It’s not a sin to have doubts and questions about the Bible or about God or about your life’s purpose, but it is a sin to have those doubts and then do nothing about them. It’s fine to have doubts, so long as doubts aren’t all you have. Doubts are like calories. You need them to live, but if you consume too many, and for too long, and then you just lay around and do nothing, you’ll wind up feeling bloated and hating yourself.
Doubts are healthy when they inspire you to seek the Truth. Occasionally I’ll hear from parents of college students, and their hearts are broken because their kids are having doubts about God. They’ll ask me, “What can I do to get my kid back in church?” And I say, “Stop nagging them. Every time you do, it feels coercive and they take another step back. Give them a Christian book, and let them give you a copy of whatever they’re reading. Then say, ‘Let’s read both of these books and have a cup of coffee and talk it out.’”
Why? Because questions and doubts should be encouraged, as long as they’re leading someplace. And you might think, “Don’t we need to shield young people from anything that’s not Christian? What if that boy reads that book and becomes an atheist?” Two things: first, the Church has got to stop treating young adults like they can’t think for themselves. Second, we’ve got to stop underestimating the Holy Spirit’s ability to walk with people through a season of doubt and lead them back to faith.
He does that all the time. All the great Christian thinkers in history, from St. Augustine to Martin Luther to Mother Teresa. CS Lewis and Pope Francis, they all experienced seasons of deep doubts. Mother Teresa once wrote in a letter, “The place of God in my soul is blank. There is no God in me.” Charles Spurgeon, the great Baptist preacher, once said, “I think, when a man says, ‘I never doubt,’ it is quite time for us to doubt him, it is quite time for us to begin to say, ‘Ah, poor soul, I am afraid you are not on the road at all…”
Secular folks tend to think that faith means blindly believing in something that doesn’t make sense. A Harvard University professor recently wrote an article insisting the university remove a paragraph about “Reason and Faith” from its General Education program. He wrote, “Faith – believing in something without good reasons to do so – has no place in anything but a religious institution, and our society has no shortage of these.” Harvard University was founded by intellectual Christians and named after John Harvard, an intellectual pastor, who donated over four hundred books from his own collection to start the Harvard library.
Knowledge doesn’t threaten faith. Knowledge strengthens faith. Because faith is NOT belief without knowledge. Faith is the engagement of the will. Faith is acting on what you know.
John 20:19-31 tells the story of so-called Doubting Thomas. History hasn’t been kind to poor Thomas; all he’s remembered for is doubting! But Thomas wasn’t the only doubter among the disciples – the other disciples doubted, too, until they saw Jesus. Unfortunately, Thomas had missed the meeting where the other disciples had already seen Jesus, so of course, Thomas was bound to have the most reservations.
Think about all the trauma that Thomas and the other disciples had been through, seeing Jesus get arrested, convicted, and brutally killed. In the days that followed, the disciples went into hiding. They were understandably afraid and paranoid. That’s when Jesus came to them and showed them his scars. Think about that for a second. Why would he show them his scars?
First, remember these are guys we’re talking about. Guys love comparing scars. And these must have been some awesome scars to look at. Gruesome. But also, his scars stood for something. They meant Jesus really was who he said he was: a man who felt pain, but more than a man – the Son of God who took the weight of the world on his shoulders and overcame.
Jesus’ scars dismissed the disciples’ doubts. And from that moment, their trauma gave way to trust. They left the isolation of that room, and they went out into the world to make disciples. We think Thomas made it all the way to India, where he planted several churches before he died as a martyr.
Thomas wasn’t just a doubter; he just needed a personal connection with Jesus to know it was true. It wasn’t enough for him to know about Jesus from what the other guys told him; he needed to know Jesus for himself. There’s a huge difference between believing in Jesus and believing Jesus. To believe in someone is to think they’re great from a distance. You can believe in the Houston Astros, but some would say you shouldn’t believe the Houston Astros. Do you see the difference?
To believe someone is to know them. It’s personal.
When it comes to your faith in Jesus, you can come here and listen to me talk about him. You can read books about him. You can know facts about him. You can be religious in his name. But when it comes to Jesus, there is no substitute for a personal relationship with him. A personal encounter. One-on-one. You and Jesus.
For some of you, that probably sounds like preacher-talk. You think the whole me-and-Jesus thing works for some people, but it’s not your style. Other people seem really close to Jesus, like crazy-in-love with Jesus, but you’d rather keep it casual with him. Other people claim to feel his presence and hear his voice, but that’s never happened to you. You’ve never heard his voice.
With all respect, I have to ask: Have you ever really tried? Have you ever made a habit of stopping and listening long enough for Jesus to speak to you? Or have you basically filled up every waking minute of every single day with some kind of noise? Do you avoid intimacy with Jesus because you doubt it will really make any difference?
Don’t let your doubts define you! There was a guy on Reddit the other day who went crazy on one of my threads, and he said, “No matter what you say, you can’t prove God exists, so why bother?” And you know what? He’s right. You can’t prove God exists. But you can KNOW God exists. You can’t prove God, but you can know God. Proof is about verifiability. Knowledge comes from a relationship.
You can know God exists because He came here as a real man and he lived a real life. He went through hell on earth and had the scars to show for it. And Christians believe he still lives today, because Death could not keep him in the grave. Billions of people have experienced personal encounters with him. Illiterate peasants and Harvard graduates. Homeless folks downtown and Fortune 500 CEOs have all experienced Jesus personally.
It happens when you stop and listen. It happens when you pray. It happens when you go deep into the Bible. It happens when you make time for small groups and worship. Jesus still shows up. His scars still speak when we take the time to listen.
