Her.meneutics: When Doubt Comes to Church

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October 6, 2010

When Doubt Comes to Church

How should we respond to intellectual challenges to Christianity from inside the flock?

Marlena Graves

In a presidential address at InterVarsity Christian Fellowship’s annual conference in 1972, evangelical luminary John Stott admitted that he found himself "wondering how the apostle [Paul] would react if he were to visit Western Christendom today. I think he would deplore . . . the contemporary lack of a Christian mind” (from Your Mind Matters). Quoting Anglican theologian Harry Blamires, Stott continued: “The Christian mind has succumbed to the secular drift with a degree of weakness and nervelessness unmatched in Christian history. It is difficult to do justice in words to the complete loss of intellectual morale in the twentieth-century church.”

Are things any different nearly 40 years later?

New Humanist magazine recently co-hosted a debate at London's Royal Society for the Arts, Manufacture and Commerce on the question, “Where is the God debate going?” Panelists included novelist Marilynne Robinson, philosopher Roger Scruton, and historian Jonathan Rée. According to The Guardian's Mark Vernon, the debate mostly turned into a critique of the New Atheism, with some questioners in the audience proposing reasons for why “people of faith never question their beliefs (unlike scientists).”

Vernon hints that while the New Atheism may be slipping out of fashion, the God debate is not. Indeed, religious questions are still on the public’s agenda. But it’s not just atheists and agnostics who are lobbing objections at Christianity and theism in general, and bemoan a perceived anti-intellectualism among people of faith. Some within the church are grappling with the problem of evil, religious pluralism, and the origins debate, to name a few issues, wondering if their faith is intellectually robust enough to face into these topics honestly.

Not too long ago, I received an e-mail from a college student expressing his intellectual struggles with Christianity. He gave me permission to share this excerpt:

I have realized that the arguments I have been fighting all these years — against ethical relativism, against Darwinism, against atheism, against Pentecostalism, against nihilism, against the gay-rights advocates, against amillenialists, against Lutherans and Catholics, against you-name-it — were not fights against those things at all. I had been spoon-fed caricatures my whole life. Triumphantly defeating the caricatures was easy. But sooner or later, I learned that I would have to encounter real competing arguments instead of watered-down versions. You can’t live in your rosy, private schooled, small . . . church world forever, where every challenge (or perceived challenge, whether innocent or not) to Christianity has a nice, clean, naively compelling answer.

I had been spoon-fed caricatures my whole life. The student captured well the triumphalist, anti-intellectual strain present in some quarters of the church. Of course not all objections to the faith are intellectual in nature. But I can’t help wondering if some of us are unwittingly contributing to the ship-wrecking of faith because we fear to directly and honestly addressing seemingly forceful objections. Do we fear that God and his people cannot handle rational scrutiny? That if we honestly and seriously confront the objections leveled against God and the church, both will be found wanting?

I happen to think the answer is no. In college I majored in history and minored in religion and philosophy. I had my own struggles with doubt. Yet I can’t count the number of times I was given pat answers, presented with straw man arguments, or told, “See, you shouldn’t study philosophy — it only serves to lead you astray.” It is this sort of environment that prompted Christian philosopher Clifford Williams to write, “It is difficult to imagine thinking Christians remaining long in such a condition" (see his The Life of the Mind: A Christian Perspective, 2002).

My husband, a philosopher, and I have become convinced that part of the problem is that we have paid little attention to vices of the intellect: being closed to the ideas of others, an unwillingness to exchange ideas, a poor sense of one’s own fallibility, a disposition to yield to the excitement and rashness of the overly enthusiastic members of a community, an unwillingness to conceive and examine alternatives to popular ideas, a tendency to wilt in the face of opposition, and impatience with thorough, genuine inquiry.

And we are further convinced that it is both necessary and healthy to question our faith within the church community in order to truly own it. As Tim Keller writes in his 2008 book, The Reason for God, “A faith without some doubts is like a human body without any antibodies in it. . . . A person's faith can collapse almost overnight if she has failed over the years to listen patiently to her own doubts, which should only be discarded after long reflection. . . . ” It’s hard to question within community if we are unsure we have the freedom to do so or aren’t confident we will receive loving and thoughtful responses.

It’s true: We cannot coerce people into loving Jesus and following him. But we can do our part to lovingly remove the intellectual obstacles that those like the New Humanist and New Atheists are highlighting by building up our antibodies and rooting out a fear of critical inquiry in our circles.

Comments

I think you've got this exactly right. We live in a world where superficial sound bites and caricature have replaced rigorous, respectful discourse. I focus on reproductive ethics in my writing--a topic where black/white, knee-jerk, "the other side is evil and/or stupid" arguments reign. Meanwhile, I keep plugging away, trying to honor the complex and difficult realities of the topic. It's exhausting and often feels like thankless work, as I see both evangelical Christians and secular liberals resorting to simplistic arguments in favor of their own position while dismissing those who disagree as naive, cruel, foolish, uneducated, hard-hearted, misled, uptight, alarmist, etc.

Thank you so much for this. I think I fear the debates, especially in my college classroom. Students this week said things like they don't believe in the soul or heaven. I found myself afraid to speak. What if I just stepped backed and asked questions? Is there any scientific evidence for the existence of the soul? How do we know there's an afterlife? Why do people think there is one? Discussing with genuine questions might help us in my classroom.

For several years, my scrolling screen saver has had the message: MATURE FAITH CANNOT BE BUILT ON THE ABSENCE OF DOUBT.

It works for me!!!

A fruitful reflection, but likely to be lost on the very people it targets: the hyper-certain. After all, one of Christianity's ongoing traditions is overconfidence in over-simplified certainties. Both the populists and the great thinkers (like Paul) deal with answers and why we should be certain - doubt always looks like a slippery slope. Doubts may be like antibodies, but a central paradox of Christianity is that faith can get people off the hook of serious thought.

The contemporary church seems distant to the idea of raising up thinkers and apologists in the body. I encounter believers in my various spheres of teaching and ministry who understand the basics of what they believe, which is satisfactory to many church leaders. But when pressed, these Christians don't believe that their beliefs are to be held to the level of facts that are universally true for everyone. The gospel has not lost power, but the ministry of the church is losing intellectual traction.

The New Christians

Time moves on and we with it, but in this endless labyrinth of dogma and humanity we seek power and proof from the ancients to safeguard our personal narcissism. The new Christians, if one can call them Christian at all, have forgotten the teachings of Jesus to love one’s neighbor as one’s self. They have forgotten the words that began it all, that we are created in the Image of God. Ignoring our theological past, we cherry pick the scriptures for a word or two to support our own homophobic and even racial biases.

So I raise the question, “How can a Christian return to the Old Testament version of ‘sin’ and ignore the teachings of Jesus and still call themselves by his divine name: Christ?” What is the church becoming? Is it only a sanctuary for human bias, a social club with a religious name that only admits those who adhere to its accepted dogma?

It seems perfectly clear that many so-called Christians have politicized their faith and narrowed it to a few select beliefs. I challenge them to read the Sermon on the Mount or the parables in the Gospel of John about forgiveness, love, and Christian purpose. That some writer in either the Old or New Testament demonstrated his biases in writing doesn’t make his words “the word of God.” Jesus didn’t think so for when the legal beagle asked him about his beliefs, he simply said love God and your neighbors.

And so we ask; is the creation of a new Lutheran denomination another sign that the church is dying? The Baptists have put the hex on women and the United Church of Christ has shown its homophobia. The church, like politics, has become issue oriented. Where are the great statesmen who spoke for Constitutional continuity? Where are the great systematic theologians that are able to guide our faith? Like many others, they’re lurking in the shadows, protecting their jobs, and polling the masses to discover which way to turn and what to say.

Philosophers, theologians, ministers, and politicians – the cultural gurus of our time – have loss their nerve and lead us by our prejudices, without hope, into the narrow confines of limited belief and charity.

Too bad!

Joe Hester

That is why it is important for Christan parents not to insulate their children from the world and its incorrect ideas, rather parents should take the time to discuss with the kids the details of what those incorrect ideas are, and why they are incorrect. By teaching them how to find the correct answers in the Bible, instead of promoting a "see no evil, hear no evil" attitude, prepares the future adult to meet the inevitable faith challenges from secularism and other religions.

Young adults who grew up in Christian homes where they were isolated from outside non-Christian ideas due to a protective bubble, are the ones most likely to lose their faith when they grwo up and their parents are no longer in the position to maintain the faith greenhouse.

Allow me to add to my response above. After I sent it I remembered a discovery I made this past weekend in going back to read THE CHRISTIAN AGNOSTIC by Leslie Weatherhead. On page 163, I rediscovered this penetrating statement:

"Christianity must have a marvelous inherent power, or the churches would have killed it long ago."

A very timely post for me, Marlena. I am in the middle of discussing the psychology of religious doubt in my Psychology of Religion class. I am trying to encourage my students not to see doubt as a sign of weakness, but as an opportunity to grow in their faith through the struggle of dealing with it head-on.

I have emailed a link to this blog post to my students. Thank you.

Joe Hester:You wrote: "Ignoring our theological past, we cherry pick the scriptures for a word or two to support our own homophobic and even racial biases." and "That some writer in either the Old or New Testament demonstrated his biases in writing doesn’t make his words “the word of God.”"

I agree that Christians shouldn't just cherry-pick certain Bible verses and ignore others. BUT, REAL Christians believe that the ENTIRE Bible is "THE WORD OF GOD." No Biblical writer was just writing to demonstrate his personal biases, but was INSPIRED by GOD. And I don't know of any REAL Christians that cherry-pick Bible verses to support their "racial biases." People in the Ku Klux Klan and the Aryan Brotherhood aren't REAL Christians. Everybody, including Christians, has biases in favor or against certain groups of people. But that doesn't make the biases okay. REAL Christians try to get rid of their biases and they definitely wouldn't use the Bible to justify their biases.

Actually, there IS some logical sense in the fact that much of the Church wants to bury or run from doubts and doubters. What is the actual track record for people who look deeply for truth, researching whether the "received" traditions on things like how we got the Bible (history of canonization), or whether it and Christianity began and grew out of divine revelation and intervention rather than understandable human social and religious-development processes, etc.? A pretty high percentage of deep seekers end up either leaving the faith or liberalizing it beyond "orthodoxy" (myself included, after 9 years in conservative Christian college and seminary and years of ministry.)

For at least myself and many I know of from similar circumstances, it was not out of "rebellion against God," or moral lapses or disillusionment with the Church, etc. It was from gradually recognizing the fatally flawed premises on which Evangelicalism and "traditional" forms of Christianity is founded, leading to an incoherent system which actually gives no clear guidance on what exactly is even saving faith, has no clear or logical biblical basis for substitutionary atonement, etc., etc.

Getting to a certain point in digging for truth is indeed like opening the proverbial Pandora's Box. Thus, "safer" to not dig, if one is not prepared to be shocked and find the need to make major revisions, maybe change alliances, etc... very unsettling things for most!

Having sat on both sides of the doubt fence, I see the church's fear to allow people their doubts. Platitudes and Bible verses are so much easier than walking in relationship with one who is doubting. Commitment to those in our communities who doubt is sometimes painful and exhausting. And doubters don't need finely-tuned sensitivities to see the fear associated with their doubts. Sometimes they go away out of a respect and sensitivity to those they do not wish to pain. If the church wants to deal honestly with the doubts of those among them, they must be willing to start with a relationship, with a community that spends time, as well emotional and intellectual energy with those who doubt. As I write this, I am reminded of the shepherd who left the 99 to find the one lost sheep.

We should respond the way Jesus himself did: with more questions for the people he was speaking with. An invitation to discuss doubts is far more productive (and usually reveals the fears or issues that lead us to doubt) than simply repeating Christian-ese phrases without thinking.

While the Bible itself is infallible, our interpretation of it most certainly is not infallible. I hope I always have the humility to ponder honest questions (my own and others'), and that I don't become intellectually lazy in my faith.

Oops -- that should've read: "While the Bible itself is infallible, our interpretation of it most certainly is NOT."
:)

I am 25 years old and the "Culture Wars" language of my youth was something that many of my friends have had to work out of their system. Most Christian colleges today at least sell themselves to parents as defenders of the faith against secularism. This has made it difficult to even disinterestedly entertain other viewpoints for fear of a slippery slope.

Certain 'worldview' approaches (such as you find at a place like Summit Ministries) tie together various ideas (like marxism to feminism to evolution to abortion) so that thinking is no longer necessary--you simply have to follow their rubric. Most of my friends who have continued on to college discover that the non-Christian world does not have a secret agenda to destroy the Church. Ironically, the non-aggressiveness of the world is enough to make some Christians throw out their entire faith altogether.

Well, it seems that we get what we pay for. Just look at what is most popular in evangelical Christianity. Everyone is after "practical application" that "works for me." No wonder there is an absence of Christian wisdom and understanding. Popular, pragmatic evangelicalism does not require cultivation of the Christian mind but that we only know how to "use" and "apply" what someone else, like a Rick Warren, tells us we "need" to do. Being Christian is like learning to change the oil in your car or learning how to use your new Blackberry. Just do it! What could be more relevant? On the other hand, what could be more harmful?

The problem with the article and responses is that it does not use scripture. Only faith pleases GOD, and doubt is the absence of faith. SO it is a sin to be doubtful or double-minded. THe bible says if you are doubleminded you will not get anything from GOD - be it more faith, a healing, a spiritual gift etc.

Also, the best way to not get a disease is not to get a vaccine, it is to not come in contact with the infected. We must protect our children from birth on.

These arguments against Christianity are not new. And the superficial way in which some Christians approach their faith is not new.

Part of the issue here is we don't know history. We think that we are the first to really struggle with these issues.

The saints and other Christian thinkers throughout antiquity have already blazed a mighty trail in the area of apologetics: Paul, Augustine, Origen, Anselm...more recently Chesterton, C.S. Lewis, N.T. Wright....Dinesh D'souza has also written eloquently on such topics.

You will find in these writers, and many others, a depth and intelligence to exceed that of the greatest secularist atheists. Christians have nothing to fear, ultimately, from their arguments.

So Renee, how has preventing your children from ever coming in contact with disease worked? We are in the world. Protecting your children from the world by your definition would mean removing them from it. God created the world and the people in it. If you want to completely isolate yourself from it, you are welcome to try, but it isn't exactly biblical or possible.

To Renee, you say that this article and all of the replies don't use scripture. . . including your reply. Can you use the scriptures to back up two major assertions you made? First that doubt is the absence of faith and, second, that to be doubtful is to be double-minded. If this sounds accusatory, I don't mean it that way. I am genuinely interested.

I believe you can see how Jesus handled doubters in His time here on Earth. As one poster already stated, he asked them probing questions to get them to think more deeply about what they were saying or doing. He also gave them some truth to think about. He always did this in a way that was hoping to bring that person closer to Him and the truth.

He at no point, that I can recall, "protected" His followers from the ideas that were contrary to the truth. He, and Paul, most certainly told us to search scripture to be sure what someone said was true or not. We can't be doing that if we hide from what they are saying.

As for the disease metaphor, didn't Jesus say he came for the sick? If we are to follow in his footsteps, we need to do the same.

I'm reminded of what Frederick Beuchner wrote: "Doubt is the ants in the pants of faith; they keep it alive and moving."

TO a poster called MP
'My God My God Why have You Forsaken Me'
Doubt is not an absence of faith but a heart renching cry from someone in need.
----
Thanks CT for publishing Marlena's provoking article which I read only minutes after your Frank James In the Shadow of Mount Hood 10/05/2010)
Fraternally
Arthur

The "practical application" I'm looking for is how to follow closely behind Christ while being in this world.

God gave us our minds with a reason. Doubt--and overcoming doubt--are part of free will, no?

Wonderful article. I believe some of the best articles on CT come from this blog.

Nobody can avoid doubt - it simply stems from not knowing everything. Do you know everything? No. Do you have the faith to pursue your doubts, trusting that Christ is still and will always be the light at the end of the tunnel? That's real faith, in my opinion.

I sometimes say these things to my husband. Let's talk about this - or why is the church like this, or why would the Bible say this. I'm not afraid! Let's get to the bottom of it!

I am amazed at the lack of simple logic by professing Christians posted here. I looked up the definition of "doubt" and it gave the word "distrust" as another word for it. I looked up the definition of distrust, and it means the lack or absence of trust.

The words "faith" and "believe" can be used in place of "trust".

It is very illogical to say "MATURE FAITH CANNOT BE BUILT ON THE ABSENCE OF DOUBT" and "Do you have the faith to pursue your doubts, trusting that Christ is still and will always be the light at the end of the tunnel? That's real faith, in my opinion."

The dictionary says that DOUBT is:
to lack confidence in (another word for it is DISTRUST).

The dictionary says that TRUST is:
assured reliance on the character, ability, strength, or truth of someone or something.

So based on these definitions it is illogical to claim if I lack confidence in God (doubt God) then my reliance upon Him (trust of God) will be matured, grow, or increase. Does anybody use common sense or logic anymore?

I hate people going to dictionaries for arguments. We all know what doubt means. Anonymous above is taking one understood meaning of doubt and making it the only understood meaning of doubt. That is not the case. We all know there are multiple meanings of the word doubt. That is the point of this whole discussion. One group of people wants to assert that scripture and faith can only mean one thing and they know what that one thing is. Another group of people asserting that scripture and faith are complicated and while they believe in Christ they continue to struggle through the variance in meanings trying to come to the deeper meanings.

Linda -

so what word would you use to describe the kind of "doubt" Jesus experienced on the cross? That's the kind of uncertainty I'm talking about. Pick whatever word you want, and I'll use it. It's merely a matter of semantics.

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