Stuck in Doubt
A new installment of Journey of a New Christian. Click the “subscribe” button at the end to receive free weekly updates by email. New to the series? This introduction provides an overview.
I still find it perplexing that when I first attended the small Bible-believing church less than 10 minutes from our home, I didn’t accept Christ. At the time, though, it seemed like the most natural thing in the world. I didn’t actively object to what the church taught. I just didn’t believe all of it. I thought I knew God, but I didn’t think I knew Jesus. I was like Thomas, to whom Jesus said, “If you had known me, you would have known my Father as well” (John 14:7, ESV). I was hyperaware that he had protected and guided me all through my life, but I did not know Jesus was God.
Of course I knew that everyone else in church, first and foremost the pastor, believed Jesus was God. Other people’s belief didn’t influence me. What made them so sure? Because they’d been taught? Because this was what others believed? I didn’t feel comfortable asking them what they believed about Jesus and why. I suspected they would recoil from these uncomfortable questions. Maybe they would wonder why I was attending this church or even suspect that I did so under false pretenses. After all, if you wanted to know if Jesus was God, all you had to do was look in the Bible. If you didn’t believe in the Bible, why go to a church like this in the first place? Why not go elsewhere where no one cared?
My question about Jesus didn’t inhibit my enjoyment of church. For my wife Louise and me, Sunday morning services were part of our new life together. I embraced worship. We got to know a few people, and I enjoyed their company. I learned from sermons. We gave willingly to the church. Even so, my reservations did hold me back. Since we attended regularly with no thought of going anywhere else, it would be natural for us to join the church. To do that, however, I would have had to be baptized, which required a profession of faith and public acceptance that Jesus is God.
I was uncomfortably aware that my skepticism was holding back not only me, but also Louise. She had been baptized in her teens and had no reservations like mine. But she did not want to join the church without me. To do so would have looked strange. We did not want people inquiring into the state of our marriage or commenting on the fact that we had both been divorced. I was uncomfortably aware of Pau’s warning about believers being “unequally yoked” to unbelievers in marriage (2 Corinthians 6:14).
When I asked about “unequally yoked,” Louise assured me she didn’t feel this way about our marriage because I was searching. I was drawing nearer to God. We could discuss any reservations I had, but she wasn’t going to try to convert me. In God’s good time, the Holy Spirit would take care of that. I regretted, though, that it was taking so long. After we started attending the church, a year went by with no progress, then two years, then three. I wanted to believe, but I was acutely aware that although I agreed with many tenets of doctrine and accepted Christian living principles, I still didn’t accept what the church taught.
I must have mentioned my impatience to Louise, because I remember she asked why I didn’t go and talk to the pastor. I didn’t like hearing that. Though I liked and respected the pastor, I dreaded the thought of sitting down face-to-face with him and admitting that I didn’t accept the church’s central teaching. Louise told me this concern was misplaced. Pastors were used to people coming to them with all kinds of doubts. There was no guarantee he would be able to answer my reservations, but he wouldn’t mind being asked, and at the very least his answers would give me something to think about.
My curiosity piqued, I met the pastor in a budget chain restaurant near the church. It was midafternoon on a weekday. When the waitress left, we had the whole section of restaurant to ourselves. We each got a full pitcher of coffee, ensuring we wouldn’t be interrupted any time soon, and Pastor had a slice of pie, which helped to quiet my nerves since he wouldn’t be focused exclusively on me.
Still, when it came time to ask him about Jesus and God, I anticipated a daunting theological argument. He asked about my relationship with God. I explained that I prayed every day. He listened but didn’t seem too impressed.
“Do you read the Bible?”
That question startled me. I knew generally what was in the Bible. In the Episcopal boarding school I attended, Bible passages were read aloud every day for 5 years. And of course, I followed the Biblical texts that he preached from. But no, I didn’t read on my own. I knew people did, including Louise, but it hadn’t occurred to me that I needed to.
“I would say that your conversations with God sound pretty one-sided. You talk to him in prayer, but when he talks to you through the Bible, you’re not paying attention.”
Definitely not what I expected to hear. Pastor wasn’t anywhere near as concerned as I was about what I believed or didn’t believe. It seemed to matter more to him what I did—or in this case didn’t do. Before I even asked whether I should read the Bible every day, I knew what the answer was.
Looking back now, five years after relinquishing my lingering doubts, I’m amazed that I struggled so long with this issue of what I believed, when the problem all along was not belief but what I didn’t know and was failing to learn. The definitive evidence that Jesus is God is found in the Bible. Since I wasn’t immersed in the Bible and hadn’t read it all the way through, I hadn’t considered this evidence. In the next post, I’ll describe how I went about correcting this gap in my learning, and how, after a year of daily Bible reading, my doubts were resolved.
My long struggle with doubt has made me more sympathetic toward unbelievers. Reading the Bible straight through took me a year. On top of that enormous investment in time I had a head start on faith. Thanks to my Episcopal high school I had a basic understanding of Christian belief. I prayed daily. I understood God was at work in my life. I had married a Christian. I attended church. I wanted to believe. I have no reason to be critical of those who aren’t there yet. I hope those who are skeptical can learn from my struggle. For Christians, the Bible is God’s message to humanity about who He is and what He expects from us. Before denying this claim, skeptics ought to familiarize themselves with the evidence that supports it.