Doubt says “Are you there, Lord?” does it not? Is that a feeling?
No it’s not, Dale. You just made that up.
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And then we can pay attention to the reassuring facts we have from scripture and from others we trust, and hopefully our own experiences as we mature.
I don’t believe you have any way of determining whether your accounts are things we should expect to happen by chance or not. There are a large number of people in the world and a very large number of events happen to each of them every day, most of them highly improbable. Picking a series of improbable events simply because they fit a story you’d like to be true is an exercise in confirmation bias and an excellent way of creating false narratives. This is a universal human tendency and a constant temptation even for scientists; quite a lot of scientific practice is devoted to avoiding this temptation. Because if you don’t avoid it, your results will be meaningless. The fact that I want your conclusion to be true increases my caution about it.
Providing support for my skepticism is the long history of Christians telling such stories, many of which are obvious nonsense and many of which you would classify as rank superstition (or worse).
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We’ve been over this before.
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I tend to hear doubt more often described as an “experience,” but that would seem to include some degree of feeling. Have you ever felt more than one feeling at a time or is it just me? 
Again, I completely agree with your encouragement to look to God – I just don’t think it makes anyone an “immature” Christian for experiencing doubt even in the midst of following Jesus.
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Sure. It just is not justified to say it should be the steady state condition. I think I may have said that all doubt is not wrong, but we can decide what to do with it. Some prostrate pleading may be in order. (Has anyone done that?)
No kidding. We’ve also asked you to give your favorite topic a rest, if I’m not mistaken.
Forum you have once again failed to respect:
Avoid repeating the same ideas over and over because you have failed to convince everyone to accept your viewpoint.
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This thread is now a huge 149 posts long. And where have I mentioned Christians and doubt before.
I was referring to the Maggie/Rich Stearns “objective evidence” you bring up every day, despite us asking you not to, as a way of insisting other people’s doubts are stupid.
And while he’s dropped off my radar, and his last public display of foolish self-destructive behavior was very sad, Sproul Jr. once made a great remark at a Ligonier conference by telling how he likes to ask people what do you know.
For the Christian struggling with doubt, “What do you know?”
Knowing that you are a sinner and Jesus is the only religious leader that gives you his perfect righteousness, well it’s a pretty good thing to know.
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Not so.
Yes. We know more than we think we do, if we will just pay attention to the right things. And that is a choice. Maybe we are so busy accommodating that we fail to see important content.
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As a kind of deep irony, there’s a real concern for people, and yet it comforts rather than corrects. I seem to remember a theme in the Bible about this as well.
And it’s certainly not black and white. There’s a real fuzziness, so that those who are wrong can often and easily cry foul when corrected (regardless of what side of the issue they fall).
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Good point. It is better to point a drowning person to the life preserver within reach than it is comfort them. Mashing two metaphors, you can lead a horse to water but you cannot make it grab the life preserver.
“It’s ok to doubt, we all do it, so don’t worry about it at all.”
And because of paranoia (or disobedience), never get to learn or experience some really cool things.
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Dale and @heymike3 , I know you mean well.
However, do you see how this sounds a bit like “full gospel” and Pentecostalism, faith healing–and even the discussion we had earlier about whether we would be safe to meet in Covid times, because of the nee for faith?
It sounds like we are saying “name it, claim it.”
It is well intended, but not only does it not work, but blaming others for their apparent lack of being able to fake it
- puts a burden on them that can drive them from God, implying that He is not willing to deal with doubt, or
- as with Lewis as a child, makes Him look angry and burdensome, and unjust. It drove him away from Christ and into the arms of first spiritism, and then atheism, when he found he could not satisfy his need for faith and closeness with God (“Surprised by Joy”).
- Do you notice how, in arguing with a sibling or spouse, their ending the conversation by saying “you’re lying,” or “you’re being selfish” discounts any attention to the facts of the disagreement, and puts the other person down?
Again, it is not intended–but that is the sum of what can happen.
Thank you.
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Most, if not all of those extremes, would be rightly corrected by a balanced reading of the Bible. However, I do not find any support in the Bible for the kind of skepticism you seem to have.
Can you clarify? Thanks.
Are you saying we can only allow ourselves the amount of doubt that the Bible prescribes?
That doesn’t make sense to me. Would we accept a Muslim or Hindu’s response to us that they can only doubt as much as their holy book recommends?
How can we say we are being intellectually clear if we use this argument? It sounds like a special pleading?
Thanks
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