Doubt Your Doubts

Doubt Your Doubts

The LORD passed in front of Moses, calling out, “Yahweh! The LORD! The God of compassion and mercy! I am slow to anger and filled with unfailing love and faithfulness.”

Exodus 34:6

Timothy Keller, pastor of Redeemer Presbyterian Church in New York City, advises Christians that “faith without some doubts is like a human body without any antibodies in it.” He says, “People who blithely go through life too busy or indifferent to ask hard questions about why they believe as they do will find themselves defenseless against either the experience of tragedy or the probing questions of a smart skeptic. . . . It is no longer sufficient to hold beliefs just because you inherited them.”^a

By saying this, I don’t think Keller is saying we should doubt God’s faithfulness whenever we encounter difficulty. This brand of doubting makes us weak, leading, as it does, to unbelief. Instead, Keller is arguing for a kind of intellectual honesty that requires us to grapple with hard questions in a way that will make our faith stronger, not weaker.

Keller has also famously advised skeptics to doubt their doubts about Christianity. Perhaps it would also be wise to advise the weakest among us to begin to doubt our doubts about God’s character. God says he is a loving Father, and we act as though we are orphans. God reveals himself as all-powerful, but we don’t think he can help us. God tells us he forgives, and we cling to our guilt.

The reason for our doubts? Sister Wendy Beckett archly observes that many who call themselves Christians may well have embraced a false god. “Sometimes I blush for those who think themselves Christian,” she says, “and yet the God they worship is cruel, suspicious, punitive and watchful. Who could love such a God?”

She goes on to say, “I have the greatest admiration for atheists, because by definition they have rejected a false ‘God.’”^b Her point, of course, is not that atheists are right in rejecting God, but that they are at least right in rejecting a caricature of God that contains more shadows than light. Though the God we love will always be mysterious, we can be sure of one thing—in him there is no darkness at all.

Lord, there are so many things I don’t understand about you. Help me to know you and then to know you more.

^a Timothy Keller, The Reason for God (New York: Dutton, 2008), xvi.

^b Wendy Beckett, Sister Wendy on Prayer (New York: Harmony Books, 2006), 83.