Doubt is OK

 

 A Painful Experience

Anyone who has passed through a season of doubt will know what a painful experience it is. Doubt comes in one of two varieties.

Tier 1 doubt, by far the most painful and serious, is when we doubt our own salvation. This may arise out of personal failures, the apostasy of someone close to us or some terrible church experience. Or any number of other causes. I plan to write about this kind soon.

Tier 2 doubt is also painful, but far less serious and takes place when we begin to doubt some truth we once held dear. I'm not thinking about the divinity of Jesus Christ, or any such central truth, but a secondary, or even tertiary doctrine. 

In this blog I only consider the less serious variety of doubt, which is a common experience of believers: 

• After the resurrection of Jesus, Thomas doubted (John 20)
  
• In Galillee some of the eleven doubted Jesus had risen from the dead, "but some doubted." (Matthew 28)
• Jude encourages us to be "merciful to those who doubt." (Jude 22)
  

Tier 2 doubt can make you a wiser and stronger believer.

My own Journey of Faith (and doubt)

I used to believe everything "solid as a rock."

Key word is "everything."

You could ask me a question about any spiritual topic and my answer, should I have had one, would be immediate, clear and certain. Doubt? Never.

But then one day, perhaps 20 years ago, I began to question my own stance on one of the secondary doctrines of the Christian faith - it does not matter which one it was for the purpose of this blog. I did not doubt the doctrine itself, I began to doubt my own particular secondary views about that doctrine.

All I had believed and read thus far on that particular issue, I began to question. It was quite a rocky journey. And for me a rather dramatic U-turn.

(Now before anyone calls the Doctrine Police or hails the Truth Ambulance, the secondary doctrinal change I'm talking about is in the same category as say an Amillennialist becoming a Premillennialist. They continue to believe that Jesus Christ is returning in power and glory, they are just less certain of the secondary details, and especially the details they used to hold. Nothing foundational. No phone calls please.)

The Joy of Certainty

My own life-long journey of faith and doubt has taken me on parallel train tracks.

On the one hand, I have become more and more certain of the primary truths of Christianity, of the Gospel - found for example in the Apostle's Creed.

I am more sure today that Jesus Christ is the Son of God who rose triumphantly from the dead than at any previous time in my life. I believe more firmly that there is a heaven to gain and a hell to shun. I am convinced that faith alone is the way to eternal life. I am convinced that God alone (not chance or law) is the Creator of this glorious universe.

But at the very same time, I have become more and more sceptical of the stance I once took on some secondary doctrines. (I have learnt to hold on to these with a lighter touch, and sometimes even placed them on a shelf labelled "not sure yet."). 

Never sceptical of the doctrine itself but only about the secondary stances I used to take on it.

Secondary doctrines include the following:

• the precise work of the Holy Spirit we can expect today in the life of a believer and in the church
• the age of the earth and the age of the universe
• the exact details of Christ's return
• the precise nature of the narrative of Genesis 1 (poetry? narrative?  elevated prose?)
  
• what is the exact nature of the church
  
• and so on

I used to be totally convinced that the secondary positions I had adopted were right...

No Place for Doubt

... and the reason for this certitude was not merely youthful pride or zeal without knowledge. There were - and often still are - two doubt problems in the good evangelical traditions I grew up in and love.

(1) First, there was no place for doubt. Doubt was frowned upon and even regarded as a sin. Which meant that if a doubt was rising in your mind, one of two things happened. Either you ignored or suppressed it and lived with the pain of cognitive dissonance, or you apostastized and left the church altogether.

Doubt - asking questions - was treated in the same way as unbelief.

(2) No distinction was made between primary and secondary doctrines. Even more significant, we were taught to hold primary and secondary truths with equal zeal. No distinction was made between primary and secondary truth. Which meant that if we were beginning to question our take on a secondary doctrine we found ourselves feeling guilty of primary unbelief. 

There is a vast - indeed an eternal - difference between primary and secondary doctrines. (See a fuller explanation of the difference between primary and secondary HERE.)

"Be merciful to those who doubt" (Jude 22)

Churches ought to teach the difference between primary and secondary truth. We all need to hold onto primary salvation doctrines with utter conviction and certitude. But we must hold secondary doctrines with sensitivity and humility.

We can't be sure about many secondary doctrines, not least because genuine believers on different sides throughout history have and do believe different things.

The very fact that good Christians do not believe the same things about how Jesus will return, for example (will he come before or after a millennium or without a literal millennium's involvement at all), should humble us all.

A Sobering Tale

Imagine a believer who was taught that the earth was created in six days about 6000 years ago (something God is quite able to have done, BTW). Imagine, however, that this doctrine was taught him with the same conviction and certainty as the Resurrection of Jesus from the dead. Suppose there was no recognition or admission that there is a world of difference between the resurrection of Jesus and one particular interpretation of Genesis 1-2.

Then imagine that this believer goes on to study the wonderful world of atomic physics. He (of course it could be a she) begins to understand the atomic clocks God has created and placed into the natural world. And he begin to question, and even to doubt, that the world is only 6000 years old.

This would be fine if he was able to ask questions and to share his doubts with his church community who might have replied something like this: "The most important creation truth is that God made this glorious universe and everything in it. Do you believe that? And do you still believe in the Resurrection which is far more important than whether the world was created 6000 years ago in six days."

But suppose his newfound doubts were treated in the category as heresy? He would feel obliged not only to give up his original secondary views of creation, but the whole Gospel to boot, for they have been tied together.

I once had a friend....

Doubt is OK

Our evangelical churches need to make space for doubt. If they don't we'll drive doubters into the hands of a strange modern aberration called "emerging Christianity" which has already abandoned not only secondary doctrines but primary ones too.

Our churches need to make space for doubt.

Not unbelief. 

There is a world of difference between doubt and unbelief.

Doubt says "I believe in Jesus Christ but I'm struggling with this issue or that issue." 

Unbelief says "I won't believe, full stop, no matter."

Unbelief is a sin. 

Doubt, on the other hand, is the human flip side of the genuine coin of faith.

Jesus never condemns Thomas for doubting. Quite to the contrary, he does everything he can to calm his heart and alleviate his doubt.

Unbelief damns the soul while doubt strengthens our faith in the long run, and makes us more sensitive to the questions of others and the questions of the lost and needy world Jesus came to save. 

AI drawing: "Dalle draw a person in doubt, digital art"