Reading through the Bible, there
are books within my own that get a lot of wear and tear. The Psalms are a constant source of comfort
to me. I find myself in Paul's letters a
lot for encouragement and teaching as well.
There are some books within the Bible that, while I don't avoid them,
they just don't get a lot of airtime.
A few months ago, I remembered a
verse in the book of Jude, a very short 25 verse long book. A friend had brought one of the verses in
Jude to my attention years ago in a conversation. Jude 3 says, "Dear
friends, although I was very eager to write to you about the salvation we
share, I felt compelled to write and urge you to contend for the faith that was
once for all entrusted to God’s holy people." After constantly stumbling upon this verse
and remembering our conversation, I was led back to Jude to see what other
insights that it might hold.
Over the past
few months, I have read through Jude a number of times, at least once a month
if not more frequently. The beauty of
Scripture, to me, is that there is new insight to be gleaned every time that I
read it. I am constantly amazed at how I
can read something hundreds of time and one day, I read it and notice something
that I had never noticed before.
That very thing
happened to be this morning as I found myself again reading through Jude. Jude 22 says, "Be merciful to those who
doubt." I really stopped on that
verse and began to think about it. There
is an ancient practice of Scripture reading called Lectio Divina in which the
Word of God is read, meditated upon, prayed upon, and then contemplated. As I read through Jude this morning, I felt
like I hit the brakes when I read this verse.
It was a moment for meditation, reflection, and contemplation.
I have wrestled
with doubt in my life. It was far
greater when I was younger, but every once in a while, I still find myself
having questions and doubts. They are
more to do with what I am doing and where I am going, though the occasional
"existence of God" doubts can sometimes take center stage.
This morning as
I read through Jude and stumbled upon this verse, I began to think about so
many people who had decried doubt as if it were a sin. As we read through the overall narrative of
Scripture, we encounter many people who have had their fair share of
doubt. I recall the man whose son was
possessed by a spirit who said to Jesus, "I believe, help my
unbelief." I recall the disciple,
Thomas, who needed to put his hands onto the wounds of Jesus after he rose from
the dead in order to fully believe.
Those are just two cases, but there were others who doubted, who
struggled to hold onto faith.
It is a myth to
say that the Christian life is all rainbows and roses. While some may criticize me for having a
"doom and gloom" approach towards life with a statement like that,
I'm only basing it on what Jesus said to his followers. He specifically told them that in this world
they would have trouble. He told them
that he had been persecuted and they should expect to be persecuted just as he
was. But he never left it there. When he told them that they would have
trouble in this world, he told them that he had overcome the world (John 16:33).
Doubt isn't a
bad thing, it's what we do with that doubt.
Do we let it plague us, pull us down, overtake us? Or do we wrestle with it and seek answers in
the midst of it? Job went through a
crisis of faith, rightfully so, who wouldn't experience the depths of loss that
he experienced and not go through a crisis of faith? He eventually heard from God who set him
straight and restored what he had lost.
We will
doubt. When we do, be careful not to
listen to the voices of those who would cry against it. Amidst our doubt, we serve and know a God who
can hold that doubt, who is big enough to handle when His children struggle
with their faith and questions along life's journey. There is room for doubt in this life, it's
just a question of what we do with it.
We will also
encounter others who doubt, and despite the journey that we have been through
that has brought us to our current place, others have not necessarily had
similar circumstances and experiences.
What may seem logical to one may seem impossible to another. As we encounter those who wrestle with doubt,
we aren't called to beat them over the head with our experiences or what we
have come to believe and know as truth, we are called to love and to be
merciful to them. If we have doubts,
wouldn't we hope to have others be merciful to us?
There is room
for dialogue and conversation in doubt, if we would only stop and find the time
to engage in these things. As we talk
and converse, wrestling with our doubt, the ministry of presence from others as
well as the mercy that they are called to can help us through these
doubts. Remember Job and his friends,
while they ministered to him with their presence, some of their advice was less
than sound. A conversation requires both
sides to be engaged in order to be fully successful.
The doubts that
I have experienced are not behind me, one day they will rear their heads again,
but how I handle them is my choice. If I
handle them honestly, they can be used for strengthening, rather than weakening
my faith. May we allow our times of
doubt the opportunity to strengthen our faith.
God is big enough to handle our doubt, don't let anyone tell you
differently.
Thank you for this, Jon. Would you believe the verse I rely on the most is Mark 9:24? My friend who is a christian education professor once said during a small group discussion that the world needs doubt, because without doubt there is no such thing as faith.
ReplyDeleteFrom my perspective...it's almost as if one's faith just dwells on the surface if there is no doubt...as favorite song of mine goes, "It's harder to believe than not to". And speaking of favorites...one of mine on the subject of doubt and faith is Os Guiness who has written several classics on the subject: Doubt, Doubt: Faith in Two Minds, and God in the Dark: The Assurance of Faith Beyond a Shadow of Doubt.
ReplyDeleteTwo Os Guinness Quotes:
“Sometimes when I listen to people who say they have lost their faith, I am far less surprised than they expect. If their view of God is what they say, then it is only surprising that they did not reject it much earlier.
Other people have a concept of God so fundamentally false that it would be better for them to doubt than to remain devout. The more devout they are, the uglier their faith will become since it is based on a lie. Doubt in such a case is not only highly understandable, it is even a mark of spiritual and intellectual sensitivity to error, for their picture is not of God but an idol. ”
― Os Guinness, God in the Dark
and
“What has happened to create this doubt is that a problem (such as a deep conflict or a bad experience) has been allowed to usurp God's place and become the controlling principle of life. Instead of viewing the problem from the vantage point of faith, the doubter views faith from the vantage point of the problem. Instead of faith sizing up the problem, the situation ends with the problem scaling down faith. The world of faith is upside down, and in the topsy-turvy reality of doubt, a problem has become god and God has become a problem.”
― Os Guinness