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Trusting Doubt
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by Sam Williamson
My friend was recently fired from a job
when his boss blamed him for a mistake the boss
had made. He said to me, “All is good.” The next
week his wife totaled one of their two cars. My
friend said, “I trust God that everything will
work out for the good.”
When we met for coffee, I asked how he was doing,
and he snapped, “Of course I’m okay. I’m keeping a
positive attitude. I have faith.” The thing was,
he didn’t seem as peaceful as he claimed. He
seemed anxious.
A few weeks later his transmission died, and he
phoned me saying, “What the hell is God doing!” He
no longer seemed anxious; he was angry. It was not
an improvement.
Why are we so reluctant to admit our doubts? I
have met scores of believers who try to keep a
stiff upper lip, or refuse to voice a negative
thought, or speak only positive platitudes; many
even deny they are getting sick in the midst of
chills, fever, and a hacking cough.
The thing is, our doubt is never improved by our
self-deceit.
Doubts Meet Reality
Nearly seventy years ago, Norman Vincent Peale
published one of the most influential self-help
books of all time: The Power of Positive
Thinking. And its message infected our
culture like the plague. Christians and atheists
alike confused faith with the self-hypnosis mantra
of repeating “I can do all things in Christ” ten
times a day. Twenty times would be better.
The Power of Positive Thinking is
heretical, but every successful heresy works only
when it resembles the real thing. Peale’s version
has faith, but it rests its faith in “faith”
rather than in God. And it ignores Scripture. When
all sorts of terrors inflict Job, he screams, rips
his robes, shaves his head, and sits in a pile of
ashes. And Scripture says, “In all this, Job
sinned not.”
Maybe Job should have read The Power of
Positive Thinking. Probably not.
Real faith looks at reality with eyes wide open,
and whenever we honestly examine reality, we will
find doubt. If God’s nature is infinite, then our
limited understanding of him always falls short of
his reality. Which means our sense of
reality and his real reality are in
conflict..
Jesus Always Reveals Our
Doubt
Spiritual growth only takes place when God’s ultimate
reality confronts our false reality. That is why
Jesus constantly exposes our doubts. He provokes
our spiritual growth—not that he makes us to
doubt, but because we already do doubt. We
just won’t admit it.
When Jesus tells his disciples that they should
forgive their repenting brother seven times in one
day, what was Jesus doing? He revealed a
true-spiritual reality that differed from the
disciples’ limited-spiritual reality. How do we
know? When they hear his command, they cry,
“Increase our faith!” Which means they admitted
their doubts.
Which is exactly what Jesus wanted in the first
place.
The disciples’ dinky reality led them to forgive
their brother, but only with limits. Jesus shows
them a spiritual reality of unworthy humanity,
repeatedly rebelling against God; and yet of such
value to God that he himself comes down to absorb
its sins at infinite cost.
Jesus does not fear our imperfect sense of
reality. Instead, he constantly incites reactions
in us to reveal our doubts so we can grow into a
deeper and truer spiritual understanding.
We will always grow most when we take our most
perplexing questions to God and look to him to
stretch our minds beyond our doubts—our dinky
realities—into a new understanding of Him.
As Einstein once said, “Never lose a holy
curiosity.” Even when we doubt.
Sam
P. S. Jesus stirs up those doubts in us so we
bring them to him; so we can grow in intimacy with
him. So we can hear his voice.
Sam Williamson has published
numerous articles and has written two books.
He has a blog site, www.beliefsoftheheart.com,
and can be reached at
Sam@BeliefsoftheHeart.com.
Hearing
God in Conversation: How to Recognize
His Voice Everywhere, by Samuel C.
Williamson, published by Kregel
Publications, 2016, available from Amazon
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photo of two guys having coffee and
talking, by (c) alexey_sinelnikov
photo at
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