How To Handle Doubt

I’m a natural skeptic and doubt comes incredibly easy to me. When I was 22 or so years old I came very close to losing my faith. I had been blogging about my study in the Bible for a year or two by that time when an atheist (and I mean the most aggressive kind) got on my blog and tore me to pieces. He raised objections I’d never heard, used words I didn’t know the meaning of and quickly batted down all my responses. I realized that day that I didn’t really know whether or not what I believed as a Christian was true. I came home to my wife and asked her in earnest “What if nothing we believe is really true?”

Well thankfully, by the grace of God, I was able to take a class at Moody Bible Institute soon after called “Apologetics.” I had never heard of apologetics before that and the first book I read in the course was Paul Little’s Know Why You Believe. Well it didn’t answer all my questions that I now had but it gave me a good starting place and hope that I could continue to believe and keep my mind at the same time. I began to consume apologetics books and lectures and when I found out that Luther Rice University had launched a B.A. in Religion and Apologetics I promptly transferred from Moody Bible Institute to LRU. From there I was able to really get onto solid ground with my faith once again.

There are some things that I wish I had known before (and during) the time I was struggling with doubt that I would like to share with you in case you ever find yourself in this place. While I hope the Lord may allow you not to go through the fire, so to speak, I hope that you will find this helpful if indeed you do or if even now you are in such a place.

1. Don’t freak out.

It’s very unnerving when you feel like the ground you are standing on is suddenly not as solid as you once thought. When I say that it was God’s grace that led me to some answers to my questions I do not overemphasize that point. I was panicking because I didn’t know where to turn. If it were not for the fact that my current course of studies led me to an apologetics class I don’t know where I would have landed.

All of that said, I would encourage you to remain calm and think clearly about a logical way to seek out answers to the questions that are causing you to doubt. Emotional responses don’t often lead us to clarity of mind. Accept where you are struggling and then seek out people and books that tackle those issues head on. See if there is an answer before you throw up your hands in despair and abandon what you have been believing.

2. Have humility and patience.

A little humility can help you here. Realize that the reason you cannot currently answer an objection or question in your mind may have less to do with there not being a good answer and more to do with your ignorance. You, me, everyone, all of us together are limited and finite human beings and there is no way we can master the entire realm of knowledge. You simply cannot know everything, you simply cannot know how to answer everything that comes your way and you do have a lot to learn. Finding answers involves admitting ignorance and beginning a process of seeking answers which may take time. Be willing to be a patient student as you look for answers. It is the height of arrogance to assume that if you can’t answer an objection there must not be a good answer. Don’t be that guy. Seek out answers patiently and persistently by talking to people smarter and/or more experienced than you.

3. Don’t go it alone.

One gigantic mistake on your part is to tell no one that you are doubting your faith. I know that it is scary and people might judge you, but if you keep it to yourself you are less likely to find satisfying answers and more likely to succumb to discouragement and walk away from the faith. It is true that not everyone will be understanding and not everyone will be helpful but you need to find a small group of godly, intelligent Christians who will walk through these things with you.

If you find that you are in a church that is not equipped to answer your questions or which does not meet you with understanding (which is unfortunately all too common) then try to reach out to someone outside of your church. Write an email to the head of an apologetics department at a university or seminary and tell them you need help and ask if they can walk with you through some things or hook you up with people who can. Make sure you are dialoging with thoughtful believers who love God, his word, and you and who are willing and able to wrestle the hard questions with you. Such men and women are far too sparse I admit, but they do exist and if you are doubting you need to find some of them to talk to (I officially volunteer to help you if I can).

4. Be careful about how you read what you read.

When you are struggling with doubts you often find yourself wanting to better understand the non-Christian position that is plaguing you. This is understandable. Someone has challenged you about “Bible contradictions” or the “Problem of Evil” or something else and you find yourself compelled to read more about these things from critical scholars because you have to know the truth no matter where it takes you. Even if it means walking away from the faith, truth alone will satisfy.

I am not telling you not to read those critical scholars and to understand their arguments against your faith, I think you ought to. If we are to hold our faith in earnest then we must do so intelligently and be able to reckon with our greatest critics. But I do want to tell you that you are being foolish if you are reading those sources in a vacuum, cut off from the other side. If you spend your time reading Dawkins, Hitchens, Hawking and Ehrman without reading Craig, Copan, Licona, Wallace, etc., then you are asking for trouble. There is a basic proverbial truth that “Bad company ruins good morals” (1 Cor. 15:33) and this is true not only of people we spend physical time with but of the books we fill our heads with. Proverbs 18:17 also tells us “The one who states his case first seems right, until the other comes and examines him.” Do not spend your time unevenly in one side of the story or you’ll be led away before you ever hear the other side.

5. Be careful who you doubt in front of.

This is not to contradict what I said before about being honest about your doubts. You really do need to find mature brothers or sisters in Christ to walk through this with you, but I want to emphasize that they should be “mature”. The last thing you want to do is to come out on the other side of your doubts having found the answers you needed just to realize you have left a wake of doubt and destruction behind you.

Facebook, Twitter, or even in certain church Bible studies and small groups are not the place to openly air your doubts. While you are posting questions you are struggling with and quotes from skeptical scholars because you are seeking help with them you may also be planting seeds of doubt in the hearts of other believers just as ill equipped (if not more so) as you are to answer them. You may have the best of intentions in seeking to hash these things out but if you are not careful you may hurt other people in the process who now have experienced your doubts but do not find the answers that you might now have gotten.

6. Consider the alternatives.

I don’t feel like I have every question answered to my satisfaction about my faith. There are certain things that still bother me that sometimes still cause doubt to flare up within me. I wish I could say this were not so, but it is. But there is something else we have to consider when we think about whether or not we are standing in the right place, namely, if I leave here where else do I go?

It is impossible to be devoid of a worldview. There is no Switzerland when it comes the matter of beliefs. You cannot help but believe something and even saying “I believe nothing” is still taking an affirmative position of some kind. The question is, if I move from my Christian faith, what will I embrace in its place? Agnosticism? Atheism? Buddhism? Islam? Do these worldviews better answer the questions of life? Are they more defensible evidentially and philosophically? I know for me the answer is no. No matter how many unanswered questions I have that I might like to put to rest in my Christian faith I find the alternatives even more untenable because of what I do know for sure.

In conclusion, I hope these thoughts will be helpful to you or someone you know at some point (although ideally you may never need them at all). As someone who has studied objections to the Christian faith for about eight years now I feel comfortable telling you that the majority of objections to the faith are not nearly as powerful as they might seem to you when you first hear them. The objections that are most common are usually relatively easy to answer.

For those objections that are more difficult I will encourage you that we ought to look at our faith as a cumulative case. Some areas of our defense will be stronger and others weaker and there may always be some things that we can’t answer to our satisfaction. But one good argument against something we believe does not overcome the total positive case for Christian faith. When one steps back from individual issues and considers the worldview of Christianity as whole and the case that can be made for it as a whole then they will see a very solid and defensible position.