6 The Doubt Trap
6
He slumped in with head bowed down, shoulders bent, and a blank expression, offered no greeting, and crumbled onto my couch. He was the quintessential image of a completely beaten man. Everything about him projected defeat, and it was clear that talking to me was going to be tortuous for him. His appointment with me was the only reason he’d ventured out of his house that day, something he hadn’t done for months, even though he was sure that this too would be a waste of time, like everything else in his life had proved to be. He was broken, and his world was broken, and he was sure that there was no way that it would all be put back together again.
He had once been a young man with a bright future. He was the valedictorian of his high school class. He then graduated with honors from a revered university and ran through his masters program with little difficulty. But five years into a career that he thought would rock him to the top of his firm and his field, he began to have troubling physical symptoms. Within a year his life had become a drama of unanswered physical questions coupled with a worsening cycle of fatigue. At first he just felt unusually tired, but before long, he felt that he was dragging an unwilling body from place to place. Morning after morning it was all he could do to get himself out of bed. Dressing was an exhausting routine, and more and more his work performance suffered.
He was embarrassed and ashamed because he just couldn’t cope with life. He wanted to tell his friends, but because the doctors couldn’t find a physical cause for his fatigue, he feared his friends would think he was just emotionally and psychologically losing it. He reasoned that on top of the discouragement of his overwhelming fatigue, the last thing he needed was his friends to think he was a nut. So he began making excuses for not participating in all the spiritual and relational activities they normally did together. At first they pursued him, making sure he was okay, but after a while, because he never said yes, they gave up and quit asking.
After an extended sick leave, he finally went to his boss and told him that he was unable any longer to do what he had been hired to do. His boss was very gracious and wanted to help in any way he could. Even so, the thought of continuing to deal with the daily shame of showing up to work and accomplishing next to nothing, of being in meetings but barely able to follow the discussion, and of the awkward conversations at lunch were overwhelming. He was convinced that the only way out was to quit, and that day he did, much to the dismay of his boss.
That left him with only one reason to leave his house—church. He had loved his church and his small group and his circle of close friends, but what was once a source of joy had become painful. He began arriving late for church so he could slide into one of the back rows without having to engage in conversation with anyone. He hated being asked how he was doing or what was happening at work. He would leave during the last song or the benediction and get to his car as fast as his weary body could take him. But this didn’t last long either. He would sit in the service with such anxiety that he could hardly concentrate on the words of the songs or the content of the sermon. And when he was able to concentrate, what was being sung and said seemed to address a different world than the one he felt trapped in.
After dressing for church one Sunday morning, he sat down on his bed to put on his shoes but simply lay back down instead. Going to church only left him more ashamed and discouraged, which was the last thing he needed. So he didn’t go that Sunday or any Sunday thereafter. He was left with not only overwhelming and debilitating fatigue but an empty life as well. He had no reason to get out of bed, and even if he had, no reason to shower and shave. The Internet became his chef and butler, and when his home became too dirty and cluttered to live in, he hired someone he found on the Internet to bring order to the chaos.
In his withdrawal, he was left with himself. It’s the thing none of us can escape. He had no friends, no work, and no church to distract him from or interrupt his private conversation. In his withdrawal, he had no one to talk to but himself during his waking hours. And because of his despondency, he found it nearly impossible to say anything positive to himself. Every day he talked to himself out of the darkness he saw all around him. He hated the brief success of his past, his present condition made him angry, and he dreaded the future. But at the center of the endless negative conversation was something deep and profound that drove him deeper into the darkness.
In ways that he was unaware of, his private conversation had become progressively theological. More and more, he thought about God, and because of that, the meaning and purpose of his life. But rather than letting what the Bible says about God help him interpret the overwhelming circumstances he was facing, he let his circumstances redefine his view of God. How could a loving God let this happen to anyone? Where were all God’s promises? Why didn’t God answer his prayers? Why were other people being blessed while he got cursed? Why didn’t God use his power to help him? Why was God punishing him? Why had God turned his back on him? Why didn’t God do something to help him? Why?
The Bible didn’t answer his questions because he no longer had faith in what it said, and he knew that his pastor and Christian friends would offer him the same tired platitudes that he had once repeated to others in need. His love for God began to morph into anger at God. Worship devolved into an angry demand for change. The faith that had shaped his life now seemed to be a grand trick played on weak people. In his endless and dark conversation with himself, he finally concluded that if there was a God, he was not good or worthy of his trust. And in that moment he was all alone in his overwhelming and increasingly debilitating circumstances.
It was a miracle that he made it to my office. He told me about one friend who wouldn’t be shut out, who would not stay away. It was a hassle at first; he just wanted to be left alone. He even hid in his bedroom when the friend showed up unexpectedly, but his friend would not relent. Finally, in an attempt to get rid of his friend by proving to him that he was okay, he let him in. Shockingly, his friend told him he wouldn’t leave until he agreed to get help. So to get his friend out of the house, he agreed to one appointment with me. He reasoned that one hour of torture was worth it if it meant that his friend would finally leave him alone. But that one hour of “torture” was what the God he had given up on used to begin a process that would change him and his world forever.
There is so much I could say about the months we spent together, but I want to focus on one central thing. In the middle of his despondency and withdrawal was one fatal conclusion: he had quit believing that God is good. There is no deeper, more fundamentally life-changing doubt. If your life has been based on the assumption that God is good, and that because he is, what he has said about himself, called you to, and promised to do for you is reliable, then this form of doubt really does change everything. Here is why. If you’ve come to the conclusion, as the result of assessing your circumstances, that God is not good, then you will quit listening to what he says and going to him for help. None of us would ever think of seeking out the help of someone we no longer trust. Doubt in the middle of suffering has the potential to radically change your life but not for the good.
Let’s Talk about Doubt
Like fear, doubt is not in and of itself a bad thing. God has given us the ability to wonder and the desire to know and understand. He has wired into us the quest to have our questions answered and our confusion cleared up. He created in us an intolerance of irrationality and contradiction. Doubt can cause you to ask profoundly important questions. Doubt will make you think deeply about very important things. Doubt will allow you to expose and reject falsehood. Doubt can ignite a life that is reasoned, wise, and protective. Doubt can keep you from being all too naive or an easy target for deception. Because doubt drives us to know and understand, it has the power to lead you to the One who knows and understands everything. Your capacity to doubt can drive you to God, but not always. This is why we need to talk about doubt, because this God-given capacity, wrongly functioning, can be disastrous.
There are two kinds of doubt. First is the doubt of wonderment. God’s ways can confuse you. His ways are not like our ways. His plans often don’t mesh with the plans we have for ourselves. What God knows is good for us doesn’t always look good to us. He takes us places we would never choose to go. There are times when the way in which he delivers what he’s promised looks to us as if he’s breaking his promise. He doesn’t warn us ahead of time before he initiates change in our lives. He doesn’t invite us into the counsel of his secret will. He will not submit his sovereignty to our sense of what is best. He will exercise his power to deliver not what we want but what he knows we need.
Because of this, at street level, the life of faith is always a struggle of trust. In this struggle of trust you will be left with questions about what God is doing. If the doubt of wonderment causes you to come to God with sincere questions, asking is an act of faith. You’re not rebelling against him; you’re not running from him. You’re not demanding answers, but crying out of your confusion for the help that only he can give. The doubt of wonderment is a normal part of a healthy life of faith. God won’t always make sense to you, and when he doesn’t, bringing your doubts to him is good. You see this beautifully portrayed in such psalms as 4, 6, 7, 10, 13, 22, 42, 43, 44, 69, 73, 74, 77, 79, 80, 83, 85, 88, 90, 94, 102, and 115. In fact, the vast majority of psalms were written out of a real-life struggle of faith. The doubt of wonderment is a normal part of a life of faith, and it’s spiritually healthy when it drives you to bring your confusion to the One who has no confusion.
But there’s a second and not so healthy form of doubt. It is the doubt of judgment. This doubt is not the result of wondering what God is doing. This form of doubt is the result of concluding that, because of our circumstances, God is not good and therefore not worthy of our trust. It’s to bring God into the court of our judgment and determine that he is unfaithful, unloving, or uncaring in some way. The minute your functional theology tells you that God is not good, it’s very hard to hold on to the confessional theology that declares he is. Once this happens, you no longer actually believe what you once believed about God, and because you don’t, as I said before, you will no longer run to him for help. You don’t actually think that he’s with you and loves you, so you quit doing the “faith in God” things that you once did. Your suffering has told you that God isn’t good, so you quit following him and relying on him for help.
I’m persuaded that there are many more sufferers in this place than we tend to think. I am also convinced that many of them don’t know that they’ve reached these conclusions. The reason so many sufferers aren’t aware that they’ve given up on God is that the process of theological change hasn’t been self-consciously philosophical; it’s been much more of a traumatic emotional-situational process. The surprise of situational distress has produced deeply emotional questions that have led them to deeply theological conclusions, but it’s been nothing like the sort of theological debate found in a classroom.
As I talked to my depressed and discouraged friend, he described a God I didn’t know, a God who was vastly different in character, presence, and power from the God the Bible reveals. As I listened to him, I understood why he no longer entrusted himself to the Lord and why he felt so abandoned and alone. It hit me that if I thought God was who my friend thought he was, I wouldn’t trust him either, and I would feel that I had been lied to. But it is important to observe that my friend was seemingly unaware and unafraid of the radical shift that suffering had initiated in his theology. And he was also unaware that this shift in his theology was a major component in the decimating of his hope. Perhaps you should ask yourself right now, “What has my suffering done to my theology? What has it done to the way I view God and his presence, his promises, and his power? Do I still believe that God is the definition of what is loving, good, wise, and true?”
Sowing seeds of this second kind of doubt in the hearts of sufferers is one of the Enemy’s most powerful tools. You get a glimpse of this in a rather curious passage in 1 Peter 5:9: “Resist him, firm in your faith, knowing that the same kinds of suffering are being experienced by your brotherhood throughout the world.” Peter’s first letter is written to people who are suffering, and as his letter is drawing to a close, Peter pens those words. Why would Peter say, “Look around; you’re not the only ones who are suffering”? Is he saying, “Stop whining as if you’re the only ones who suffer in this broken world”? Does he know that misery tends to love company, so he’s giving them some kind of backhanded comfort here? No, Peter is doing something deeply theological and insightful. Peter knows that when we suffer, we are susceptible to the lies that the Enemy whispers in our ears:
“Where is your God now?”
“Why have you been singled out?”
“Perhaps God does have favorites.”
“Why isn’t God listening to your prayers?”
“Why do others have it so much easier than you?”
“Maybe God doesn’t love you after all.”
The function of all these lies is to sow seeds of doubt in our hearts when we feel the weakest, the most afraid, and are reaching out for help. The Enemy is seeking to make us doubt the goodness, love, presence, and power of God. He knows that if we begin to question God’s character and power, we will quit going to God and seeking his help. His lies are meant to damage and weaken our faith so that on the other side of our suffering (if there is another side) we will not love and serve him as we once did.
Peter understands that holding on to a childlike faith in God in the middle of the painful experiences of life in this terribly broken world is spiritual warfare, and his statement is meant to give his readers weapons for the battle. He is saying, “Look around. Your suffering has nothing to do with God singling you out, turning his back, ignoring your need, or forgetting your plight. Your brothers and sisters around the world all carry their own package of difficulty. It’s impossible to live between the ‘already’ and the ‘not yet’ without suffering somehow, someway. Your suffering is not a sign that you’ve been forsaken; rather, it’s a sign that you live in a world that doesn’t function the way God intended and is in need of complete renewal.”
This curious little verse isn’t so curious after all, because in it are the wise words of a loving pastor who knows what his people are facing. Peter knew that the core attack against us in our suffering is not the attack on our bodies, our relationships, our possessions, or our circumstances, but the attack on our hearts. You can live well with a damaged body, but spiritual damage to your heart has the power to cause you to live in a spiritually unhealthy way. Peter’s statement is intended to protect his suffering readers from the spiritual damage to their hearts and lives that results from concluding that God is not good.
The doubt of wonderment will drive you to God with normal, situational questions of faith and, because it does, it will strengthen your rest and reliance on him. The doubt of judgment will progressively weaken your faith until, in practical terms, you don’t trust God anymore, and either you will feel alone in your travail or you will look elsewhere for hope and strength. It’s practically impossible to suffer without doubt, but it’s critically important to assess what kind of doubt has taken residence in your heart.
Fighting the Debilitating Power of Doubt
1. Fight the Devil’s Lies
I want to add some practical counsel to our discussion about lies that lead us to doubt. When you are suffering, you have to force yourself to pay attention to your private conversation, that is, the words you say to yourself that no one else hears. We are always talking to ourselves about ourselves, life, God, others, meaning and purpose, relationships, trouble, solutions, hope, the past, the future, etc. Because of this constant internal conversation, we influence ourselves more than anyone else does, because we hear what we have to say more than we hear anyone else. Here’s the question that everyone suffering needs to ask: “Has my suffering caused me to begin to believe things that are not true and therefore say things that are not true to myself?” You need to question your own assumptions. You need to argue with your own heart. You need to confront evidences of unbelief in your private conversation. Fighting the Devil’s lies means being aware of the talk of your own heart and defending your heart against any perspective that would call into question the wisdom, love, goodness, grace, and faithfulness of God. Pray that God would give you insight into your own heart and the strength to fight this spiritual battle even in moments when you feel profoundly weak. Have you allowed the lies of the enemy, whispered to you in struggle, to sow seeds of doubt about God?
2. Count Your Blessings
There is no more powerful tool against debilitating doubt than gratitude. It is exactly at the point when you are tempted to think that you’re not blessed that counting your blessings is the most important. A thankful heart is the best defense against a doubting heart. Recounting evidences of God’s presence, his grace, his faithfulness to his promises, his provision, and the reliability of what he’s told you in his Word reminds you of God’s goodness, and because it does, it protects you against the lies that tempt you to judge him as less than good.
No matter how difficult and long-term your suffering has been, there are blessings to be found. As a defense against doubt, it is really important to give yourself to quiet moments when you look at the trail behind you and what is now around you for evidences that God is good and worthy of your trust. In other words, do what the old hymn says:
Count your many blessings, name them one by one
And it will surprise you what the Lord has done.1
If you can’t do this alone, ask someone who knows you and lives near you to help you. It is an important spiritual blessing for every sufferer. Have you taken time today to recount the many, many blessings that are yours as God’s child?
3. Daily Confess Your Struggle to Believe
In your struggle with faith you don’t have to give way to the fear of guilt or hide in the humiliation of shame, because Jesus carried your guilt and shame on the cross. God is not surprised by your struggle. He knows the condition of the world he’s placed you in and how those conditions impact you. He’s never surprised or disgusted by your weakness. Instead of criticizing you for being weak, he comes near and reminds you that his grace is up to the task and, in fact, does its best work in those moments when you feel most unable.
So as the battle of doubt and faith rages in your heart, you don’t have to run from God; he graciously welcomes you to run to him. When you humbly confess your struggle to believe in the midst of your suffering, God welcomes you with arms of love and blesses you with his presence, power, and sustaining grace. Since Jesus took all your judgment, God doesn’t respond to you with judgment but with the faithful, tender love of a father. He welcomes you to be honest, and he will always respond to your confession with mercy. In your struggle of faith, do you run from the Lord or to him?
4. Get Busy
I find the content of 1 Peter very interesting. Peter is writing to people who are suffering through very difficult things. You would expect this letter to be one of sympathy, comfort, and encouragement, and although these themes are in 1 Peter, they surely don’t dominate the content; what Peter gives to his struggling readers is marching orders. This little letter, written to sufferers, is a call to pursue everything God called them to and blessed them to experience between their conversion and their homegoing.
Rather than speaking just to the feelings of his readers, Peter addresses their identity as the children of God. He calls them to base their actions, reactions, and responses not on what they are suffering, but on who they are as the children of God in suffering. This letter is a call to Godward, gospel business. It’s a call to get busy doing what God has called you to do and to celebrate who you are as his children. Sympathy is an appropriate response to suffering, but the danger there is that too much focus on suffering has the potential to magnify its impact on the way you think about yourself, God, and your suffering. So it’s wise and loving to encourage sufferers not to let difficulty define them and the way they live. Godward, gospel-centered busyness has the potential to remind you of who you are as a child of God, what your potential is even when you are suffering, and the things that God has called you to that are eternally bigger than you and what you are facing. The temptation when you are suffering is to do just the opposite, that is, to quit pursuing all the good things God welcomes you to and calls you to do in his name.
Good biblical busyness is a powerful defense against debilitating doubt. The more you give yourself to the devotional, discipleship, and missional things God calls all his children to, the more you will be reminded of the enormous blessing and eternal importance of what it means to be a child of God and a part of God’s unstoppable mission of redemption. In your busyness you will experience God’s presence and power, and you will have the joy of looking back at the good results of the work you have done in God’s name. And the experience of these things will work to weaken doubt and strengthen faith. Has suffering robbed you of your enthusiasm to do the good things God calls all his children to do?
5. Encourage Other Doubters
One of the most powerful ways to be encouraged is to encourage others. Perhaps my own story would be helpful here. As I was suffering profound weakness after undergoing many surgeries, and as I lived with the burden of wondering what would happen next, I met individually with young pastors each week. My goal with each meeting was to encourage these pastors who were struggling with the hardship of being young in ministry and pastoring struggling churches. There were mornings when the last thing I wanted to do was have that meeting. There were moments when fatigue seemed to make the next meeting impossible. There were times I did cancel, but in the midst of my struggle, I was determined to be faithful.
What happened morning after morning in these meetings is that I left encouraged. As I recounted to these young pastors who God is, who they are as his children, the amazing wisdom of God’s Word, and the wonderful work that God has called them to, not only would they remember, but I would remember too. I told my young friends again and again that while I was ministering to them, they were ministering to me. God, in his goodness, was using something I found difficult to encourage my heart. What was hard for me to do (encourage others) became the very thing that God used to encourage me.
Who near you needs encouragement? Who near you has lost their way? Who is about to forget their identity as children of God and quit doing things that are good for their heart and life? You are uniquely positioned to help because you have a personal experience of what they are going through. You can speak into their struggle with sympathy and authenticity. You know the temptations they are grappling with because you have grappled with them too. In your weakness, you have powerful things to offer others who are weak.
You can remind those near you that they are not alone and, as you do, remember that you are not alone either. You can remind those near you that their suffering doesn’t define them and then rest in the fact that it doesn’t define you either. Every good thing you say to another, God will use to encourage you. Who near you needs the very encouragements that you daily need yourself?
6. Let Doubt Drive You to Jesus
I have said this before but will reinforce it here: in your moments of doubt, don’t run away from your Lord. Determine to run to him. Here is his welcome to you:
Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light. (Matt. 11:28–30)
Your battle is not just the difficult thing you’re facing but the impact of the difficulty on your heart. Suffering can leave you spiritually damaged. Suffering can decimate your faith and leave you with life-altering doubts about the goodness and power of God. So in your suffering, doubt is a battle worth fighting. Remember, you never fight this battle alone but with the strength that is yours because of the presence and power of the One who gave his life so that you would have everything you need even in the darkest of moments in this fallen world. Cry out to your Lord. He hears; he really does. Run to him; he cares and will not turn his back on you in your moment of need.
Review and Reflect
1. How does doubt reflect our theology? Describe good doubt and bad doubt.
2. Paul Tripp writes that a “life of faith is always a struggle of trust”. Where is this struggle most present in your life?
3. The apostle Peter writes that suffering is primarily an attack on our hearts (1 Pet. 5:9). How have you seen this in your own suffering?
4. Paul Tripp asks, “Has my suffering caused me to begin to believe things that are not true and therefore say things that are not true to myself?”. What lies are you believing and repeating to yourself?
5. There are multiple ways to fight bad doubt: speak truth to yourself, count your blessings, confess your sin, keep “biblically” busy, encourage others, and be honest with God about your doubts. To what bad doubt are you drawn? Pray for the Lord’s conviction of where and how you need to fight bad doubt.
Heart Reset
Psalm 90:1–17
Matthew 11:28–30
1 Peter 5:9
1. Johnson Oatman Jr., “Count Your Blessings,” 1897.