Doubt, Belief, and the Thoughtful Pastor

Doubt comes easily for the thoughtful pastor. As we walk with our parishioners through their valleys of the shadow of death, we peer with them into dark corners and over precipitous cliffs and we shudder. Some of us by experience, and others of us by personality, and for many by both, are given plenty of reasons to disbelieve the faith we otherwise are committed to proclaim. People look to pastors for a certainty that they might struggle to embrace themselves, and some, though it costs them their income and status, walk away. Few pastors have spaces within which they can process their struggles with doubt. Rare is the friend to whom we can safely say, “I’m not sure what I believe anymore.”

Francis Schaeffer, a man known for his apologetic vigor and his long ministry of opening plausible pathways to Christian faith for the most skeptical, himself once nearly abandoned his Christianity.¹ He emerged from his struggle intact and wiser, but not all pastors do. Though I’ve never come as close to that edge as Schaeffer or others have, I am familiar with that neighborhood. Why I’ve continued to believe is a question that was pressed upon me recently by an earnest young woman for whom it was not a merely academic question.

My answer to her, and to myself, I know, lacks sophistication. But then again, when we examine our hearts for reasons (which reason knows nothing of, according to Pascal) we are looking for that which adequately satisfies us, not the academics.

So, why do I still believe?

Like many, I find life itself implausible without a creator. The randomness and meaninglessness of it all feels impenetrable without there being One whose purposes infuse it with significance. Though I find myself struggling to comprehend a being who could conceive such a diverse and complex universe, yet for the universe to be impersonal is even more incomprehensible. The existence of God gives order, even if it’s an order I often fail to understand.

At the same time, the order of this universe is pierced by the presence of one who was born of a virgin and raised from the dead. The reality of Christ’s resurrection persuades me that there is something concrete and real to the Christianity that is my inheritance. Christianity is inexplicable apart from the resurrection, an event that could have been easily disproven before Christianity got a cultural toe hold, but it was not. Any drift I make toward disavowing my Christianity is intercepted by the undeniable bodily resurrection of Jesus. The tomb is empty.

Further, so much of my experience defies explanation apart from the hand of God. Like all moderns, I try to turn every divine fingerprint into an inevitability or a coincidence. I try to twist the inexplicable into nothing more than fate or good luck. To do this, though, often demands quite a bit of imagination, for there are points in my otherwise ordinary life that are inexplicable apart from the possibility of miracle. To remove the hand of God from my story hollows it out and strips the future of the possibility of change. The best explanation I have for the events of my past and my hope for the future is the providence of the living and true God.

But in the end what most stabilizes my convictions and commitments is that I’m captivated by Jesus himself. I find the Jesus of the gospels, not the wise philosopher and teacher of our secular reconstructions, to be greatly attractive. When, years ago, I finished reading R. T. France’s wonderful but now out of print little book I Came to Set the Earth on Fire (whose subtitle, A Portrait of Jesus, captures its content), I was left with one impulse: I wanted to follow this man. Peter, Andrew, James, John; the woman at the well or the blind man who could now see - these were not men and women with great theological or philosophical sophistication. But they were changed by the presence of the person of Jesus and wanted to follow him. I am among them.

With all this weight anchoring me, I believe. I choose to cast my lot with the martyrs, the fathers, the creeds, and the faithful men and women who have lived a life of viable witness before my eyes.

Am I certain? No more than anyone can be certain about anything. And yet most of the time I’m at rest. I am at rest ultimately because of that which is not a reason at all. The Spirit of God holds me. He is the one who draws me back and holds me close.

The author of Psalm 119, a person I used to call “Mr. Cheery-I-Love-My-Bible” guy, was not always so cheery or certain. When his soul would melt away for sorrow and he would be left clinging to the dust, he turned in the only direction any of us can turn. He asked God to put false ways far from him, and to be strengthened by his word.²

This is why faith persists. The Spirit of God strengthens us and holds us close. I’ve seen many over the years come to the edge of unbelief and turn back from what lies beyond because they could not not believe. The Holy Spirit, in the end, will not let me go. In that I find rest.

1. Jerram Barrs recounts the story in his introduction to Francis Schaeffer, True Spirituality, (United States: Tyndale, 2001).

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2. My soul clings to the dust;
give me life according to your word!

My soul melts away for sorrow;
strengthen me according to your word!

Put false ways far from me
and graciously teach me your law!

(Psalm 119:25, 28, 29)