What Do You Do With Your Doubts?
I once walked out of the Oriental Institute in Chicago into the sunshine with Dr Gleason Archer. Some of you who are a little older will remember Dr. Archer as a world-renown Old Testament scholar who consistently reads the Bible in sixteen languages.
And I plucked up enough courage and I asked him: “Dr Archer, do you sometimes have doubts about God? And without so much as slowing down, as we headed for the car-park, he said in a matter-of-fact way “Of course I do.”
Here was a seminary professor, a distinguished biblical scholar, one who had taught the Bible virtually all his life, and written more than a dozen books; and he candidly confesses to periodically having had doubts about the God He had been living for and serving.
Over the many years now since that incident, I have not forgotten that short walk with this great man. Whenever I have had my own personal doubts over some issues about God, I would speak to the Lord openly about them. I do not feel a sense of condemnation as I believe that deep inside my faith in His isn’t shaken.
But what has helped me come out of my doubts each time I have had them, has been the reply that Dr. Archer gave to my second question to him.
I asked him what he did whenever he had doubts. His reply goes something like that: “I just go back a few steps. Stack all the evidences for Christianity against all the other viable competing worldviews. And I rationally sort out which one holds water. And again and again Christianity stretches ahead by a far distance"
It is finally a question of worldview isn’t it. And having examined the various major competing truth-claims in a smorgasbord
of claimants to a knowledge of the truth, the Christian gospel is deeply satisfying both in terms of its existential relevance and rational coherence. The story of the Gospel is both a belief that is relevant to our lives, through its joys and pain; and one that rationally holds water. But more than that, the entire story has a ring of truth to it.
We may struggle through occasional bouts of doubt, but deep inside, our human heart, through the Spirit of God, bears witness to it’s truth and reality.
Your doubts do not spell the end of your faith. Not necessarily.
Painting: Caravaggio. Doubting Thomas. 1602-1603. Oil on canvas. Sanssouci, Potsdam, Germany.
