Is God doubt-tolerant?

[Running2win]

But didn't Jesus say something about the weak...

Yeah but you need a big "faith" muscle. Got to get the "pump". All about the pump.

 

[Bruce Leiter]

I don't think "doubt-tolerant" is an actual word but it's a word writer Philip Yancey used in an interview I've just read that he gave on the subject of faith and doubt.

In the interview he said that he often challenges students to find a single argument against God in the older agnostics (Bertrand Russell, Voltaire, David Hume) or the newer ones (Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, Sam Harris) that is not already included in books like Psalms, Job, Habakkuk, and Lamentations and how he has respect for a God who not only gives us the freedom to reject him, but also includes the arguments we can use in the Bible.

My first experience of church was that asking questions was tantamount to a sin and I was basically told just to believe. I left in a state of some disgrace and this put me off church for some years until I decided to try a different church where I had a better experience.

I wonder what you think about doubt. Do you regard it as a weakness or even a strength? It seems to me that doubt and faith go hand-in-hand. The apostles and people who witnessed the risen Christ are the only people who know for certain that Jesus rose again (or didn't and it's all a hoax) but the rest of us are simply not in this privileged position. We can only have faith that He did but this does seem to imply a level of doubt. If we were certain, we would not need faith. So it doesn't seem warranted to feel guilty about having doubt and perhaps it's even a good and healthy thing to acknowledge it.

Edited to note that Christopher Hitchens died in 2011

First, I want to say that Dawkins, Hitchens, and Harris aren't agnostics; they're atheists. I think that there are two kinds of doubt, believing and unbelieving doubt.

The first kind is throughout the Bible. Job in chapters 3, 7, and 10 doubts God because his horrible suffering doesn't match his idea of God. The psalmists express the same kind of doubt focused on God about their experiences. Look at Psalm 73 and John 20:19-31, for two of many examples. God is patient with our doubts.

Second, unbelieving doubt is illustrated by a majority of the Israelites for 40 years in the desert; all but two of them died there. They complained in unbelief to Moses instead of praying to God. The three atheists that you mention fall into that kind of doubt.

Third, the keys to overcoming doubt are to express it genuinely and persistently to God in prayer until he gives you his peace to accept whatever it is you're doubting about God and his Word, to read and study his Word, and to surround yourself with a good, Christ-preaching church that shows you unconditional love like the second one that you mentioned.

 

[Hmm]

First, I want to say that Dawkins, Hitchens, and Harris aren't agnostics; they're atheists.

That's not strictly true. I don't know about Sam Harris but although Richard Dawkins was an atheist in the New Atheism days (the movement's now really fizzled out) he describes himself now as an agnostic after admitting that he can't disprove the existence of God. Christopher Hitchens was always a self-proclaimed anti-theist rather than an atheist because his stance wasn't that there is no God but that all religions are harmful.

 

[Gary K]

I see a lot of people saying to question God's goodness and love is tatamount to leaving God. I can't accept that position for one of the best examples we have of faith in God is Elijah. And what did Elijah do? After showing the faith to beat up on the prophets of Baal for an entire day and then calling down fire from God out of heaven to consume the sacrifice on his altar he prayed for rain seven times and when a very small cloud appeared told Ahab he better get down off the mountain because it was going to rain really hard.

His reaction then to hearing Jezebel was threatening to kill him was to turn and run away for days on end. And if an angel hadn't fed him during his depression he would most likely have died. Talk about doubting God after displaying a faith that seemingly could not be overcome. And yet what did God do for him? He saved his life and then taught him how to really listen for God's voice while he was hiding in a cave.

Then God tells us to come together with Him and reason between the two of us. This is a God who respects us. He knows what we go through every day, and everything we've gone through in our entire life. He knows how all that affects us, and still He reaches out to us in our pain and despair. He tells us not to assume our ways are His ways. Why? Because if He was like us we would have been destroyed long ago.

Trust that He is who He says He is in the midst of periods of doubt and God will bring us through those tough times with a much stronger faith and knowledge of who He is. That has been my life's experience. God just doesn't let us go when we become discouraged because of the illusions the devil places in front of our eyes. If we will just lean on Him and His promises and not on our own understanding God will save us. The only one who can separate us from God is ourselves and our doubts if we allow that to happen.

God is faithful.

 

[Hmm]

From reading all the posts I beginning to think that there are maybe two meanings to the word "doubt" and that it's good to differentiate them. I'm sure there are many other meanings but I'm not a Biblical scholar or a linguist so I'm just talking in a very amateur way.

One meaning of "doubt", it seems to me, is philosophical doubt. This is the idea that we don't really know anything for sure. Everything is problematic. I think that this is true. Let's take an example of just walking out of your house and stepping on the pavement/sidewalk. It may sound silly but we don't know for sure that the pavement is not made of some jelly like substance that will swallow us up once we set foot on it. We "know" from our experience that it won't but this form of knowing is more like "trust" than knowing in the mathematical sense that 1+1 =2. A poster earlier in the thread mentioned that the only thing we can really be sure about in that we can say it is proved to be true is a mathematical proposition. Everything else is really taken on trust. That's the ironic thing about atheists who try to maintain that all we need is science and that faith is an old-fashioned medieval kind of thing that we don't need anymore. We can't live without faith! We can't even walk out of the door without trust/faith that the pavement is not going to swallow us up. Another example is that when we get on a plane we trust that the pilot is qualified, is not drunk and that the engineers have done their job. We don't know that this is but we trust that it is.

The doubt a lot of people have been talking about here seems to be different from that, that it's more of a lack of commitment to what we believe about God. I liked the analogy Running2win gave about that we need to get to the "pump" to develop our faith muscle. For me, I feel I haven't been as committed as I should have been to what my beliefs and I think that's maybe because of a combination of laziness and not really believing that God wants me to have "fullness of life". In other words, my belief seems to be more in my mind than in my heart, and I recognise that I'm like this in other areas of my life too.

So I'd say that the first kind of doubt, the more philosophical kind where we're not really sure of anything and everything is problematic is valid and true and is actually something to value and keep hold of because it will make us more tolerant of others and stop us descending into a fundamentalist cop out faith. This kind of doubt will always be with us and so it's best we draw up a chair and make peace with it. The more personal knd of doubt where we think God is not with is or doesn't love us seems to me to be different and something that we need to do something about. Anyway, what I've learnt from everyone's posts, and thanks!, is that I need to think about the person of Jesus more than I do and to try to believe more that He does want us all to have full and resurrected lives, not just for ourselves but for others benefit too.

 

[Gary K]

Kenny's: On your thoughts.

Kenny's: Complete lack of doubt in this case would equate to perfect faith. Some may claim it but I seriously doubt anyone has perfect faith.

This is where Holy Doubt comes in. Those who embrace the The Dark Night, or a walk though the Beatitudes, may, though its unlikely, but may reach a near perfect faith, but of course, even if they did they would likely say they are a sinner still. That fact is the closer you come to true faith, the dirtier you feel.

Kenny's: Meaning God has to have some type of tolerance there.

Without which would anyone be saved?

Kenny's: Remember Peter as he walked on the water, then began to doubt, began to sink and Christ saved him from sinking? I'd call that tolerance, and I doubt Christ's loved him any less because of it.

Also the last page of John, Peter could only Philo love Christ even though Christ kept asking him if he Agape loved Him. Philo is a strong feeling, Agape is active love or love in action. Still the last time Christ asked, "Somon, son of Bajona, Do you love Me?" he used Philo, thus here too He moved to Peters level. That because Christ has Agape love!

Kenny's: With faith as a mustard seed we can move mountains...have any one of us been able to move a mountain with faith only, no? And I seriously doubt God holds that against us.

Amen!

I really like the paragraph I emphasized.

It's paradoxical that even the more we see the defects in our lives we also come to know and recognize the fact that we are seen by God to have infinite value in His eyes because He thought enough of us to send His son to die for us.

 

[Gary K]

From reading all the posts I beginning to think that there are maybe two meanings to the word "doubt" and that it's good to differentiate them. I'm sure there are many other meanings but I'm not a Biblical scholar or a linguist so I'm just talking in a very amateur way.

One meaning of "doubt", it seems to me, is philosophical doubt. This is the idea that we don't really know anything for sure. Everything is problematic. I think that this is true. Let's take an example of just walking out of your house and stepping on the pavement/sidewalk. It may sound silly but we don't know for sure that the pavement is not made of some jelly like substance that will swallow us up once we set foot on it. We "know" from our experience that it won't but this form of knowing is more like "trust" than knowing in the mathematical sense that 1+1 =2. A poster earlier in the thread mentioned that the only thing we can really be sure about in that we can say it is proved to be true is a mathematical proposition. Everything else is really taken on trust. That's the ironic thing about atheists who try to maintain that all we need is science and that faith is an old-fashioned medieval kind of thing that we don't need anymore. We can't live without faith! We can't even walk out of the door without trust/faith that the pavement is not going to swallow us up. Another example is that when we get on a plane we trust that the pilot is qualified, is not drunk and that the engineers have done their job. We don't know that this is but we trust that it is.

The doubt a lot of people have been talking about here seems to be different from that, that it's more of a lack of commitment to what we believe about God. I liked the analogy Running2win gave about that we need to get to the "pump" to develop our faith muscle. For me, I feel I haven't been as committed as I should have been to what my beliefs and I think that's maybe because of a combination of laziness and not really believing that God wants me to have "fullness of life". In other words, my belief seems to be more in my mind than in my heart, and I recognise that I'm like this in other areas of my life too.

So I'd say that the first kind of doubt, the more philosophical kind where we're not really sure of anything and everything is problematic is valid and true and is actually something to value and keep hold of because it will make us more tolerant of others and stop us descending into a fundamentalist cop out faith. This kind of doubt will always be with us and so it's best we draw up a chair and make peace with it. The more personal knd of doubt where we think God is not with is or doesn't love us seems to me to be different and something that we need to do something about. Anyway, what I've learnt from everyone's posts, and thanks!, is that I need to think about the person of Jesus more than I do and to try to believe more that He does want us all to have full and resurrected lives, not just for ourselves but for others benefit too.

Here is one of my favorite songs.

If we would just keep on asking God help our unbelief God would do for us just as He did the father in the story. The prayer of the father is one that God will never fail to answer in a positive manner, for the Bible tells us that it is God who works within us to will and to do of His good pleasure, and it God's pleasure to save us if we will just allow Him to do it.

 

[Beanieboy]

I had perhaps a similar kind of question which led to me being ignobly ejected from the first church I mentioned. My question was Do unbaptised babies go to hell? The very idea would never have occurred to me and I wouldn't have dreamed of asking it but I came to realise that everyone who I knew in the church believed that they did. I remember one of them telling me that we're in a spiritual war and in a war there are always innocent victims. This was my first experience of church so I thought that this must be a required belief but I couldn't accept it (praise the Lord!) and kept asking Why? I remember the vicar actually sneering at me over his guitar during a Bible study meeting one evening when he thought no one was looking! A great welcoming experience to the family of God!

Would you send a baby to hell? Why would God, who is even more loving and merciful?

 

[Hmm]

I agree. I can't understand people who believe in a God who would do such a thing and want to be with him forever. I would reject such an unjust God although of course I don't believe that He is like that.

The first commandment is to love God. I don't think it's humanly possible to love God if your image of him is that he is capricious, unjust and cruel as most people including children would define that. Fear, sure, but not love.

 

[Cis.jd]

My first experience of church was that asking questions was tantamount to a sin and I was basically told just to believe. I left in a state of some disgrace and this put me off church for some years until I decided to try a different church where I had a better experience.

I wonder what you think about doubt. Do you regard it as a weakness or even a strength? It seems to me that doubt and faith go hand-in-hand. The apostles and people who witnessed the risen Christ are the only people who know for certain that Jesus rose again (or didn't and it's all a hoax) but the rest of us are simply not in this privileged position. We can only have faith that He did but this does seem to imply a level of doubt. If we were certain, we would not need faith. So it doesn't seem warranted to feel guilty about having doubt and perhaps it's even a good and healthy thing to acknowledge it.

Edited to note that Christopher Hitchens died in 2011

Most churches that condemn you for asking questions are doing so in any religious way but they want you fully invested in their preaching and ideals that your wallets will be there for them on sunday.

You need to question (moderately) because God did design his creation with a mind and as life shows, growing is practically part of everyday reality. In order to grow in wisdom and sometimes maturity, you need to question in order to look into the heart of certain matters. Just agreeing for no reason other than influenced is the definition of brain washed, which I think God isn't ok with. I think he would rather have people come to him full heartedly in their decisions not because of being brainwashed by someone else's ideals.

 

[Glorytothefather2245]

I don't think "doubt-tolerant" is an actual word but it's a word writer Philip Yancey used in an interview I've just read that he gave on the subject of faith and doubt.

In the interview he said that he often challenges students to find a single argument against God in the older agnostics (Bertrand Russell, Voltaire, David Hume) or the newer ones (Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, Sam Harris) that is not already included in books like Psalms, Job, Habakkuk, and Lamentations and how he has respect for a God who not only gives us the freedom to reject him, but also includes the arguments we can use in the Bible.

My first experience of church was that asking questions was tantamount to a sin and I was basically told just to believe. I left in a state of some disgrace and this put me off church for some years until I decided to try a different church where I had a better experience.

I wonder what you think about doubt. Do you regard it as a weakness or even a strength? It seems to me that doubt and faith go hand-in-hand. The apostles and people who witnessed the risen Christ are the only people who know for certain that Jesus rose again (or didn't and it's all a hoax) but the rest of us are simply not in this privileged position. We can only have faith that He did but this does seem to imply a level of doubt. If we were certain, we would not need faith. So it doesn't seem warranted to feel guilty about having doubt and perhaps it's even a good and healthy thing to acknowledge it.

Edited to note that Christopher Hitchens died in 2011

Of course its not wrong to ask questions. But always pray for discernment when your unsure of things. God does not forsake his children you just need to learn to have faith and trust in him and his word. Asking questions is not tantamount to a sin. Telling you to just believe is actually wrong. But him telling you to just believe depends on the context he ment it by. Why i say that is because we are suppose to judge everything according to his word. We should not believe everything everyone tells us just because they told us to.

Please don't doubt God give him a chance and he will show you how true to his word he is, it just requires a little bit of faith.

Matthew 17:20 (KJV) – And Jesus said unto them, Because of your unbelief: for verily I say unto you, If ye have faith as a grain of mustard seed, ye shall say unto this mountain, Remove hence to yonder place; and it shall remove; and nothing shall be impossible unto you.