Very good point. Randal Rauser’s “What’s So Confusing About Grace” runs on the same lines.
C S Lewis, in “Surprised By Joy,” wrote that his fear of losing his salvation led him to eventually rejecting the faith as a child. I struggled for nearly a year with the same fear at age 20–I drove my parents and pastor nuts with the questions. Part of that was Hebrews, which I agree is about the potential of leaving the faith.
On the other hand, maybe what we miss is God’s character. Liam had said that Arminians and Calvinists may be surprised at the actual answer to their differences, and maybe there’s something there. It seems that if God is really just, He has to be better --not worse–than our own parents. My parents gave me the benefit of the doubt (to allude to Greg Boyd’s terrific work). They knew that I was imperfect, and frequently failed unintentionally. Could it be that doubt and deconversion work the same way?. God, after all, “knows our frame; He remembers that we are dust.” He knows that through great struggle with truth, some of us come to the conclusion that we don’t see His evidence. I have to believe that God would not blame us for not being able to believe against the evidence. Is He to punish us for using the brains He gave us?
There are other instances that imply repentance is more important than knowledge; an attitude of the heart, more than understanding. After all, He has decreed that many of mankind are born into Hindu, Buddhist, and other religious (or non religious) families, and never even hear the message of salvation. Other children never have the ability to fully understand the message because they are struggle with mental challenges.
George Macdonald (“Unspoken Sermons”) and Lewis ( “Mere Christianity”) both argue that God never gives up on redeeming his children–whether born in or outside the faith–for all of eternity. Even those who are saved, He purifies for all eternity, to be more like Him; and for those who die not knowing the message, He also gives the opportunity for learning more about Him after death. They felt that even for those who go, as in “Great Divorce,” to Hell knowingly, He offers repentance. It’s a beautiful picture of one way God, being truly just, may work.
At any rate, there are many good reasons we may doubt and leave the faith. One of the strongest is to believe that God is unjust. As Rachel Held Evans wrote, once you believe God is unjust, the impetus to find him drops significantly. But as Austin Fisher wrote, it’s frequently not doubt, but the perception that God doesn’t allow us to doubt, that causes many to leave the faith. Focusing on God as the ultimately truly just One may clear up some of the questions of what happens to those of us who struggle with doubt.
Thanks.
