A biblical model of faith isn’t about trying to feel certain about your beliefs but being willing to commit to living a certain way despite the fact that you’re not certain.This chapter marks a sharp turning point from the first three.
-Gregory Boyd
Those were primarily centered on laying groundwork for that which follows, which
are the key areas of thinking in which I have changed most drastically during
the past few months of prayer, thought and meditation.
This topic probably could have made its way into the foundational category
of the preceding three chapters. But it also exists as a sort of intermediary;
an entity with a foot in each of two worlds.
The issue in question is, as the title suggests, doubt and its diametric opposite
certainty.
My Foray Into the Realm of Not Being Sure
Many apologists I have read make a valid statement, and one which affected me greatly in my study. It has to do with a method of abductive reasoning known as cumulative-case inference,
and it was probably described quite well by the author J. Warner Wallace in his excellent book 'Cold Case Christianity'.
"The nature of circumstantial evidence is such that any one piece may be interpreted in more than one way. For this reason, jurors have to be careful not to infer something from a single piece of evidence.
Circumstantial evidence usually accumulates into a powerful collection, however, and each additional piece corroborates those that came before until, together, they strongly support one inference over another..."
In his book, J. Warner Wallace creates a fictitious circumstantial case against a suspect to demonstrate the compelling nature of cumulative evidence as it continues to mount.
Past a certain point, it ceases to any longer be reasonable to accept any conclusion other than that the suspect is guilty of the crime in question.
Of course, he uses his fictitious case to draw a parallel between cumulative case inferences in criminal investigation and the case for the existence of God that many apologists make.
As arguments in favor of God's existence continue to pile up, it becomes more and more rational to accept the truth of His existence, and more unreasonable to deny the obvious; or so the story goes.
In the instance of my life during the past six months however, the power of cumulative case inference came to produce entirely different results which were unexpected and which launched me onto the journey of spiritual discovery that I am still on today.
In the past three chapters, I have labored (perhaps to the point of annoying you, my dear reader), to produce three pillars of spiritual argument which form a cumulative case.
I also made the statement that any theological framework must retain its overall coherence and consistency when put to the test, or fall apart.
As I began looking back over the years of my life to examine various behavior patterns I've had, the personal trials and failures which I have endured, and the many doctrines which I have accepted as foundational truth since childhood, I began to suffer from anxiety and doubt; my conscience had begun to trouble me.
Could these beliefs and attitudes I had held for so long really be the truth of God?
Worse still, the more I read and re-read Scripture and studied and gave careful consideration to some of these previously accepted 'truths', the more they failed to align themselves with the cumulative case which I had accumulated as the primary axioms of my faith.
In this particular instance it seems, J. Warner Wallace's infamously mentioned
inference to the best explanation was working against me.
Instead of bolstering my faith, it contributed to my doubts.
How could these things be?
Either I was wrong and God was not who I had come to know from personal experience,
revelation, and Scriptural study, or many of the beliefs I held to be so concrete during my formative years were false.
But I couldn't stop seeking.
Like the man possessed of a particularly nasty habit, I was compelled to keep pulling the loose string on the sweater until finally the entire blasted thing came unraveled in my hands like so much colored twine.
It turns out to be a thing of immense fortuity that I was born with such single-minded determination.
Because if I had lacked the fortitude to pull the entire house of cards down, I would never have had the opportunity to start over again and rebuild on a more stable foundation.
The Positive Side of Doubt
This, then, is the basic thematic element of the current chapter. Doubt can be a good thing.
In fact, given the right context, doubt can be the only reasonable thing. Doubt forces you to examine and re-examine until you find flaws.
In so doing, doubt can serve as one of the strongest allies of faith, removing impurities like a blacksmith hammers away dross from molten steel.
In light of my recent struggles in facing my own doubt firsthand, I want to share the following positive consequences of that can come from doubt and conversely from lacking certainty
that you are right.
If hope can be defined as the expectation of good things, then fear can be
generalized as the expectation of bad things.
But there are extremes that we as human beings tend to swing to at opposite
ends of the spectrum that move far beyond expectation and into the realm
of absolute certainty. As we will soon discover, there are inherent dangers in doing so.
Doubt is a natural corollary of our journey through life.
If we were able to breeze through life without any apprehension whatsoever,
then the power of faith would be rendered meaningless to us.
It is faith in the face of adversity that bears weight.
There are two categories of doubt that I would like to separate here.
The first is doubt of God. The second is doubt of oneself or one's own
doctrines, philosophies, interpretations, thoughts, activities, choices, etc.
The second is generally healthy to engage in for reasons we will examine momentarily.
But even doubting or questioning God can prove to be highly constructive to ones
personal spiritual growth and development if it is an honest and seeking response
from the heart. Persistent and willful doubt of God in spite of evidence to the contrary
can eventually move a person from doubt to unbelief. That is dangerous ground.
The Difference Between Doubt and Unbelief
But there is a very big gap between doubt and unbelief.
Even the Hebrew word for unbelief in Scripture is virtually synonymous with
hardening one's heart much as Pharaoh is recorded to have done in the Old Testament.
Inasmuch as doubt is honest and earnestly searching for truth, I believe that God's
response to it indicates that He does not consider it to be a sin.
Some of the greatest men and women of Scripture engaged in doubt at times.
For some interesting examples we can first turn to the encounter between
Moses and God (Ex 3:10-22; Ex 4:1-17)
Moses questions God four times, each time raising an objection, and each time
God patiently responds to Moses' doubt with a reassurance until the fourth
time when God finally waxes irritated at his persistence.
His doubt has crossed the line and is now borderline unbelief.
He has rejected God's assurances in spite of reasonable evidence to support them.
Then we have Abraham's lengthy conversation with God regarding the
destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah in Gen 18:23-33.
Please note that in essence what Abraham is doing here is questioning God's
justice. There is no other way to interpret what goes on.
He clearly states:
"Far be it from You to do such a thing, to slay the righteous with the wicked, so that the righteous and the wicked are treated alike. Far be it from You! Shall not the Judge of all the earth deal justly?”Not only is Abraham questioning God's justice in his appeal to him to refrain from
enacting judgment on the cities, but he is appealing to an innate comprehension which
he has regarding God's justice.
He proceeds to question God five more times. God demonstrates unflappable
patience in His responses to Abraham. He does not condemn Abraham
or smite him for questioning His nature or for appealing to him on behalf
of the city and the righteous in it.
Let's move to the New Testament for a couple of examples.
In Luke 7:18-23 we find that John the Baptist has been imprisoned by Herod
for some time. While he is slowly wasting away in a dank cell, Jesus and His
disciples are walking around outside perhaps a mere stone's throw away.
To make matters worse, John of all people seems to have a better understanding
of who Jesus is right from the outset than most in the narrative.
Jesus is performing tremendous signs and miracles. But John is still in chains.
Doubt begins to creep in. So he sends for word from Jesus, questioning
if He is actually the Messiah.
Jesus sends word back to answer John's question without condemnation.
In John 20:24-29, one of the disciples Thomas, refuses to believe that Jesus
actually resurrected without physical evidence confirming it to him.
Jesus obliges him by showing up miraculously in a closed room and allowing
him to test for himself. The only thing Jesus says which could possibly be construed
as negative regarding Thomas' doubt is 'Blessed are those who have not seen and yet believed.'
But perhaps the strongest example of doubt in Scripture which we can find
occurs in the book of Job. On this particular example I find myself in strong support
of the analysis of Gregory Boyd, who highlights a tension that occurs within the
narration. In Job chapters 38 through 41, God reprimands Job sometimes sternly
for speaking out of ignorance about His nature.
Some examples of Job speaking out of turn are Job 16:12-13; 30:20-22.
In spite of this rebuke, in Job 42:7, God claims that Job 'spoke right' about Him
in context with the words of his friends.
But how can we resolve this tension? Gregory Boyd seems to think
that the Hebrew word 'kûn', which has a great many possible meanings,
in this particular instance can be interpreted as 'straight' or 'honest'.
Because Job doubted out of sincerity and honesty and spoke out of ignorance,
he is held in a different state than his friends who spoke only out of a
sense of self-seeking judgment over Job.
Doubt Equals Humility
It is this kind of doubt which is healthy to the soul.
If we can forge through to the other side, it almost always produces a more firm
foundation and walk with the Lord.
Coinciding with this form of doubt, there is also the doubt in oneself which
we skimmed over earlier.
I find that when I doubt myself, I submit my pride to the Lord.
When I doubt myself, I must submit control over my life and circumstances to the Lord.
When I doubt myself, I must submit my lofty knowledge and self-image to the Lord.
Doubt forces me to relinquish all things which are unstable and cling only to my trust
in God and God alone.
Inasmuch as suffering and trial produces this quality in us, it is productive.
Now that we have looked at doubt, let's consider it's opposite, certainty.
Unsuspected Idols
John ends his first epistle with a critical injunction which we as members of the
modern Christian community at large seem to have forgotten or lost along the way
like loose change between the hungry cushions of the family sofa.
Little children, keep yourselves from idols.
As we all well know an idol is generally conceived of as an image or something
which represents a deity which we worship. The generic idea which pops into ones
head upon considering this concept is the proverbial golden calf.
But that's wrong. Not just wrong, but dangerously wrong.
Because it leads us to believe that graven images are the only idols which
can persuade us to worship other gods.
There is a whole assortment of false gods which we, even as Christians, unwittingly
bow and pay homage before every single day.
Allow me to name a few for you. Arrogance. Snobbery. Selfishness. Self-Worth.
Lust. Envy. Money. Power. Privilege. The list could go on and on for pages.
Simply put, anything which detracts from God's place of prominence in our lives
and seeks to put itself on the throne is an idol.
John's words of warning still ring true today in our moment-by-moment lives.
I engage in this introduction to say that in this chapter
I'm confronting one of the most malignant and insidious idols we face in our
Christian walk. Certainty.
Doubt forces us to relinquish the idol of certainty.
Since God is truth, we shouldn't be ashamed to relinquish our idols.
Because idols are, by their very definition, false gods that can never fulfill; never satisfy.
The idol of certainty is merely one more to add to the growing pile.
Certainty is dangerous. It cloaks itself in religious piety but produces a supremely arrogant
disposition. The 'I am right and you are wrong' mentality rarely gets us anywhere
in social dealings anyway. But when it comes to witnessing the Gospel of Jesus Christ
it is downright ugly. It leeches away the beauty of the vision of the kingdom we are
called to preach and instead replaces it with hypocrisy.
Whenever anything, including our basic mindsets start to dethrone God and maneuver
their way to the center of our heart, it's time for them go.
Sometimes this is difficult to test, simply because these idols are so subtle.
Like some viruses, we simply do not acknowledge them as the enemy until it is too late.
But we can always tell an idol by the attitudes it produces in us.
When the behavior a mindset or philosophy or thought pattern produces fail to line
up with the commandments of Jesus, more likely than not it's an idol.
Frank Schaeffer has been quoted as saying 'Nobody has ever bombed an abortion clinic
or a mosque right after shouting 'But I could be wrong!!''
I believe he's on to something.
Certainty pushes us to make decisions with extreme consequences based on the absolute
confidence we have in our underlying principles.
Sometimes we use the Scripture to provide us with ammunition.
Sometimes we fall back on our basic image of who God is to provide backup.
Sometimes we're just that sure that our philosophy is correct.
But how are we justified in being this confident at all?
As human beings one of our defining attributes is our propensity for short-sightedness
and being misled. Look how easy it was for the serpent to deceive us in the garden!
We've been repeating the cycle of deception ever since.
It doesn't take much. Simply appeal to our self-worth and what we view as
the fundamental needs of our life, and you will quickly see the depths and depravity
that we are willing to sink to in order to violently defend our 'way of life' against
everyone else.
Certainty presents us with a deceptive idol to cling to.
Instead of trusting in God alone, we run and fall upon the graven image of our own hubris
and confidence in ourselves. We should know better.
Conclusion
I offer this essay on doubt as a further introduction to the proceeding chapters.
We should not feel ashamed or afraid to question some of the doctrines which we have taken
for granted since we can remember. We should not be ashamed or afraid to question these things
because that is exactly what we are expected and called to do according to Scripture
(1 Thess 5:21; Luk 12:57).
As I've stated repeatedly, if a doctrine cannot sustain its force when held up against a
cumulative portrait of Scripture and when held in tension against our conscience and the testimony
of our experience of God's character, then we have very good reasons for doubting its
veracity altogether.
Allow me to offer you, my reader, this opportunity to leave me here at this critical juncture.
If you hesitate here and are concerned that your image of me may be considerably lessened
by what you read in the chapters to come as I attack some of the more controversial and inflammatory doctrines of Christianity to seek answers, then by all means feel free to stop
reading here. It has never been my desire to weaken the faith of another or to place any stumbling
block in the path of my fellow brothers and sisters in Christ.
However, each must do according to his or her own conscience before the Lord.
Because He is able to make each of us stand holy and blameless before Him.
If you're sticking around though, let's proceed with boldness.
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