Wrestle-Worthy Doubts – Part II

This present series of musings was inspired by a reader who asked me to describe some of my wrestle-worthy doubts. I’m not inclined to bear my deepest and darkest secrets to the unseen masses – be they one or a million – who read this blog. But I will not hide my doubts or struggles either. The truth be told, all doubts are wrestle-worthy.

Doubts do play a role in moving us away from our presuppositions about God and toward a point of truly examining the Scriptures. Yet some Believers grow uneasy with doubts that linger or reoccur. In their understanding, doubts (about God in particular) should be settled once and for all. If that were the case, we’d have only one Psalm written by David that questions God and His actions. Instead we have many, for David wrestled with God all his life, as did all the Bible greats.

Even post-Pentecost pillars of the faith such as Peter and Paul. You see this in Peter’s wavering in Antioch. He has heard clearly from God that, contrary to everything he understood about Mosaic law, there is nothing “unclean” when it comes to eating, including with whom you eat. And yet he struggles to eat with Gentiles with whom he ate before the Judaizers arrived from Jerusalem. This struggle on Peter’s part may be dismissed as a lower-level cultural dilemma rather than an issue of faith. But Paul makes it clear that such “cultural” waverings strike at the heart of the Faith.

As I’ve written in another weekly blog, “Ethics in the 21st Century,” ethics is living out what you believe. Show me your behavior, the New Testament writer James claims, and I’ll show you what you believe. The implication in all this is that when our behavior deviates from what we profess to believe about God, it is a reflection of some internal questioning or confusion about what we believe about God.

E. Stanley Jones, a Methodist missionary in India and a great writer, was a close friend of Gandhi’s. Apart from the rare faith he found in Jones, Gandhi was deeply distressed by Christians. It is said that he greatly admired Jesus, but had little time for Jesus’ followers. There is a significant reason for this response on Gandhi’s part. As a law student in South Africa, Gandhi thought to visit a church to learn more about Christianity until he was stopped at the church door by a sign which read “No dogs or Indians allowed.” And, of course, his treatment as a native of India at the hands of a “Christian” colonial power did little to correct this lesson in the ways of the Christian faith.

As believers, we tend to scoff at the idea that “hypocrites in the church” are valid excuses for doubt. And yet, both the Bible and common experience do not take such hypocrites or hypocritical behavior lightly. Our behavior as followers of Jesus is our strongest witness. Contrary to common thinking however, inconsistent behavior is not the real offense. Pretending we have no struggles or inconsistencies is.

The world (as with God) will take any imperfection over the claim of perfection. While the Scriptures do not teach a hierarchy of sins, the sins of pride that block us from receiving God’s grace may be seen as far more deadly than “mere” sensual sins.

The sin that is least understood is what is called the “unpardonable” sin, what Jesus refers to as blasphemy against the Holy Spirit. In a short answer, I favor the interpretation that sees Matthew 12:32 as referring to the work of the Holy Spirit of convicting men and women of sin. If, in pride, we shut out this Voice of God and “harden our hearts” in unresponsiveness, we remove ourselves from God’s grace. Interesting how Jesus reserves his strongest words for those who lead others away from that same Voice.

So, as with most people who are honest about their doubts, I think my doubts about God start with what I see in the inconsistencies of faith in us human beings, including myself. The occasional acts of God that arbitrarily kill innocent babies aside, God is easy to believe in. It is when we get to people that faith runs into trouble.