Ever doubted your faith? You know; it really is ok to answer that question. Most of us experience some form of doubt when it comes to God and the Kingdom of Heaven. Atheist, agnostics, and authentic Christ followers have questions about the Divine which can’t always be answered in a nice cookie cutter fashion. With that in mind we began a short series at The Crossings this past Sunday entitled, “Oh God, Help My Unbelief!” The launch pad for our study comes from Mark 9:24 with a man who struggled with his belief. The man had tried everything and prayed feverishly for a son with horrendous sufferings. Jesus came, healed the boy, and encouraged the man’s faith. But what about you and me and our questions? What about the times when Jesus doesn’t seem to swoop in and save the day? What about the times when we doubt?
In our study, we looked at three major themes.
1. Reasons for Unbelief:
-Unanswered Prayer.
-Baggage from our past.
-Experiencing physical and emotional sickness.
-Doing life in a society that opposes faith.
-Seasons of life that we move through.
-Simple rebellion where we don’t want to believe.
2. Dealing with Unbelief:
-Know that it’s ok to ask questions and look for answers.
-Dangers of ignoring the questions.
-There are real and quick answers to some questions.
-There are questions that will take longer to answer and patience is required. (That’s called Faith)
3. Misunderstandings about Belief:
-Belief does not mean you have all the answers or everything figured out.
-Seeing rather than believing a testimony is not true faith. Note Hebrews 11:1
-Positive feelings or experiences do not mean you have true faith.
-Believing things which contradict scripture does not mean you have true faith.
This next Sunday we will look at:
1. Dangerous ways to build faith.
2. Healthy ways to build faith.
In conclusion, I’ll be honest and admit that I have wrestled with particular faith questions myself. I don’t get it all. But I’m hanging on to what I do know and trusting in the person of Jesus Christ. Actually, that would be my main thrust, pointing everyone not to a church or a system, but simply to Jesus Christ.
Grant, thanks for jumping into the discussion. You have some great questions which unfortunately can’t all be answered in full detail here. I’ll make an attempt to address your questions and will probably talk too much on some points and miss on others. Please forgive me if I miss something. But I hope I can point you in the right direction and maybe some points can be dissected later on.
1. I’m a bit troubled with your statement that “When I was 13, I went through the sacraments of becoming a born again Christian.” I was not there and I don’t know what you were taught. But in the Bible, there is nothing indicating that there should be a man-made “sacrament” between us and God. The basics of being “born again” are simple. Man created theological systems are complicated.
2. You have touched on an issue that causes a whole lot of doubt in the hearts of people and that is personal suffering. Baggage from childhood is a big one. I get the deal with parents splitting up. My childhood had plenty of baggage and dysfunction in it. Less than some and more than others. But I get the pain there. You prayed for things to work out and they didn’t. I can’t give a perfect answer to that one especially since there is so much emotion involved. But I would say that part of the big picture there is the fact that God has given mankind a free will. We are to pray. But other people still have a choice to follow God’s plan or reject it. We hurt when they reject God and we have to deal with it. But God is not the cause of the pain we deal with. The other people are. We do know though that there will be a judgment day in which God will settle all the scores. Passages like PS 68:5 are encouraging ones to me in which the Bible speaks of God being the “Father to the Fatherless.”
3. There are indeed times when we are to “wait on the Lord.” There are other times where we are to get up and walk. In fact Jesus teaches a parable in Matt 25 about those who were productive and those who were lazy. My point being that sometimes it is hard to discern the difference between the times when we need to wait and the times we need to push something forward. That is a hard part about faith and I still get that one wrong at times. But again, that is part of this series about faith and doubt. Sometime people believe that they can’t have “faith” because they don’t have all the answers.
4. The whole discussion of gay and homosexual issues is a huge hot topic today. But the Bible does speak to that issue. It also speaks to many other issues which our society ignores. I do not reject that these people may feel same sex attraction. The question is how we respond to that. The present system says that we should say it is normal (like a race). But we are not talking about a skin pigment here, but a sexual preference. We all have preferences in many areas and sexuality is one of them. But that does not mean that all of our preferences are good for us and society. A man, or woman, may have a sexual preference for multiple heterosexual partners and say that they are wired that way. That does not mean their free expression of that is good for society. Many of us have grown up with wrecked parental marriages because one parent ran off with someone else. I included a link in one post a while back that noted that really celibacy is a serious option for those with same sex attractions. The bible actually honors those who are celibate as they have more time to devote to kingdom service. The point being that God ordained sexuality in creation as a good thing, but a practice between a married man and woman for life. Now a big thing you have rightly touched on is that some in the “Christian” community have totally responded with hatred toward homosexuality. That is wrong. But so is homosexuality as is adultery and anything else outside the design of God.
5. You have rightly pointed out that there are a lot of black eyes on the face of “Christendom” over the past 1800 years. I do not deny that. But this is why I always make a point to speak of “Authentic Christianity” verses the fake stuff. There are some really bad teachers in education. But you would not say Grant that all teachers are bad. A true mark of an authentic Christian is not what title they wear, but whether or not Jesus is in their hearts. As posted on FB recently, one can judge a tree by its fruit. Jesus even stated that there would be lots of folks who would say to him “Lord, Lord” but would not be in the Kingdom of heaven. Why? Because they refused to obey him. There are a number of places in scripture, like Matthew 7:15ff, where Jesus and others warned of “wolves in sheep’s clothing” who deceive the masses. So I would say that you are correct that evils have been purported in the name of Jesus. But those actions do not line up with what Jesus taught. The action here is to call into question those people, but not Jesus. Also, there are authentic Christians who just drop the ball at times. Some of the dumbest things I ever did in my life were after I became a Christian. I acknowledged that, took ownership of that, confessed that to God, and then accepted his forgiveness which he merited for me on the cross.
On the flip side, consider all that has come into the world which is good over the past 2000 years. I like the way you’ve spoken about taking care of children. It was the first Christians who would go to the Roman trash dumps to rescue infants and children who were abandoned there. That was the first century form of abortion. Consider all the orphanages started by Christians. Consider all the institutions of higher education. Most don’t know this, but Oxford, Harvard, and Yale were first started to help give an education to ministers who could not afford one. The original hospitals, Red Cross, Salvation Army were all started by Christians. All these good things came into the world by Christians; not atheists. Some of the most intelligent people in history were followers of Christ. Newton, Kepler, Bach. In our time, JRR Tolkien and CS Lewis both were serous followers and Christ. The master piece from Lewis, “The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe” clearly has Christian imagery all through it. Note also it was the strong Christian, William Wilberforce, who led the abolition of slavery in England while he was in British parliament.
6. To ask about the Bible or whether or not Jesus really rose from the dead are valid questions. If Jesus did not rise after he was “killed” centuries ago as you mentioned in your comments, then we need to be honest and admit that Christianity is a farce. Jesus clearly taught that he would be killed and rise again on the third day. If that is not what happened, then that means that he was either a liar or a nut case. Either way, if that is the case, then that means that the hope of Christianity is bankrupt. On the other hand, if he did rise from the grave, then that means that everything he said is true. The first followers were so convinced of the resurrection that they all went to violent deaths for their faith. My point here is that there are indeed answers to the question of the resurrection and the authority of the bible. In fact, I made a post a while back about the evidences for the Bible. (Reading the Reliable) At this point, people just have to be willing to go back and look and examine the evidences. Many times people have an emotional angst against Christianity, but never honestly examine the evidence. I’m reminded of a guy name Lee Stroble who wrote “The Case for Christ”. Stroble was an atheist who thought that Christians were dumb and naive. But after watching the transformation in his wife who accepted Christ, he then took his logical investigative journalism and began to study the claims of Christ and Christianity. From that he came to logical conclusions which brought him to Christ.
I think you have a misunderstanding of the point of the Bible. The ultimate point of the Bible is to show God’s love for us. Are there things you don’t understand? Yes, as for me. But I think you may have gotten stuck on things you don’t like or understand and have missed the main point. You mentioned slavery. The point there was not that God was condoning slavery, but showing messed up humans how to negotiate bad situations. I suppose a modern example would be if a polygamist in Africa accepted Christ, he would need some wisdom on how to handle the many wives he had. There is God’s design. This guy is out of it. But what do you do now? Does he pick one and kick the others out to fend for themselves? The OT would teach him to take care of those women and not throw them out. But that is not the same thing as God saying he endorsed the idea of having many wives. That is one reason why there are those “odd” sounding laws in the OT.
Conclusion:
Grant you do have some great questions. But I want you to know there are also some great answers for those who honestly seek them. There really are solid proofs for both the Bible and the resurrection of Christ. Have Christians done stupid stuff in the past? Yes. As pointed out before, some of those folks were never really “born again” in the first place. They just knew how to jump through the right religious and political hoops to access power. There are also others who have been born again, but have just made stupid mistakes or engaged in deliberate rebellion. Therefore, I think a big thing that I try to do all the time is just point people to Jesus. Don’t look at me, or any other preacher or system, just to Jesus.
Faith does not mean that we no longer ask questions. Yes, there will always be bigger and bigger questions and we will not fully comprehend God, especially on this side of eternity. But there are many questions people ask about the Bible and Jesus for which there are indeed answers for those who will take the time to look.
Again, I’m very glad to hear from you and always enjoy dialoguing when we have an aim. So please know you are heard. Please know that some of the pain you have experienced, I have as well. But in it all, I know that God is capable to working things out in a good end that I could not have imagined.
s
When I was 13, I went through the sacraments of becoming a born again Christian. The road to get through that was rough, but I endured it as I endure other things. When my parents broke up, I had thought it was time to start to see what others are like. True to form, I discovered the truth about how marriages end…a LOT. Over half of my classmates have gone through a divorce, if not more. I started to question, but the fundamentalist community said, “Wait”. So I waited, and watched my parent in wretched shape as she prayed to God to preserve the marriage, while my brother and I could clearly see it was over. As I started to cool my emotions toward Christ and Christianity, I started to see the church erupt in a trust fund scandal, followed with a megachurch minister being discovered having affairs. I entered the military clinging to some beliefs, and also found myself challenged with issues. God told me to wait. Wait while the military officers were wondering if I was Air Force Material. I needed help. He said, “Wait”. It was when I had to go to a Psychiatric board when I said, “@#$#$!! waiting. If God is not saving me, I must save myself.” I did take deliberate action, not caring what scripture told me. I survived the board. Two years later and at another Air Force base, I fell in love with a new arriving airman. I found out later that she was gay. That brought into question the hatred….yes….hatred the Christian institution has as well as the US government at that time about the prejudice of gays in particular. After that, I learned much about the history of Christianity in the world and the damage that Christianity as a culture did to the planet. The Celts, the Crusades (that many ministers wish to go on to save the World for Jesus. The Native American Genocide, THe witch trials, slavery, as perfectly condoned in Leviticus. No, Christianity is not the answer. To see a world government under Christian leadership is no better at all than the leadership we see in Iran and Afghanistan. I live my life, taking care of our most precious commodity…our children. I take time to work in soup kitchens, and I fight against prejudice, which currently takes the cloak of the Christian institution against the rights of gay human adults. I sometimes hear about how Stalin, Hitler and Pol Pot killed millions more than any Christian war has done. I find that completely laughable, seeing the mass genocide, destruction of cultures and church rule for nearly eighteen centuries. I am a former Born again Christian who has read the bible from cover to cover and am now a staunch Agnostic, taking care of society for the sake of society alone, not in the name of a man killed centuries ago, or for a text written in full prejudice against all but those who follow.
Barb, I think you touched on something important there. Faith is indeed a journey that has many ups and down. There is a faith point where we step across the line to accept Jesus Christ. But then there is an ongoing relationship where faith is tested and strengthened. When you look at the great giants of the “Faith” in the Bible, we find that they also went through many valleys and mountains. That should be an encouragement to us all.
Thanks for jumping in Amy. Agreed. That was actually one of the points I wanted to really make in the series. We won’t have all the answers this side of eternity. Faith means that we press forward anyway. Excellent!
I completely agree! I gave my life to God at the age of 8 and even went to Bible College after high school. While at college, I began to question my faith and through that journey I developed a faith that became mine instead of just a “mini me” faith of my parents. Then, when I married and moved far away from family my faith was again questioned, but led to stronger beliefs and reliance on The One that gave His life for me. Then, when we adopted our two children after being married for 18 years (what were we thinking?!), my faith took on more questions. I now look at my faith through the eyes of a mother who wants her legacy to be leading her children to be sold out believers in Christ. Again, I find my faith stronger because of my questions and the search for those answers. I have come to believe that if I’m not questioning my faith from time to time I am becoming stagnant and not advancing the Gospel.
This is a reason why so many people just wont take a chance and have a relationship with Christ. They think doubt is not okay and that they will be a “fake” if they say they believe and then have doubts. We sometimes just need to let people know it is okay and no of us have it all figured out. We are just making a choice to believe everyday even when it is not easy!