THE COMMON CHRISTIAN DILEMMA

I am writing about doubt because I know that many times our prayers are hindered because we have some secret uncertainty hanging around. I believe that it would be good to uncover doubt, so as we get into prayer more deeply, we could at least have some knowledge of the hindrance. Doubt, like everything in this life, has a particular anatomy and it is good to have a view of doubt in order to strengthen faith: 1) We must understand the character of doubt; 2) We must learn to resist its confusion; and 3) We must uncover and confront doubt’s real causes. We should all know that faith is much more than just the absence of doubt, but an understanding of doubt is the key to strong faith, a sound mind, and a quiet heart.

There are some groups of Christians who are very liberal and tend to be too soft on doubt and this spiritual permissiveness can become a slip-way to rank unbelief. On the other side, we have those who are very conservative and tend to be too hard on doubt, demonizing the consequences of unresolved doubt, which can leave a doubter in a state of guilt and despair that they dare not acknowledge their doubts to others or even themselves. When we study the scriptures we find a realistic yet healthy view of doubt that is definitely serious but not terminal by contrast. Contrary to widespread misunderstanding, doubt is not the same as unbelief, so it is not the opposite of faith. It is a state of mind in suspension between faith and unbelief. To believe is to be of one mind in accepting something as true; to disbelieve is to be of one mind in rejecting it; to doubt is to waver somewhere in between the two and thus be of two minds. (Jas 1:6-8)

James is absolutely true, but I want to make an important distinction that uncovers a major misconception of doubt – the idea that a believer betrays faith and surrenders to unbelief by doubting. The doubleness represents the deepest dilemma of doubt. A heart in doubt is a divided heart. In fact, all the New Testament words for doubt are dipsychos, diakrino, dialogizoma, distazo, and meteorizomai. They all have this sense of doubleness. There are other languages that speak of this like the Chinese speak of a person with ‘a foot in two boats.’ Yet even though doubt is a dilemma and God will never honor it, there is an all important difference that exists between open-minded uncertainty of doubt and the closed-minded certainty of unbelief.

Faith is crucial (Ro 14:23; Heb 11:6) and doubt is serious, but doubt is not unbelief and it is not terminal. It is the halfway stage that can lead one to a deepened faith as easily as it can breakdown to unbelief. That is what being fully persuaded is all about. From the outside, doubt can be described with certain clarity, from the inside it is foggy, gray, and disorienting. That is why if you want to strengthen your faith, you must learn to anticipate and resist the confusions of doubt, don’t confuse doubt with unbelief. By doing that you’ll only re-enforce doubtfulness by adding guilt. It is really true that there is no believing without some doubting. But since belief strengthens as the Christian understands and resolves doubt, we can say “if we doubt in believing, we nevertheless also believe in doubting.”

The prevalence of doubt in the lives of God’s children seems strange, yet it is common among believers. In fact, when we examine the scriptures we’ll find that faith and doubt coexist in a Christian’s life experience (Mt 28:17; Lu 12:28-29). Why is this? It is because of the remnants of sin. Doubt is a fact of life and we are all subject to it. It differs from Christian to Christian only in frequency, degree, or length of experience. Did you know that most of the passages in the New Testament where the word doubt occurs refer to the believer. This really underscores the need to deal with doubt when it arises. It may come in time of a financial difficulty, change of a situation, bodily affliction, loss of a loved one, temptation, or persecution. In these kind of times, we tend to forget God’s faithfulness to keep his promises. To doubt is to be uncertain about God and to feel isolated from Him. This condition feels like a giant despair surfaces and it imprisons us in a dark dungeon of despair and we begin to hear and believe the voices that say, “…there is no help for him in God” (Ps 3:2). In Ps 3:1-8, it says that we will find help in God! Isa 50:7 says, “…because the sovereign lord helps me, I will not be disgraced” and Ps 46:1, 5 says, “God is our refuge and strength, a ever present help in trouble…God will help…at break of day”. The problem is for those that are doubting the ”break of day” has not yet come. It is still dark. That’s why we have to complete the course and stay on track to recognize the symptoms of doubt. You’re not unique. “There hath no temptation taken you but such as is common to man: but God is faithful, who will not suffer you to be tempted above that ye are able; but will make a way to escape, that ye may be able to bear it” (1Co 10:13). Great saints of God have been where you are now.

Think of Elijah, suffering from total exhaustion; he doubted God’s future purpose for his life and he laid down to die (1Ki 19:4). Then we have Jeremiah who bravely faced being beaten and put in stocks; he is a different man in private when suffering catches up with him and he cries out, “O lord, you deceived me, and I was deceived…” (Jer 20:7). Then we have John the Baptist, fearless in denouncing Herod’s immoral behavior yet he receives an unwelcome visit from doubt as he languishes in prison and sends his disciples to find out whether Jesus is really the Messiah after all (Lu 7:19).

It is interesting to me that one of the things I hear some say, which is responsible for doubt, is “Why do bad things happen to good people?” The question I like to ask is “Why do good things happen to bad people?” Since Jesus said that there were no good people. “And he said unto him, why callest thou me good? There is none good but one, that is god:” (Mt 19:17). That is the real mystery. We live in a fallen and sinful world and even as Christian there are times that we can have bad things happen to us. That would be more normal than having good things happen to bad people. But see, that only proves the loving compassion of the Lord. There is a lot of scripture I could site that says “the wicked will prosper,” yet we are not to let that bother us, God has ways of doing things. He is a good God and he loves us. Some of us tend to fight and want to do things our way. God has to wean us of this. You know it is easy to have a system or method to follow. We are all works oriented and it can make us feel good, but that is not what God has in his plan. He is going to make some real uncomfortable until they can learn to relinquish all over to him. So the doubts will fly, but he’ll do that work in you. Just relax.

Let me conclude with the antidote for doubt found in the short book of Jude 1:20-21. In the Greek text this is one sentence and its verb is the word keep (verse 21), which is surrounded by three participles. What are they: “building up yourselves, praying in the Holy Ghost, looking for mercy…” A participle is a verb form that usually ends in – ‘ing’ and less frequently in – ‘en’ or ‘d’ or ‘t’. It functions primarily as an adjective and it may also serve as an adverb. In any case, the sentence could be rearranged thus. “Begin right now, beloved, to keep yourselves in the love of god, by continually building yourselves up, by praying unceasingly, and by constantly looking for the mercy of our lord Jesus Christ.” So we see here three things that will remove doubt: 1) Building yourselves up; 2) Praying unceasingly; and 3) Looking for mercy…

Let’s look at these one at a time. 1) Edification – building yourself up…building upon the foundation of “your most holy faith” (Jude 1:3) that stands first. A precious stone in that foundation is God’s love demonstrated by the sacrifice of His son for the sins of His people (Joh 3:14-17; Ro 5:8; 1Jo 4:10), then the covenant blessing that flows from that is the forgiveness of all our iniquities (Mt 26:28; Eph 1:7; Heb 8:12). 2) Jude also urges us to have effective prayer, to pray “in the Holy Spirit” (verse 20). I believe this kind of praying brings to life a soul drowning in doubt. This is prayer with divine assistance, fervor, favor (Ro 8:26-27; Eph 6:18). 3) Jude then demands the expectation of the “mercy of our lord Jesus Christ to bring you to eternal life” (verse 21). This mercy He sends to us in this world (Ps 23:6; 27:13-14; Heb 4:14-16); I think the final word to all of us would be that we must exercise the patience and compassion of the Lord toward those whom we are bound to help. “Be merciful to those who doubt” (Jude 1:22).