Room For DoubtSample

A Time of Doubt

At some point in our lives, most of us encounter a time of deep and intense doubt. Maybe yours is not about the existence of God and the reliability of Scripture. Perhaps your doubt is on a deeper level. You are not wondering if God is there—you want to know if God really cares. We sing and talk about the goodness and the love of God, but as you look at your life right now, perhaps you are saying, “God, I doubt whether You really care about what is going on. If You cared, You would help me. You would intervene in this situation. You would do something about the suffering that I am experiencing right now.” It’s hard to separate our personal circumstances from God’s love for us.

But suffering doesn’t have the same impact on everyone. Suffering can actually strengthen some people’s faith while at the same time cause others to question why a loving God would allow such pain. One person may read a book like The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins and have their world rocked; another person may read the same book and find that it ends up strengthening their faith.

When it comes to doubt, there is no one size that fits all. Some people struggle with it, and some people don’t. Some people scream their way into doubt through pain and suffering, and others seem to drift into it. For some of us, the doubt lasts for a few days; for others, months; and for some, years.

In my case, once my faith started to crack, doubts flooded my mind without mercy. I began to question everything. Is God real? Is the Bible true? Is Jesus really God? What about all those other world religions? How can they be wrong? Why did Jesus go to Israel? Why not China where there were more people? What about hell? What does a man dying on a cross two thousand years ago have to do with me today? What about the contradictory reports of Judas’s death and the number of angels at the resurrection? What about the resurrection? Did Jesus really come out of the grave alive from the dead, or was that a hoax? What about evolution? Is that a better explanation of how we got here? Wave after wave of doubts pounded my mind. I felt like I couldn’t breathe. I was drowning. I felt alone, sinking in a sea of doubts.