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I Doubt It!
Ron DeBoer
1/12/2012
We live in a pretty cynical culture. Just watch an hour of CNN and listen to the news pundits, and you’ll be more confused about the truth than ever. Here are some of the phrases I heard over and over the other night when the experts were debating about the political candidates: really?; you’re kidding; no way; prove it; I find that hard to believe. Everyone was talking and nobody was listening. Nobody was willing to change his mind. How is it possible that each person has it all figured out yet nobody else believes him or her?
Doubt is as common as the Bible itself. Take a look at the bookshelves, and you’ll see lots of evidence of doubt about God and Christianity. Books such as George Smith’s Atheism: The Case against God and, more recently, Richard Dawkins’s The God Delusion make doubting God and the Christian faith an intellectual pursuit.
Believe it or not, God can handle the doubters. In fact, God uses doubters to fulfill his own purposes, and here’s why: Doubters are engaged in the debate. Doubters are searching for the truth. If they didn’t care, they wouldn’t expend the energy to doubt. They’d simply go about their lives believing or not believing. C.S. Lewis, widely known as an intellectual, began reading the Bible with the sole purpose of refuting it. Instead, he became a believer. Lee Strobel, who describes himself as having been a “spiritual skeptic,” wrote The Case for Christ through the lens of an investigative reporter, interviewing dozens of Bible scholars. He found irrefutable evidence for the following: Jesus existed; he died on the cross; he rose from the dead and was seen by over 500 people after his death and resurrection.
In my many years as an educator I have learned to love the doubters because the doubters are engaged and sometimes willing to learn and be convinced otherwise. Passive students, because they don’t care, just nod and give you the illusion they believe. You can work with the doubters.
God chose to work with the doubters. In Genesis 17:17, after God told Abraham that Sarah would give birth to a son and “be mother of many nations,” Abraham “bowed down to the ground, but he laughed to himself in disbelief. ‘How could I become a father at the age of 100?’ he thought. ‘And how can Sarah have a baby when she is ninety years old?’” In Genesis 18:12, when Sarah overheard the three visitors tell Abraham the same thing, she also laughed in doubt. But God fulfilled his promise, and Sarah did give birth to Isaac, eventually becoming great-grandmother to the nation of Israel, through which God worked his plans.
Moses also was a doubter. In Exodus 3:10-15, we read the interchange between God and him when God commissions him to lead the Israelites. When Moses asks what to do if the Israelites don’t believe him, God answers, “I Am Who I Am. Say this to the people of Israel: I Am has sent me to you. . . . Yahweh, the God of your ancestors—the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob—has sent me to you” (NLT).
Other doubters in the Bible include Gideon in the book of Judges, Zechariah in the book of Luke, and Thomas, of course, famous for doubting that Jesus had risen from the dead. We read Doubting Thomas’s story in John 20:24-29.
One of the twelve disciples, Thomas (nicknamed the Twin), was not with the others when Jesus came. They told him, “We have seen the Lord!”
But he replied, “I won’t believe it unless I see the nail wounds in his hands, put my fingers into them, and place my hand into the wound in his side.”
Eight days later the disciples were together again, and this time Thomas was with them. The doors were locked; but suddenly, as before, Jesus was standing among them. “Peace be with you,” he said. Then he said to Thomas, “Put your finger here, and look at my hands. Put your hand into the wound in my side. Don’t be faithless any longer. Believe!”
“My Lord and my God!” Thomas exclaimed.
Then Jesus told him, “You believe because you have seen me. Blessed are those who believe without seeing me.” (NLT)
I remember my college days in the 1980s and the doubts that crept into my mind about my existence, God’s existence, and the meaning of life. I attended a Christian college in Iowa, and I read the books, took the classes, and listened to the professors. My friends and I sat up late in our dorm rooms debating the fish stories of the Old Testament and the miracles of the New Testament. I remember lying awake at night and looking out my dorm window at the expansive Iowa sky. I wondered, Can God really see me here in the middle of this tiny campus nestled among cornfields and at the same time see my brothers and parents in their farmhouse in Canada?
But when I returned home and talked about these things with my parents, their response was always the same. “The Bible is true. God is our maker. Jesus was sent to die for our sins. If you believe that you’ll go to heaven.” Their simple faith was unwavering despite the lean years of drought and economic collapse of the 1980s.
We find ourselves in a similar mess today: joblessness, economic instability, the breakdown of marriage, and bestsellers refuting God’s existence. It’s no wonder our conversations have traces of doubt in them.
But God’s there, folks. His fingerprints are all over Creation, and he’s working his plan in your life and mine. One day we’ll see his glory and understand it all. A simple faith? Yes, a simple faith. “Blessed are those who believe without seeing me.”
Ron DeBoer is an educator and writer living near Toronto, Ontario.
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