“The only thing that casts doubt on the miracles of Jesus,” a Wisconsin fishing guide once quipped, “is that they were all witnessed by fishermen.” I chuckled over that, knowing fisherman the way I do. But for many people, the subject of doubt is no laughing matter.
If being a Christian is all about faith, “from first to last” as Paul puts it, isn’t doubt about the worst thing that could happen to a person? Doesn’t the presence of doubt cast doubt on the genuineness of a person’s salvation?
To get to the bottom of this, one must first distinguish between doubt and unbelief. Doubt resides in the mind; unbelief in the heart. Doubt is intellectual; unbelief is spiritual. Doubt motivates a person to seek answers while unbelief deadens a person and leaves him unconcerned. Paradoxically, it is generally the believer who has doubts, while the unbeliever does not.
It is important (and helpful) to understand that most believers will struggle with doubt at some point in their lives. Because the idea, “I am the only one who has doubts,” is so terrifying, many people don’t admit their doubts and end up living in misery. They hide their doubts for fear of being thought a fraud, but this inevitably leads to more doubt. It’s a vicious cycle.
But most people have to deal with doubt from time to time. We are like the man in the gospel story who says to Jesus, “I believe!” only to cry out in the next breath, “Help my unbelief!”
A good example comes from John Wesley, the founder of Methodism. After a mission trip to the American colonies that seemed to him to be less than successful, Wesley concluded that he was not only not a minister, but that he was himself a lost soul. Then, at a meeting in Aldersgate Street in central London, Wesley encountered God in a life-changing way. He wrote that his heart had been “strangely warmed.”
It was the beginning of an extraordinary life of faith that had worldwide impact. Wesley established the great Methodist movement. He was a principal figure in a spiritual awakening that some historians believe spared England a revolution like the one that splintered France. The revival spread across the ocean and had a powerful effect on people living in America. What most people don’t know is that a year after his Aldersgate experience, Wesley wrote in his journal, “I know that I am not a Christian. I know it because I do not feel that I love God and his Son Jesus Christ as my Savior.”
Even great men have doubts. It is what one does with those doubts that determines whether they will strengthen faith or weaken it.
When doubts arise, there are certain steps a person can take. First, even before examining the doubt, the believer should examine himself. The Christian who is living a hypocritical life is certain to suffer doubts: doubts that are intellectually unassailable until that person has faced his or her sins and dealt with them in an appropriate manner.
Then it is useful to discover where doubts come from. When the twentieth century’s most influential Christian apologist, C. S. Lewis, struggled with doubt, he discovered that his doubts were not based on rational grounds at all but on “the irrational deadweight of my old skeptical habits, and the spirit of the age, and the cares of the day.” He came to realize that he didn’t “think” these things; he “felt” them. And, of course, it is nearly impossible to reason oneself out of a feeling.
Sometimes doubts about God stem from doubts about other people. The man whose alcoholic father repeatedly failed to love him, the woman whose husband was unfaithful, the parishioner whose need was overlooked by the church may all suffer doubts by extension. These may not be legitimate, but they are real and must be faced.
Perhaps the best advice for a person suffering from doubt is this: confront the doubt, share it with a wise Christian friend, work through it, and then move on. Doubt can only defeat a person if it keeps him from doing the things that he has no doubt he should be doing.
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