the worst way to do it is to go off in the dark alone. And by the way, that’s what that’s what the tendency to do when you’re struggling is the human nature I think is you just want to be alone. You want to go kind of deal with it by yourself in the darkness, let the darkness overwhelm you. That like a horror movie, that’s not going to end well. Right. You want to handle your doubt, by going into the group and staying in the light. Not off alone in the dark. What does that mean? That means the heartbeat of the solution to doubt is sort of centering yourself in solid, strong Christian fellowship. And by the way, that’s a cure for many things I might add, but it’s particularly a cure. For doubt. One of the things about Tao is it, it’s it’s it’s a sort of a fungus that grows in the soil of aloneness. Okay? It’s like mold. You mold doesn’t grow well, in the sunlight. It grows well in the dark and in moisture, you want it you want to get it in, expose your data light and get in a group. What does that mean? That means you need to talk about your doubts. tell someone what your doubts are. Go to your pastor, go to your elders, go to a friend go to your small group Bible study saying, Hey, I’m laying it out there. Here’s here’s what I’m struggling with ABC helped me. This is the Christian life and if you were struggling with something else, I’ll give you the same advice. Go to your pastor, go to your elders, go to your fellowship and say here’s what I’m struggling with ABC helped me the same thing is true for doubt. So don’t end up like the horror movie protagonist right. Take advice as Number One On The List time and time again, when someone goes off to college and loses their faith, it’s almost always because they never found good Christian Fellowship. While they were there, my book surviving religion one on one was almost one of my main points was exactly that. You’re not going to make it by yourself. It’s a biblical theological principle that we need to take seriously. Okay, here’s a second application for a cure. We as individuals in churches need to do a little better job at studying our faith deeply. Studying our faith deeply. I’ve been amazed over the years, how many doubts can be at least soothed with rich theological understanding. Not suggesting that when someone doubts that all you got to do is say, Read this big, systematic theology volume, and it’s all gonna go away. Okay? That’s not the argument here. People’s doubts are multi dimensional, and there’s different things bound up in them. But you do realize that many people’s doubts are at least soothed and calmed and quenched by understandings that that God has for you, not against you. Right? That God is sovereign. He’s in control of all the things that are you feel are against you in your life, that God cares for his people. One of the other things that you may understand, theologically is, as I said earlier, understanding the problem of evil Why is there evil in the world? Why do bad things happen? How will it all be set right one day, so even your eschatological understanding can help solve some of your anxiety and worried that God, maybe he doesn’t look in control now, but someday, all will be made, right. It’s also true for more narrowly intellectual things. As I indicated my own intellectual journey. When I was doubting in my undergraduate days, it literally was true that the more I studied, the more confident I became. Right. The more I studied, the more I learned, the more the more helpful it was to understand why we believe the Bible is the Word of God and why it can be trusted. And that can be part of the solution. Third thing to mention, as we think about dealing with our doubts, is go and get wise counsel. What does that mean? That means there are people whose specialty can be dealing with your particular issue, right? Could be a counselor could be a pastor, it could be a particular Christian, many that may be dealing with exactly what’s on your mind and causing your doubts. In other words, the church is filled with great resources. Don’t miss that some of them are available. Even as simple as just going online to the right websites, you can find amazing resources. But even on an individual and personal level, there are great resources out there for us, and you want to avail yourself of those. And here’s my final piece of advice for how to deal with doubts. I give Tim Keller the credit for this because this is a famous phrase of his. And you may have heard it before. Whenever someone will talk to Keller about doubts his said he would always say, but you also need to doubt your doubts. And I think this is a very good piece of advice. What does it mean to doubt your doubts? If you haven’t really thought about it, when someone doubts, the truth of Christianity, they are thinking about replacing their Christian belief with a different belief. You’re it’s like swapping out beliefs. Right? So if you’ve concluded that Christianity is untrue, you’ve probably done it because you think something else over here is true. And you’re thinking I’m going to abandon Christianity for this other truth, but Keller’s point is but have you challenged the other truth? Have you doubted that? Have you challenged the validity of that? Is it really live up to what you think it does? That it’s so strong that’s going to overturn your faith?

Here’s a good example of this. Think about just the theory of evolution for a moment. My bringing it up isn’t the debate all its merits, but I know there’s some Christians that go take a class on evolution and think, Well, I guess the Bible can’t be true. Because if evolution is true, then I don’t see how it could fit with the Bible. And they think they’re gonna abandon their faith. But notice, in that exchange, something’s happened. They weren’t believing in the Bible. And now they’ve looked at this thing called evolution. And they think, well, that’s more true. So I’m going to swap them out, I’m gonna abandon my belief in the Bible, I’m gonna replace it with my belief in evolution. But Keller’s point is simple. But if you really challenged evolution, in other words, why are we just skeptics of the first thing? Are we not gonna also be skeptics of the second thing? Why just out the Bible and not also doubt the other thing? And by the way, if you were to be skeptical of evolution and start doubting evolution, you would find that there’s all kinds of challenges there too. In fact, so many challenges that it doesn’t suddenly doesn’t look like the foe you thought it was. And suddenly doesn’t look like it’s actually worth abandoning Christianity for. Now, that’s just an example. It could be anything today that you believe that you’re thinking about embracing rather than Christianity. Have you subjected that to the skepticism that you subjected Christianity to? I’m always amazed at my conversations with non Christians and Melissa mentioned at the beginning of the talk that I’ve over the years just been blessed to have a lot of good karma. Patients with non Christians, but one of the things I’m always amazed by is how selective their skepticism is. Right? They’re skeptical over certain things, but they’re sort of predetermined, like I have this pile of things I’m happy to be skeptical about. But then they have their other cherished beliefs that they don’t challenge. And this is the whole point of doubters is that they, everybody’s got to believe everybody has to have certainty in something. It’s fine if you want to challenge Christianity, but realize what you’re challenging with is also subject to critique. And that can be very helpful for you, as you battle your doubts, doubt, your doubts, and you’ll quickly discover that are not nearly the ominous Goliath that we think they are. In fact, I’ve discovered over the years that they end up being a lot like a paper tiger, right? They growl at you, and they scare you, but then you poke and they just crumbled to the ground rather quickly. Okay, so where does that leave us today as we draw this to a close, a whole purpose in our time has been to understand doubt better. My main sort of exhortation to you has been, obviously a desire to help you if you’re here to struggle with doubt, or help someone else if they’re struggling with Dell. But even more than that, my main exhortation is to find a place in Christian ministries and churches in organizations for the right understanding of what a doubt isn’t, isn’t. And to give space for Christians to wrestle with these things in community, and fellowship, so that we might help people in their doubts and might preserve their faith, banishing them out, does not help, and then celebrating their doubt, as if that’s the highest Christian virtue does not help. But rather, what I advocate here is what I hope Jesus has advocated, which is grace, compassion, and patience, but then helping people out of that doubt towards more certainty in their faith. Thank you very much.