I think what a lot of people call ‘doubt’ you and I might call ‘to question’ or ‘to be unsure’ about something. I don’t mean that in a denigrating way, but to try and separate it from doubt as unbelief, which, is often the form of doubt that is talked about most often in our circles.
To be unsure is normal and to question is healthy. And although both can be part of, or produce, hard and painful times in our walk with God, they are a normal and natural part of endeavouring to walk by faith.
@beaglelady please correct me if I have gotten the wrong end of the stick here.
Everyone has the occasional doubt, even heroes of the faith like John the Baptist and Saint Thomas the apostle. Our rector used to say “Doubt is a part of faith” on Easter morning, during his welcome, when there were visitors who might be unsteady in their faith. Only a fundamentalist has to be 100% right all the time.
I never read Evens, but I guess all the age-old theological questions? Who was Jesus? Should I believe this stuff? […, especially after a crank sermon that mortified you in its inanity and you wish you could find some way to crawl under a rock.] Is the God thing true? Etc.
(smile!) That’s a good description of some feelings we can have. Though I’ve been more foolish in my own faith, often, than many pastors I heard.
Evans is really very empathetic. She was a terrific evangelist in her school, high school and college. If you read her book, “Faith Unraveled,” it was partly out of empathy that she began to question her faith. She wondered what really happened to those who have never heard–for example, the young Afghan woman who was executed by the Taliban for defending herself against an abusive husband. She kept trying to live the same as before, but the questions, as she wrote, kept nagging her, “like a pebble in my shoe.” Her training was also in journalism, so she is a great communicator.
Austin Fischer wrote that it is not doubts, but the feeling we are not allowed to doubt, that cause us to lose faith. She kept trying, like Enns, to not only keep the faith, but even to apply it so she could teach it well to her son. I would highly recommend “Faith Unraveled” as an easy reading book to find what respectful questions can be. She writes more later on some answers.
One of the things we are told to do, in the Psalms, particularly, to strengthen our faith, is to remember the works of the Lord. And speaking of concordism, God’s providential miracles (not necessarily breaking any natural laws) in the lives of his Old Testament saints are to be remembered and rehearsed in our minds. That goes for NT ‘heroes of the faith’, too, as well as many over the millennia since then, including today (regulars, please forgive me for mentioning Maggie, Rich Stearns and George Müller again).
O children of God, seek after a vital experience of the Lord’s lovingkindness, and when you have it, speak positively of it; sing gratefully; shout triumphantly.
I remember reading it in high school five and a half decades ago. One of the best things my parents ever did for me was to send their underachieving, ‘not applying himself’, son to a Christian school for just his last year. My favorite prof was a PhD in Assyriology who could translate cuneiform and was teaching for mere peanuts at this little school. I went from a junior class of 1400+ to a graduating class of 22.
[He never talked about his degree and was a very modest guy. I learned about it from a former colleague of his. If I ever had a mentor, he was it.]