Today, I want to do something a little bit unusual. I find my inspiration in a question posed in a Facebook group, Seekers with Questions about Christianity. You will need to become a member if you want to find the post and the response thread that follows it. This is the question:
Hi can someone please help me understand this: If God doesn’t like the idea of concubines (multiple secondary wives), then why didn’t he tell his holy prophets so? Why did He give rights and laws regarding concubines instead of tell his prophets not to have concubines? He made so many rules and instructions so that people know how to please Him and do his will – so why not also add that he doesn’t like men having concubines? And if someone wants to answer that its a matter of embracing the culture of the time, God never changes, and we are never to conform to the world around us; we are supposed to be different to the world and cultures around us.
It’s a really good question! We should be asking questions like these. The culture in some Christian circles and churches discourages people from asking tough questions. Or worse: people are actually told not to ask these kinds of questions!
I believe God expects us to ask the tough questions, and He invites us to search out the answers. I also don’t believe doubt is the opposite of faith. A lack of trust in God is more like the opposite to faith. Our doubts often drive us to seek answers and to seek God who has those answers.
In some ways, I believe our certainty can be antithetical to faith. When we think we know all the answers, we can begin to trust in our own understanding more than we trust in God. We run the risk of a shallow, intellectual faith that is wooden and stiff when we value certainty over truth.
If we reach a point where questions are no longer important, we are likely to stagnate and grow spiritually cold and distant from the world around us that has questions. If we stop asking questions, we stop growing in our knowledge of God and stop maturing in our walk with Jesus.
Thus, I think we need to encourage questions, allow ample space for questions, and take them seriously. In that vein, I want to commend Daniel Mann, who is the administrator (or one of the administrators) of the Facebook group in which the question above was posed. He is also a fellow blogger. (See Mann’s Word)
In Romans 3, Paul asks whether a lack of faith nullifies God’s faithfulness. It’s a rhetorical question that Paul answers this way: “Even if everyone else is a liar, God is true.” (NLT)
Our faithlessness, of course, doesn’t make God faithless. Our actions don’t change God’s character. Though every man be a liar, still God is true.
Alisa Childers and Lisa Gungor both grew up with evangelical Christianity. They were both Christian musical artists. They both went through a period of doubt and “deconstruction”. Alisa Childers emerged from that period of deconstruction with her faith intact, stronger than it was before, while Lisa Gungor has evolved into a progressive Christian – holding on to the title “Christian”, while letting go of nearly everything that distinguishes Christianity from other religions.
Of her own experience, Childers says that the flaws and errors in her construct of God, scripture and doctrine were removed in that process of deconstruction and replaced. Instead of giving up on Christianity, she doubled down in her testing of the faith. What could not stand up to the scrutiny, she let go. What remains is a solid foundation.
While the church, and people generally, seem to fear doubt, and shy away from it, the Bible actually encourages us to meet doubt head on. Paul urges us to “test everything” and “keep [or hold fast] what is good”. (1 Thessalonians 5:21) This is the route Alisa Childers took when faced with doubt and challenges to her faith.
More to the point of this article, though, Childers observes that many people who go through “deconstruction” of their faith often cite the behavior of the church, and the people in the church, as a primary reason for leaving the faith. It might be hypocrisy, judgmental attitudes, failure to live up to “Christian standards”, ignorance of modern science, an adherence to a blind faith that refuses to admit facts that are contrary to their understanding of Scripture.
Or worse – it might be experience with the ugliness of sin that we expect should not be present in the church. Church people can be cliquey and unapproachable. Church people can be greedy, petty, quick to get angry, lustful and worse – even church leaders. The evidence of sexual abuse and pedophilia that has come to light in Baptist churches recently reveals an ugly underside to quintessentially evangelical churches that hadn’t before come to light.
I would add that non-church people level similar complaints at the “the church” as former church people who have left. The reasons they give for not going to church, or being “religious”, or having faith in God include apparent hypocrisy, negative personal experiences and bad behavior of church going Christians.
While people may give other reasons for “not believing” or not having faith, the examples of people who hold themselves out to be Christians is almost always one of the reasons given, if not the most compelling reason given by people who don’t consider themselves (or no longer consider themselves) “Christian” (at least in the sense of born again, evangelical (whatever that still means) Christianity).
To this point, I am reminded of what Paul says, “Though every man be a liar, still God is true!” Let me explain.
People in certain Christian circles have long characterized this experience as sinful (calling it backsliding or falling away). The more modern characterization of this experience focuses on doubt (deconstruction). The unspoken tension between these views is in how we view doubt. Is doubt bad (sinful)?
Hold that question.
Lisa Gungor says that she emerged from her period of “deconstruction” as a progressive Christian, no longer believing that Jesus is the only way, the only truth or the only life, no longer believing that Jesus definitely rose from the dead. Lisa Gungor says she now doubts that truth can be known in any absolute or definitive way.
Alisa Childers, on the other hand, come through her period of “deconstruction”, with a stronger faith and a more certain foundation. She doubled down on her quest for truth, putting her faith to the test, and she is now a Christian apologist.
Both woman went through periods that they call a deconstruction of their faith, but one of them came out the other end with a stronger, more resilient and truer faith. In this blog, I explore why that might be. I hope also to shed some light on the question whether doubt is sin.
I traveled for 12 hours in a car recently and spent most of that time listening to podcasts. I listened to interviews of Tim Keller and Os Guinness, and a joint interview of Lisa Gungor and Alisa Childers. They talked about their own faith journeys, doubt and the quest for truth.
As I considered those interviews at the end of my trip, some thoughts congealed and took shape. I will try to capture them in this short piece.
Following the announcement of Joshua Harris that he no longer considers himself a Christian, and Marty Sampson, who says he is loosing his faith, the Christian world has exploded with conversation about doubt and doubters. So much angst. Some of the comments have been harsh with criticism.
These kinds of announcements tend to rock a world that may look shaky to begin, especially from the outside. Sometimes even from the inside.
These guys may not be household names, (I didn’t know either name until a few weeks ago), but they have each influenced 21st Century Christianity in the United States (Harris) and beyond (Sampson). Joshua Harris wrote a book, I Kissed Dating Goodbye (1997), that influenced dating culture (or the lack thereof) for a generation of young Christians. Marty Sampson was a worship leader and songwriter for one of the most prolific and visible (if not controversial) Christian churches, Hillsong.
In the wake of his divorce, Joshua Harris publicly eschewed his faith, stating that he is no longer a Christian. Not many weeks later, Marty Sampson, the Hillsong worship leader, announced that he was losing his faith. Since then he has clarified that he hasn’t walked away from the faith. He is simply struggling with doubt – something most Christians have experienced (even if we don’t like to talk about it).
The reactions have predictably poured in. High profile Christians struggling with their faith is like an earthquake that hits close to home (for Christians) or in a third world country (for people who are not). You know there will be casualties. (The fact that we put so much faith in our leaders is another topic in itself!)
Many of those reactions have been negative, even harsh. That’s why I write. That’s why Mike and Debbie Licona have taken to the Internet in a video to discuss the issue.
And here’s the thing: the works that have come to define these men and the quality of their scholarship were born out of doubt. They were once doubters. Their doubts led them to dig deeper and get answers, even as they feared those answers might unravel the faith that had come to define them.
They each stared doubt in the face and dared to seek truth, and their doubts led them on journeys that became their life work.
Doubts are not necessarily a bad thing. Fear, I believe, is worse than doubt. Fear feeds on and exasperates doubt, but fear keeps us from resolving those doubts in a productive way.
When I survey the Bible, I see admonitions against fear that suggest that fear, not doubt, is the antithesis to faith.
As for doubt, we shouldn’t be so reluctant or fearful. If our faith can’t hold up, it isn’t worth holding onto. If God is true, and I believe He is, we have nothing to fear. He is a God of truth that gives us confidence that we can expose our doubts to the truth with assurance that they can and will be resolved.
Further, I think it’s important to consider what Jesus thought about doubters. Jesus didn’t condemn them. He was patient with them. We don’t find him railing against doubters, though he did find fault with people who were more confident in themselves than they had a right to be!
Jesus embraced people who doubted. Consider the observations along these lines by Mike Licona in the video below:
I have often thought about Thomas, (aka Doubting Thomas) in this context. He didn’t just doubt after Jesus died, when he famously demanded to see his hands and side; Thomas was a doubter from the beginning. Do a search for all the places Thomas is mentioned in the Gospels, and you will see what I mean.
Now, consider this: Jesus chose Thomas and invited Thomas to follow him though Thomas was a doubter! That means that Jesus didn’t just leave Room for Doubters and Skeptics; he affirmatively chooses doubters who are willing to follow him, despite their doubts. Thomas walked with Jesus for three years, doubting all the while until Jesus proved himself to Thomas in a compelling and intimate way.
So the message is this: if you are doubting, be honest about it and seek answers. Jesus invites us to knock, and keep on knocking, to seek and keep on seeking, to ask and keep on asking. You might even read the book by Gary Habermas, The Thomas Factor: Using Your Doubts to Draw Closer to God.
And to Christians who are not (presently) wrestling with doubt, remember the words of Jude: “Be merciful to those who doubt….” (verse 22) Jesus demonstrates a merciful attitude towards Thomas, who doubted from the beginning, to Peter, who denied Jesus three times when the chips were down, and toward us when we doubt.
Navigating by Faith 