Rising Above Doubt

A Question Is Not Necessarily A Doubt

A few years ago when my wife and I were on our honeymoon, one of the things we did, is we went snorkeling.

Snorkeling is best done in shallow waters.

Shallow waters are tend to be more clear.

You wouldn’t go snorkeling out in the deep ocean.

The deeper the water gets, it gets murky and dark.

Christianity or our Faith can kind of be like that

In the shallows of Christianity, things are pretty basic, seem pretty clear.

But the deeper you go into your faith, the more you read Scripture, study Theology, the more you experience life.....the more you realize how much you don’t know and how nuanced things can be, and how unclear certain things really are.

Plunging into the depths of Christianity or faith can come with a lot of questions.

It’s not just Christianity, its like that with most things.

The more we understand Biology, the more we realize how little we know.

The more we discover in space, then more we realize how big it is and how much we don’t know.

Understanding of our brain

Let me give you a very brief and sporadic history of our understanding of the brain and it’s functions.

In 335 BC, Greek philosopher Aristotle thought the brain was simply a radiator that kept the all-important heart from overheating

Around 170 BC, a Roman physician suggested the brain’s four ventricles were the seat of complex thought, and determined personality and bodily functions.

In 1791, it was first suggested that electrical impulses were important in the nervous system.

In 1848, an American railroad worker had an iron rod strike his head, passing through his left frontal lobe. He survived, but aspects of his personality changed, suggesting that specific brain regions were important for certain functions.

In the 1900s it was identified that nerve cells (neurons) are the building blocks of the brain.

Today with the explosion of neuroscience, we know humans have approximately 86 billion neurons in our brains, woven together by an estimated 100 trillion connections, or synapses.

We go from radiator to billions of neurons and trillions of synapses.

Over the years we have made leaps and bounds in our understanding of the brain......yet somehow, the more we find out the more we realize we don’t know

That’s what God is like. As we grow in our knowledge and understanding of God and who He is, the more we realize we don’t know.

For every answer discovered, two more questions pop up.

There are certain questions that just don’t have answers.

That doesn’t mean we are clueless and that Christianity is just too unclear.

2 Peter 1:3 “3 His divine power has granted to us all things that pertain to life and godliness, through the knowledge of him who called us to his own glory and excellence,”

What we know by Scripture, by history, and through the power of God in us, we might know very little, but we know enough, and we have enough to fully live a life pleasing to God, and to overcome any obstacle or trial we face.

But there will be many questions.

This morning I want to talk about doubt.

And I specifically want to answer two questions

1 - What is doubt?

2 - What do we do with doubt?

I opened today the way I did, talking about the many questions we are bound to have about God and faith, because....

Many people think that having questions means you have doubts. But that is not necessarily the case.

If you look up the definition of doubt in our English dictionaries, you find these definitions:

To question the truth of something.

Uncertainty of belief or opinion.

To lack confidence in something.

In other words, doubt could be summarized by the question mark. But the Biblical definition of doubt can better be summarized by a period.

I’ll explain this further in a moment.

But you can have many unanswered questions, and those questions say nothing about whether you have faith or doubt, but they can lead you in either direction.

It’s not necessarily the question that is doubt.......it’s when a question becomes a statement that it either becomes faith or doubt.

Questions

Can God’s grace really keep me in the trials I’m going through?

Doubt - I can’t do this. I’m not going to make it.

Faith - God has made a promise, that His grace is sufficient and I’m going to believe it

Does God love me?

Doubt - I’m unloveable, I’ve made too many mistakes, not even God loves me.

Faith - God demonstrated His love for me in that while I was still a sinner, He died for me. Romans 5:8

Why does God allow so much suffering in the world?

Doubt - I don’t trust God’s character, because He is beyond my understanding.

Faith - I trust God’s character because He is beyond my understanding.

Does God even exist at all....I don’t really feel a lot when I pray or read my Bible, and there are so many opinion and religions out there.....who am I to say I really know the truth? How do I know that this whole thing isn’t just a bias due to my upbringing?

Doubt - I can’t believe in God until all my questions are answered.

Faith - I’m not going to throw away what I have due to uncertainty, rather I’m going to seek to learn and search it out.

What are the statements you are putting on your questions?

That’s where we get to the Biblical definition of doubt.

What is Doubt According to the Bible?

I’m going to nerd out for a moment.

The New Testament was written in Greek.

There a couple different Greek words translated as doubt, but the most common one is this word “Diakrino”

Diakrino is the combination of two Greek words.

Dia - “through”

Krino - “to judge or decide a matter.”

Diakrino literal translation implies a process through which you make a decision or judgement.

Its sense means to “pause or hold back in uncertainty or unwillingness.”

This is why I say that doubt is more of a period than a question mark.

Doubt says, “I can’t act or move or believe in this thing until I get some resolution. But to not move, act, or believe, is to make a decision.

Doubt is not just being uncertain, it’s acting or not acting on that uncertainty.

Whats interesting is where the English word doubt always carries with it a negative connotation, the Greek word for doubt can also be used in a positive sense.

Let me give you a couple examples of each

Negative Uses

Matthew 21:21 “21 And Jesus answered them, “Truly, I say to you, if you have faith and do not doubt, you will not only do what has been done to the fig tree, but even if you say to this mountain, ‘Be taken up and thrown into the sea,’ it will happen.”

James 1:6 “6 But let him ask in faith, with no doubting, for the one who doubts is like a wave of the sea that is driven and tossed by the wind.”

Positive Uses

1 Corinthians 14:29 “29 Let two or three prophets speak, and let the others weigh what is said.”

Matthew 16:3 You say“3 And in the morning, ‘It will be stormy today, for the sky is red and threatening.’ You know how to interpret the appearance of the sky, but you cannot interpret the signs of the times.”

So with that

Here’s my definition of doubt, according to the bible and then I want to go into a couple of Scriptures where this word is used to bring it out.

To doubt is to make a temporary judgement call due to uncertainty.

Let me show you what I mean by that by looking at a couple of Scriptures.

Scriptural Examples

Background

Jesus just a cursed a fruitless fig tree as a sign of the fruitless Israel. Israel had all the religion without any of the fruits.

And he used this as a moment to teach about faith.

Matthew 21:21-22 “21 And Jesus answered them, “Truly, I say to you, if you have faith and do not doubt, you will not only do what has been done to the fig tree, but even if you say to this mountain, ‘Be taken up and thrown into the sea,’ it will happen. 22 And whatever you ask in prayer, you will receive, if you have faith.””

To doubt is to make a temporary judgement call due to uncertainty.

The sense of doubt in this passage is an intellectual doubt.

It is placing faith in our human reason while navigating intellectual uncertainties rather than on God.

Which means that doubt is not simply the absence of faith it is the misplacement of faith.

I’m believing my reason more than God.

I say temporary because if it’s not temporary, it’s not doubt, it’s unbelief.

Doubt often feels like this roller coaster.....one moment we can believe and be full of faith in God, the next we have questions that lead to statements of faith in ourselves and our reason.

R.C. Sproul pointed out the difference between doubt and unbelief when he wrote, “An all-important difference exists, therefore, between the open-minded uncertainty of doubt and the closed-minded certainty of unbelief”

Jesus is saying if you have faith in God, and don’t doubt (put your faith in your own reasoning or abilities), God moves in that.

Our intellectual questions will lead us to these kinds of impasses over and over again.

Where I choose to trust in what I comprehend and know, or I choose to live by faith, knowing I can’t and won’t ever see the bigger picture.

And this is why in Hebrews 11:6 “6 And without faith it is impossible to please him.....

Our whole Christian walk and foundation is founded in our faith in Jesus Christ.

This isn’t a blind faith either.....we have reason and good reason to believe that Jesus is who He said he is.

Go back to 2 Peter 1, we know enough, and at some point we have to move forward in faith in what God has said.

Whether that’s in who He is, what He can do, who we are in Him, etc...

Don’t doubt....don’t place your faith in only what you can understand, but live by faith, in what God has said.

Let’s look at one other passage

James 1:5-8 “5 If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask God, who gives generously to all without reproach, and it will be given him. 6 But let him ask in faith, with no doubting, for the one who doubts is like a wave of the sea that is driven and tossed by the wind. 7 For that person must not suppose that he will receive anything from the Lord; 8 he is a double-minded man, unstable in all his ways.”

To doubt is to make a temporary judgement call due to uncertainty.

This doubt refers not to a person’s intellectual doubts, but to a person’s conflicting commitments.

It’s not wavering between “Does God love me” “Can he really do this”

It’s saying “Do I want to live for God or for myself”

It is wavering between God and the worldly value system.

Sunday you are in church, and you kind of want God, but Monday rolls around you still want to do what you want to do.

It says that this man is “double-minded” or literally double-souled.

A double-minded man is one whose devotion to God is less than total. His attention is divided between God and other things, and as a consequence he is unstable and therefore unable to receive from God.

Someone put it like this

The description is not that of a person choosing between two philosophical propositions, but that of a man choosing between his wife and his mistress.

Uncertainty as to who or what you want to pledge your allegiance to.

If this is the kind of doubt you have, you need to make up your mind.

You are a deeply divided person, and living that way puts enormous amounts of stress on your nervous system.

What the Bible calls double-minded, scientists would call cognitive dissonance which means “inharmonious thought.”

It causes emotional and psychological turmoil and compounds stress and anxiety on your life.

This is why sometimes you hear stories of people leaving their faith, and talking about how much freedom they now feel.

People who have left the truth often report that they feel more at peace with themselves now than at any time they were in the church. This should not surprise us. When anyone tries to submit to God with a carnal mind, unbearable cognitive dissonance occurs. The nervous system plunges into a tailspin until it achieves a sense of equilibrium or wholeness. The easiest way to find equilibrium is to reject the beliefs that send them into a spiritual dither.

Make up your mind....you can choose God, or you can choose the worldly value system, but you can’t have both.

There might be an initial sense of freedom in choosing the world, but the world will eventually chew you up and spit you out.

But we have a loving Savior who says, Matthew 11:28 “28 Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.”

If you are here and need to make that decision, today can be that day.

Stop going back and forth in uncertainty about whether you want to live for God or not, and choose a master.

Walk in faith, not in doubt.

So, we talked about what doubt is according to the Bible, now I want to close with some helpful application points on how to handle our doubts.

When I have doubts, what do I do with them? Let me give you 4 quick applications.

What Do I Do With Doubts

Address your doubts through God’s grace.

Realize you are in good company.

Abraham and Sarah doubted God’s promise of a child; actually they laughed at it. (Genesis 16-18)

Asaph doubted because the wicked prospered and he doubted the value of serving God. (1 Chronicles 16:4-7, Psalm 73)

Job doubted God’s goodness. (Job)

Moses doubted God could use him to lead Israel out of Egypt. (Numbers 11:21-22)

Gideon doubted God could use him to turn the tide against Israel’s oppressors. (Judges 6-8)

Doubts need to be addressed, we can’t sweep them under the rug.

But approach them through God's grace and conviction, rather than through condemnation.

God’s not mad at you for having doubts, but rather says, hey lets work through those together.

Go back to what you do knew to be true.

If all we ever do is sit in our uncertainties, doubt is inevitable, and it’s only going to grow.

I’m not saying don’t ask questions, or search out matters.

But sometimes, we need to ground ourselves in what we do know.

"Now faith, in the sense in which I am here using the word, is the art of holding on to things your reason has once accepted, in spite of your changing moods. For moods will change, whatever view your reason takes. I know that by experience. Now that I am a Christian, I do have moods in which the whole thing looks very improbable: but when I was an atheist, I had moods in which Christianity looked terribly probable." CS Lewis

Go back to what you knew to be true.

What led you to give your life to God in the first place?

Where can you look back and say I saw God come through in this thing for me?

What convinced you at another point in your life, that God was real and that He is good?

CS Lewis said we go through these moods, or emotions, and faith is holding on to what reason once accepted.

“Faith is not based solely on physical evidence, rather a conviction that I am willing to stake my life on.” Unknown

Doubt your doubts.

Most of our doubts are built on much weaker foundation than what it feels like our faith is, we just don’t realize it.

We don’t know what we don’t know.

Isaiah 55:9 “9 For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.”

The way that God thinks and acts is on such a different level.

To compare or illustrate the gap between God’s mind and our mind to our mind and that of a brain-damaged fly still wouldn’t due it justice.

Many times our doubt concerning God is not a doubt of who He actually is, but who we think He is.

I won’t go through hard things when I become a Christian.

Example flying a plane

To doubt in the moment is to say, I don’t trust a computer to safely land this plane, I’m going to take control.

To doubt your doubt is to say, “What am I doing?” I don’t know how to land a plane.

Doubt your doubts in humility knowing there is a lot you don’t know.

Ask yourself, “If not Jesus, then who or what?

John 6:66-68 “66 After this many of his disciples turned back and no longer walked with him. 67 So Jesus said to the twelve, “Do you want to go away as well?” 68 Simon Peter answered him, “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life,”

Doubts for many have eventually turned to unbelief and walking away from their Christian faith as a whole.

But if that is or ever becomes a very real temptation, you need to ask yourself the same question that Peter asked Jesus.

To whom or what shall I go?

Because walking away from one thing is walking towards something else.

What is that something else?

There is no such thing as neutrality when it comes to our worldview.

There is no such thing as neutrality when it comes to our faith.

You always believe or have faith in something. Atheism is not an absence of faith, it is simply a different faith.

Your new worldview has the answer all the same questions that led to your doubts in Christianity.

If your faith isn’t in Jesus, then who or what is it in?

Closing

Summary of points

Address you doubts through God’s grace

Go back to what you knew to be true

Doubt your doubts

Ask yourself, “If not Jesus, then who or what?”

Let’s pray together

Source

Unbelieving and Believing Doubt - https://voices.lifeway.com/bible-theology/4-differences-between-believing-and-unbelieving-doubt/#:~:text=Believing%20doubt%20trusts%20in%20God%27s,t%20understand%20everything%20about%20Him.

Words for Doubt in NT - https://pioneernt.com/2009/04/20/word-study-2-doubt-vs-unfaithfulness/

Doubt in Faith - https://www.rethinknow.org/faith_and_doubt/

Doubting God is Good - https://www.rethinknow.org/the-most-important-question-you-can-ask-when-you-doubt-your-faith/

Gospel Coalition https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/article/doubt-doubts/

Barna Poll on Doubt - https://churchcommunications.com/doubt-faith-top-reasons-people-question-christianity/

Double Minded - https://www.bibletools.org/index.cfm/fuseaction/Topical.show/RTD/cgg/ID/1925/Meeden-Diakrinomenos.htm

Diakrino Meaning - http://www.wiebefamily.org/doubt.htm

Is it a Sin to Doubt - https://www.evidenceunseen.com/bible-difficulties-2/nt-difficulties/1-2-timothy-titus-philemon-hebrews-james-1-2-peter/jas-16-is-it-a-sin-to-doubt/