Can I be a Christian if I Have Doubts?

WELCOME

Pastor Chris Paavola:

Well, hey everybody. Happy New Year. Happy year. So good to see you guys here today and just to be with you and welcome to those of you watching online. Good to be with you as well. I’m excited for today because we are kicking off a brand-new series today called The Reason For God. It’s a series based on a book by the same name, by an author named Tim Keller. And actually, we’ve got that book available in the lobby if you want to grab a copy. I love the book because it kind of has the posture that in the book, it has a posture that I want to kind of replicate in here. It’s a conversational tone, and this series is a conversation on faith and doubt.

It doesn’t set up straw men and quickly cut them down. It’s very charitable to other viewpoints and tries to have an honest and open conversation about the reason for God. And I’m excited for this series as well just for us. Now, I will fully admit as we dig into this that I am biased. I am a pastor obviously, so I have certain viewpoints that I’m going to have, but the book and I will try to be charitable as well and just to be conversive. So that being said, if you on the other hand are sitting there at any point and you’re kind of like arms crossed, like, all right, prove it to me. First of all, I may just come out and say, you’re smarter than I am. You’ve thought of things that I haven’t thought of before. I’m sure of it. And at any point in this series, if I’m out of the area of expertise, I’ll try my best to say, this is way over my pay grade, or this is not my area of expertise, but I can speak on issues while I’m asking in return.

It’s just like, let’s pretend we’re having a beer together. Okay, let’s pretend we’re having a cup of coffee and we’re just hanging out and talking about these things because honestly, we’ve all had these kind of thoughts and questions if you pursue it with any type of intellectual honesty. And also, that being said, one other disclaimer, if I can do so, I fully admit that the church has not done a very good job at talking about these topics. The idea of faith and doubt that the church has not done a very good job at this historically. And I think there’s a couple of reasons for that. And first, just let me apologize and say that we should have done better, but there’s a couple of reasons for that. One, I think there’s this fear that church leaders have of like, well, if we talk about faith and doubt and we talk about some of these things, I might inject into you new reasons to doubt.

And all of a sudden you’re going to have new things that you’ve never thought of before and you’re going to waver in your faith because of something I said. And I want to strengthen and encourage you in the faith, not discourage you. And so as an overcorrection, we avoid the topic altogether. And then I think on the other side, Christians, we tend to get defensive about this because maybe we don’t have the answers that you’re looking for. And so we end up getting defensive and then argumentative and ad hominem attacks. And I don’t want to do that in here again. We’re having a beer, we’re having a cup of coffee, we’re just talking about these issues. But I can fully admit that we haven’t done a very good job and because we haven’t done a very good job, when you do encounter questions of faith and the reasons for God and you don’t have the answers, it feels like a little bit of a house of cards. Everything just kind of comes crashing down because of one little thing. What happened to me in my dorm room.

ACNE

So, when I was in college, I had gone through puberty in middle school and high school I thought, and then I got to college in my freshman year, my face, I’m not kidding, it blew up. And I got not just pimples, I got acne, severe, severe acne, just my whole face was red and painful and the kind of acne that when I’d see people in public, they would grimace and stuff just kind of like you’re doing right now. Don’t look at me like that. But I went to a convenience store, I have this core memory. I went to a convenience store that was across the street, kind of cat cornered to the campus there, and I was getting like a mountain dew or something like that. And as I’m standing in line, the guy behind me did a double take when he saw my face.

And then I heard him whisper to his friend, did you see his face? Oh, it was devastating. And I’m standing there in line, I left the store, went back to my dorm room, slammed the door shut, and I went and looked in the mirror in my dorm room and I said to God, why haven’t you done anything about this? And I’ve been praying God heal my face. Why haven’t you done anything about this? And then in that moment there was this visceral, I’m not kidding, I actually could feel it like a heavy blanket. This question came over me and I actually thought it, but it was like I heard my own thoughts. What if God isn’t real?

 WHAT IF GOD ISN’T REAL?       

What if God isn’t real? The thought terrified me. And then I was terrified by the thought that something as simple as a pimple made me question my faith in the creator of the universe, like how vain and petty and trivial. And here I am, I grew up in Sunday school, I went to church camp, I’m studying to be a pastor, and I’m questioning God because of my face complexion. What is wrong with me? And now you’re thinking, Chris, you have the most sheltered life if this is your problems since that, okay, I had a Sunday’s school of faith and I met adult problems. I get it. But since then I’ve had real world. I fully and readily admit, but I have a hunch that I’m not alone in asking this question.

YOUR QUESTIONS

I’m looking at a room full of people and I’m talking to people watching online that I have a hunch that you’ve asked this question in some way or another. What if God isn’t real? And the problem is then that leads to the next question. Well, can I be a Christian if I have doubts? Can I still be a Christian if I have doubts? Isn’t that kind of the opposite of this thing that we’re doing right now?

CAN I STILL BE A CHRISTIAN IF I HAVE DOUBTS?

And maybe you asked this question after 9/11, something much more serious than acne, or maybe you asked this question after some personal tragedy or deep betrayal. Maybe you asked this question because of something that philosophy professor said and the whole thing came crashing down and you just questioned all of your reality. Maybe it’s something you saw on TikTok or the internet, and those are valid questions. But if you’re here today and you are a believer in Jesus and you’re struggling with doubt, the tendency is to push it away because I can’t have doubts and still be a Christian. Or if you are looking into Christianity and you’re just kind of here because someone invited you or asked you to watch this service, then you’re never going to take that step of faith and being like, yeah, I’m a Christian. If you’ve got doubts in between and big questions in between you and that profession of faith, or maybe you’re just like a kind of I’m a nun or a nun, I don’t really believe anything, I’m just kind of, eh, I don’t know.

I don’t think you can know and kind of got this agnostic approach to things or something. Hey, you’re never going to become a follower of Jesus either if there are doubts holding you back because you’re unconvinced. And so we have to be able to answer this question in week one of our series, the Reason for God, we’re going to talk about can I still be a Christian if I have doubts? We have to be able to answer this question if any of us are going to take that step forward and growing in faith.

THE REASON FOR GOD

Now, if we’re going to answer this question though, I think today and for this entire series, we’ve got to lay some groundwork about some user agreements, terms of engagement, working definitions, whatever you want.

DOUBT, UNBELIEF, SKEPTICS, BELIEVERS

There’s some words we need to define, otherwise we can actually be talking past each other and saying the same thing. And so two words that I think we need to define to answer this question is the first one is doubt.

DOUBT IS NOT THE ABSENCE OF FAITH, IT’S THE EVIDENCE OF FAITH.

Doubt, okay, in spite of what you may believe, doubt is not the opposite of faith. Doubt is not the absence of faith. Doubt is actually evidence of faith. It’s like a shadow is evidence of a light somewhere. Doubt is not the absence of faith, it’s the evidence of faith. In other words, what happened is you had a set of beliefs and you had a new idea come along or some type of crisis or some type of philosophy that challenged your set of beliefs, new evidence that made you reexamine what you believe. That’s what doubt is.

It made you focus what your faith actually is. Does this hold up to scrutiny? The opposite of faith is actually the word unbelief, but that’s a different word than doubt. Unbelief is the opposite of belief. Doubt is something in between. There’s one author who said it in a way, like he said, that doubt is the suspension. I like that the suspension between belief and unbelief. And it’s neither of them wholly, but both of them partly. But doubt is different than unbelief. And then that gets to the other word that we probably need to define as the word faith. Faith is a set of beliefs. And faith is this thing where you take all the information you have, what you know about the observable universe, what you can test and verify, and then it’s what you know in the ocean of everything that we can’t or you don’t know.

And faith is the thing that fills in the gaps between what you know and what you can’t know, just the ocean of information. And there are things that we can’t measure, that we can’t repeat, that we can’t empirically prove, and yet we believe them.

THERE ARE NO FAITHLESS PEOPLE

And according to that definition, faith of being a set of beliefs, well, everyone has faith in something. You can have faith in a God or a set of beliefs about God. You can have faith that there isn’t one. You can have faith in a politician. You can have faith in a moral code or a philosophy. You can have faith in a spouse or a loved one. You can have faith in the stock market sometimes, right? And that’s doubt. Which kind of points out the other side of this. Everyone has faith, but every faith can doubt. Every faith can doubt.

DOUBT REVEALS THE ASSERTIONS OF YOUR FAITH

I don’t mean to be pedantic, I don’t mean to play semantics here, but I’m a theist and I can be a skeptic that all religions are the same because of my beliefs. And in the same way an atheist like Carl Sagan can have faith that there are no moral absolutes because of his beliefs.

In the years I’ve been studying stuff like this and researching stuff like this, I’ve read everything from Stephen Hawkings, an atheist like Richard Dawkins to Theists and apologists like Tim Keller or Lee Strobel or Hank Hanegraaff or whoever. And all of my research of trying to get a whole 360 view of this kind of stuff, the ones that I appreciate the most are the ones that are honest that you get to the end of your set of beliefs, whatever they might be, what you can and cannot verify. And then you go and everything else. I don’t know, it’s faith, but I think it’s super reductionistic and way too simplistic to relegate faith to only people in churches or whatever. I think everyone has faith and whatever their worldview is and every faith can doubt. And so now with just that broad, I mean honestly broad definition of faith and broad definition of doubt, I think we can move forward in this conversation and we can answer this week’s question. Yes, you can still be a Christian if you have doubts. Absolutely the doubts that you experience as a Christian, everyone can, every faith can have doubts. Those are like check engine lights on your car, maintenance required, change your oil. It’s important. You shouldn’t ignore it. It’s going to break down eventually if you don’t deal with it. Whatever your doubt is, you should look into it, pursue it, investigate. But it doesn’t mean there’s a lack of faith or unbelief.

FAITHFUL DOUBTERS

You don’t have to take my word for it. Just look at Christian history. Mother Teresa Nobel prize winning Mother Teresa wrote extensively in letters to her friends about her doubt. And God, mother Teresa, Charles Spurgeon, the great preacher of the eighteen-hundreds in England, thousands and thousands saved because of his preaching. He wrote extensively about his doubts. Martin Luther, our namesake, the great reformer of the 15 hundreds wrote extensively about his doubt or go to the Old Testament, the less highlighted pages of your Bible. It is filled with prophets and kings doubting God because of personal or national tragedies and it doesn’t get any better when you get to Jesus. After Jesus, people absolutely struggled with doubt. One of his closest inner circle followers is a man named Thomas and history has branded him with the moniker, doubting Thomas Matthews is throwaway line and after what we believe is the resurrection and before the ascension, there’s this line in the book of Matthew where he says, and they worshiped him, but some doubted after the resurrection, they’re still wrestling with doubt because dead people aren’t supposed to rise.

JOHN THE BAPTIST

Or John the Baptist, the guy who Jesus called the greatest man who ever lived the greatest John the Baptist, even he struggled with doubt. It was in our reading, maybe he missed it. So let’s go back and look at this. John the Baptist, the man anointed and ordained to prepare the way for the coming of the Lord, the man who would say behold the lamb of God and baptize people in the river and declare that the Christ has come and preached about the kingdom of heaven is coming near John the Baptist dares to criticize King Herod for marrying his sister-in-law and is thrown in prison for hate speech and awaiting his beheading. He’s in prison awaiting to be beheaded, and while he’s in prison, a cold, dark cell rodents running around and he’s hungry and his hands wrapped around prison bars, he doubts it is not supposed to be like this. The kingdom of heaven is supposed to come and establish righteousness in the throne, kick out Rome and bring about the Lord’s kingdom. It’s not supposed to be like this. Things are not going well. Look at where I am.

He’s given new evidence that makes him examine and reexamine his set of beliefs, doubt. He’s trying to figure out what. See doubt often points to the assertions of our faith. When I had acne, I had a faith that God would give me clear complexion, Neutrogena God, and the circumstances were making me reexamine. What did God really say? What did God really promise? And the same thing was happening with John.

Are you the one who is to come or should we expect someone else? Matthew 11

And so he sends messengers to Jesus, which I love by the way, just an encouragement. It’s a great place to go with your doubts. And he sends messengers to Jesus with this question, “are you the one who is to come or should we expect someone else?”

I thought it was you. I said, behold the lamb of God. I said, the kingdom of heaven is at hand, but maybe I was wrong, should I expect something else? And I wish Jesus would’ve responded, yes, I am the son of God, the kingdom of heaven has come, but he didn’t and Jesus also didn’t respond to John the Baptist saying, how dare you, John? How dare you unbelieving John? Doubt doubter guy.

Go back and report to John what you hear and see. 5 The blind receive sight. The lame are walking. Those who have leprosy are cleansed. The deaf can hear, the dead are raised and the good news is proclaimed to the poor. 6 Blessed. It is anyone who does not stumble on account of me. Matthew 11

He doesn’t say that. Instead, Jesus says, “go back and report to John what you hear and see. The blind receive sight. The lame are walking. Those who have leprosy are cleansed. The deaf can hear, the dead are raised and the good news is proclaimed to the poor. Blessed. It is anyone who does not stumble on account of me.” That word stumble is where we get our word scandal from. It’s this Greek word scandalize. Blessed is anyone who’s not offended by me, scandalized by what I’m doing and what’s happening.

Why would Jesus do that? John asks him this really painful, real question and Jesus responds with a riddle. What’s he doing? I think what Jesus is doing is he’s leaving a trail of breadcrumbs. I like clues to lead John somewhere. This is like a good teacher doesn’t tell you what to think, they teach you how to think.

BREADCRUMBS

And Jesus responds by quoting scripture, these are prophecies about the Messiah and what the kingdom of heaven will look like. And he says, the blinds can see that, the deaf can hear, the lame can walk and the breadcrumbs, the promises that God gave. There’s no breadcrumbs about not being in prison. John.

WHERE IS YOUR FAITH?
-Jesus. Luke 8:25

God is doing something different than you have in mind and follow God, follow Jesus long enough. Nobody starts out perfectly believing everything they need to believe about God. And along the way, your ideas of him will be shaped and sharpened. If they’re not, I might venture that the God you’re worshiping is in the mirror. If he always agrees with you and he’s always understandable, he’s God. You’ve got a teaspoon of knowledge in your brain, he’s God. And for you in this series, you are going to have questions and I might be able to give you direct answers to your questions, but more often than not in this series, what I am going to do is leave clues for you breadcrumbs that will lead you in a direction to make a conclusion. Because Jesus, when he answers John this way more than giving John an answer, he wants to grow his faith and he wants to grow your faith.

SERIES OVERVIEW

And so, in the next few weeks, we’re going to ask some big questions with our hands wrapped around prison bars sitting in our own cellar of doubt. And some of these questions, they’ll give you answers, but some of them you’re going to have to pick up some breadcrumbs and follow the clues and the trails and the things that I have seen and observed and that others have noticed about these particular things like how can there be only one true religion? Or how could a good God allow suffering? What about all the bad things done and name of Christianity? Why would a good God make mankind capable of sinning? How could a loving God send people to hell? Hasn’t science disproved Christianity? How can I trust the Bible? And in the answers that I give you, they’re going to lead somewhere and it will grow your faith one way or the other.

That’s what an honest conversation does about these topics. I’ll be blunt, my hope is that you get to the end of the trail and you put your faith in Jesus. Obviously that’s what I want for you. But I think in this series I will give some answers to your questions. I think I will give new questions for you to consider. I think I’ll give you reason to doubt your doubt, and my hope is that you arrive at a place of faith in Jesus. And here’s one thing that we’re going to do a little bit different in this series.

I think this only happens in a conversation honestly. Every week I give monologues, I hold the microphone when I give book reports. So every week I’m the one holding the microphone. But this week I’d like to give you an opportunity to ask the questions again, like we were sitting down having a beverage of our choice. If we were talking and we were talking through these issues, I have a feeling you’d interrupt me at some point and ask a question. And so we’ve set up an account, this is not my personal cell phone number, but what we’re going to put a number on the screen in just a moment where you can text in your questions about today’s topic. And each week we’ll do this. So please don’t ask me my favorite crockpot recipe or something like that in the text message. I mean like questions regarding the topic just discussed.

And today, any questions you have about can I still doubt or have doubts and still be a Christian? And the conversation about faith and doubt, what did I miss? What did I not say? What did you think of that? Because trained in something that I’m not trained in, that I misrepresented or what questions do you have? And so we’ll put the number on the screen and then I’ll answer them. Okay? So let’s pray and then we’ll get into this opportunity.

PRAYER

Heavenly Father, we love you so much and I pray for anyone and everyone in here or watching online or who can hear the sound of my voice that over the next few weeks that you would make us honest and take away as much bias as possible and that we would grow in our faith. And I selfishly, Lord, I pray that you would grow our faith in your son Jesus. But in this series, God, just continue to help us come to a place of faith in spite of our doubts. And it’s in your name we pray. Amen.