‘Doubting it’ and ‘doubting you’
4
The personal aspects of doubt
We’re all different. People sometimes talk about different ‘personalities’ or ‘personality types’. This can be helpful, up to a point: for example, some people place emphasis on understanding, while others emphasize experiencing. The idea of a ‘personality’, however, suggests that individuals are static, and doesn’t pay enough attention to the fact that we change and develop, in response to situations. Who you are and the experiences you’ve been through can have a quite definite effect on the anxieties and doubts you have in relation to your Christian faith. Some examples will help make this point clearer.
1. Ann had a difficult relationship with her father in her youth as a result of her mother’s early death. Her memories of her father are dominated by his tyranny and insensitivity. She cannot remember her father ever doing anything to make her believe he loved her. She looks back to the day when she left home to go to college as a moment of liberation, when she was able to break free from his oppressive presence. The word ‘father’ has, as a result, only negative associations. Ann has considerable personal difficulties about thinking of God as a ‘father’, and doubts God really ‘loves’ her.
2. Bill has a track record of persistent failure, both in academic studies and personal relationships. His family place considerable emphasis upon success and the achievement of status, and have made it clear they regard him as something of a disappointment. He hasn’t met the standards of his high-achieving parents. As a result, he has now acquired a deeply ingrained sense of failure and personal inability. Bill finds the gospel intimidating, because it seems to make demands he feels he cannot meet. He is frightened of failing God. He has genuine and deep doubts and anxieties about whether he can ever really be a Christian.
3. Clare has been through a series of broken personal relationships, as a result of which she feels deeply hurt. Her rather bitter experience of life has persuaded her that people cannot be trusted. She has experienced exploitation and abuse in relationships. She is now reluctant to get involved in any further personal commitments, as she fears the results. Her experience of relationships leads her to believe she only makes herself vulnerable and weak through trusting others, and allowing herself to become close to them. Consequently, she finds it difficult to commit herself to God. She feels he cannot be trusted. She is reluctant to get involved in a relationship with him.
Many more examples could be given. But the basic idea is clear: your background can affect your faith. Your past may predispose you to certain doubts, anxieties and worries. In other words, present doubts may well reflect the continuing influence of past situations. Many people find it useful to try to identify the way in which their past affects their present, especially if this influence is unhelpful. You might like to try doing this with a sympathetic friend or counsellor.
However, the main point to make here is simple: our doubts, anxieties and difficulties often reflect our individuality. You may see things in a different way from your friends, simply because you are who you are. You may worry about something that doesn’t bother your best friend at all. You may find it difficult to understand why your best friend has problems where you have none. In part, this may just reflect the fact that you and your best friend are different people, who have been through and been affected by different situations. Our doubts often mirror our situation, and help us realize more about ourselves. If you want to help someone with difficulties or anxieties about their faith, you may find you need to understand them as an individual before you can be much help. You may find you can’t give the same textbook answer to them all. So be sensitive to your own individuality, and that of others. It may affect your faith – and your doubts.
Let’s think about this a little more. Some people find it difficult to accept God loves them. The reasons for their difficulties often reflect their background, and the values instilled into them by their families. For example, they might be perfectionists, who feel that you must do something or achieve something before God can love you. For this sort of person, the gospel proclamation of the unconditionality of God’s love for us can be difficult to accept – it contradicts the standards of the world.
Or they may have been taught that dependency is to be discouraged. Some individuals believe strongly in the cult of independence: personal fulfilment is based on not being dependent on anyone or anything. The idea that God loves us is an invitation to learn to depend on God. This clashes with the set of values they have been taught by their families, who are anxious they should get ahead in the world through being independent.
In both these cases, it is necessary to question how appropriate these values are, and whether they apply to our relationship with God. But the basic point remains the same: your history can affect the way you react to the gospel and the difficulties you experience in relation to it. Faith is a relational matter.
‘Doubting it’ and ‘doubting you’
The word ‘doubt’ can have two slightly different meanings. We could call these ‘cognitive’ and ‘personal’. The first doubts statements; the second doubts persons. One is a ‘doubt-it’, the other a ‘doubt-you’, problem. One is fundamentally intellectual; the other is basically relational. Let’s begin by looking at a ‘doubt-it’ situation.
The New Testament provides us with an excellent illustration of this kind of doubt. After the resurrection, Jesus appeared to his disciples in the upper room. They were both surprised and overjoyed (John 20:19–20). However, one of the disciples, Thomas, wasn’t there on that occasion. He missed the experience the others had of the presence of the risen Christ. And when they told him about it, he found it difficult to accept. He doubted it. ‘Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands, and put my finger in the mark of the nails and my hand in his side, I will not believe’ (John 20:25). Thomas doubted the belief of the remaining disciples that Jesus had been raised. That doubt was resolved through his encounter with the risen Christ, who spoke these words: ‘Do not doubt but believe’ (John 20:27).
The second type of doubt is slightly different. Thomas doubted something; you can also doubt someone. It’s a ‘doubt-you’, not a ‘doubt-it’, situation. To doubt someone is not to trust them. It is to have difficulty in taking them at their word. Suppose I lent a colleague a large sum of money, which he never repaid. He had promised to repay me. But it never happened. If he was to ask me to lend him some more money, I think I would hesitate before doing so! I would doubt his word. I would not have faith in his promises. My colleague exists – but that’s not the issue here. I’m not doubting whether he really is there; my worries are about whether I can really trust him.
Someone may have profound difficulties in trusting God as a person because of their past experiences. They may be reluctant to commit themselves, on account of their past experience of the untrustworthiness of people within relationships. They may not doubt that God exists; they do, however, doubt him as a person. Can God really be trusted, they wonder?
There are many who have similar anxieties about whether God really can be trusted in the first place. Does he keep his promises? Does he really love us? That sort of doubt can cast so deep a shadow that everything else seems of little importance. Why worry about doubts or difficulties concerning Christian beliefs, when God may not be worth believing in? Why bother about problems of Christian faith, if you are hesitant about committing yourself to God in the first place? This is a ‘doubt-you’ problem. The gospel centres upon the absolute trustworthiness, goodness and faithfulness of God, as we know him and see him revealed in Jesus Christ. We shall therefore be dealing with some questions touching on the trustworthiness of God himself, in the hope that this may help people with such anxieties.
There are obvious connections between doubt and faith. Each of them has this dual aspect. I can believe that certain things are true, just as I can doubt they are true. In part, this reflects the nature of the gospel itself. The gospel declares certain things are true. For example, it insists Jesus really did rise from the dead (1 Corinthians 15:3–5). It also makes some crucial affirmations about God himself. God is trustworthy; he is faithful (Romans 3:3; 1 Thessalonians 5:24). To doubt God is to question his faithfulness and reliability. We trust the statement that Jesus rose from the dead – but we trust the person of God. Of course, there is a close relation between these two ideas. One of the reasons why we can trust God is that he raised Jesus from the dead. It shows he is faithful to his promises. It is, however, helpful to make this distinction between two aspects of ‘doubt’ and ‘faith’ at this early stage. We shall return to the question of trusting God later in this book.
It is important, however, to appreciate that doubts concern more than God. Many Christians have doubts about themselves (perhaps reflecting their background and personal history), which spill over into their thinking about God. For this reason, I have tried to bring together in this book some of the more common doubts Christians have, and grouped them together roughly in four categories: doubts about the gospel, about ourselves, about Jesus in particular, and about God in general. But before we go further, we need to look at the idea of doubt more closely.