sometimes students ask me as a professor you probably get this too whether I've
ever had a time of doubt I know that for our students they can view us as sort of these
you know pristine professors who know it all and have all the answers and I think
it's really important sometimes for them to hear that we don't yeah and I often tell them the most
poignant story I had was when I was a freshman at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
years ago and I found myself in a religion class when I got to college I was a committed believer
following Jesus trying my best to live the Christian Life grew up in a Christian Home thought
I was ready for life at a university found myself in a religion class where the professor very
quickly lectured with an eye towards evangelicals and seemed to understand who we were and said that
he was once an Evangelical but now figured out the Bible isn't true after all and proceeded to sort
of attack its credibility on every conceivable level from textual transmission to forgeries and
the Canon to the you know historical reliability of the accounts in the gospels and on and on a
win and and I was just run over like a semi truck you know I didn't really know what to do I didn't
realize it at the time but the professor I was having was going to become he wasn't yet one of
the most famous critics of Christianity uh really in the world Bart Ehrman who a lot of people know
um now after all the books he's written so there I was in my religion class and it was a real moment
of Doubt for me and I I didn't know what to do and I was watching people leave the faith over the
class and compromise their beliefs so what I did is I decided look I know there's got to be answers
to the things that he's raising in the class so I I dug into the to the research as best I could
as a as a freshman and really started asking the questions anyone addressed these issues before and
I quickly found out that they had that they had done it many times and they had done it very well
throughout the history of the church and so I was reassured in that uh that these these questions
have been answered and I've discovered ever since that almost every question I hear it's really not
ever new almost every one of them has been dealt with in the history of the church and that's just
one of the things I would say to people is that look if you have a doubt chances are this has been
addressed and if it's been addressed take the time be patient dig into the research and find
an answer yeah yeah yeah one of one of the things through the years that I've doubted was how to put
what I struggle with how to put this loving God and a god of judgment yeah and for me I I realized
um one of the things in talking to people so this is really important is to have when you're
struggling is to have people in your life in communities where you can share your doubt and
not not simply peers although that's important but people who have who've lived longer and who have
um who have likely struggled with some of these things too and and some of those conversations
I I remember realizing that sometimes I had I had trouble believing that God could love me
and I had trouble believing that God could be a God who also judges and of
course there's a yeah at different times yeah and I realized that some of this was
um a lot of this was in a emotional because I rather than simply something I was you know
coldly kind of just plugging in a calculator in my brain could these things be true
um one of the things that I that I that helped me here was to not simply look at these doctrines
but to look through them to begin to see how um how actually they make sense of the world
so when I first started studying apologetics most of the stuff was looking at Christianity and so
if you believe in the resurrection then you can believe in a God who is both loving and right
Justin and so if I can just show the resurrections true if I can just show it historically is is has
good evidence then well that should solve that right well not really for me I needed I needed
another step there that was helpful and everything does in some sense come back to the resurrection
but I needed to be able to actually look at through these doctrines and see that they actually
made sense um to some deep intuitions that I had and so when I when I looked at the world I had
this deep sense of longing for Justice right and I found that it wasn't just me but it seems like
humans have that imprinted on them and then I also have this intuition that that we're called to love
and I talked to secular friends and they're saying yes you know the meaning of life is love and so
somehow these things must go together or can they go together maybe is the question but then when
you look through the gospel and you look through the Christian story yes they they do go together
um that even that God is judging because he loves a good creation and it's sin that's destroying his
good creation and so these things actually can fit together and they help me to see to see the
world and even see my own deep deep intuitions and how how they make sense of that I think the
other part of this so not only looking at and looking through these doctrines but uh for me
it was stepping into them um and to to live these out and I do that through uh through the worship
in the church through uh through living out as as we seek Justice in our communities and also
seek to love and and and do that in light of the gospel and I think that's actually important to
to remind me of the truth of the Gospel in my doubts yeah it's interesting it reminds me of
C.S Lewis's uh line and this is a paraphrase which is it I don't believe in the sun because I stare
at it I believe in the sun because by it I see every anything else and I think that's a little
bit about what it's like to examine the Christian system from the inside yeah so rather than extend
it from the outside and saying does that make sense what you realize is that once you stand
inside the Christian system it makes everything else make sense in other words it's the light
that that illumines so many problematic areas and I think that's really key for people who doubt
you've got to sort of think about Christianity holistically yeah rather than atomistically
um you can't just pick out one little thing and say I don't I don't believe or I don't find that
persuasive is it as a system uh coherent and persuasive and does it answer the big
questions of life and I think that's one of the big things that can help overcome someone's doubts
it's big picture yep and then allowing for mystery yeah allowing for uncertainties and
we have that when we start talking about um you know we talk about children or we start talking
about some big big questions infants and and so right away it introduces some things that
um we we might we might have ideas of how this can be worked out but we can also rest in a good God
right and so you go to doctrine of God who can be trusted and yet hasn't revealed to us everything
um and I often find myself going back to theology proper doctrine of God right and a recognition
that I am not God and that that means there is going to be mystery and and it completely kind of
do away with mystery as we're trying to get these answers actually I think undercuts Christianity
because there is some some paradoxes that we don't exactly know all of how things are going to fit
together well it's actually very comforting for people to know that there's going to be things you
don't get and don't understand I I talk to people all the time who are like well how can I believe
if I don't have a comprehension of that or how can I believe if I haven't fully reconciled these two
things over here and I'm like well did you expect to understand God fully and comprehensively of
course there's going to be places yeah that you don't understand fully or can't answer and and
I think just hearing from from from folks in the guild that look that's normal of course you're not
going to have that answer can be really reassuring to people they can almost take a a aside relief
and go okay so I can still be a believer and have places where I'm still struggling and places where
I don't fully understand and that's actually fairly normal for a finite human being trying
to understand an infinite God and that I can just do what God asked me to do in that and and trust
him well and anyone who tells you otherwise is just selling you something exactly and so this
is it's actually a mark of maturity to live with uncertainties right it's not religious Hocus Pocus
this is we all live with uncertainties and here's the other part we all have to live somewhere we
all are going to adopt me uh you know we're all going to have even if we don't haven't articulated
it we have a certain narrative or script that we're living by we we assign meaning and value
and yet we can't prove why we should be living for this over this in a kind of hard rationalistic way
there's going to be Mysteries and uncertainty so actually a mature life I would even say
intellectually mature life is learning to live with certain uncertainties and yet Christianity
is this big picture that explains so much and yet leaves us with some mystery but ultimately
a God who in Christ has run to us and has come to us and so even as we don't have all these answers
we can trust a God who and his son has died for us and so that gives me even great hope that in
the end when maybe this is all worked out uh For Me Maybe I get more I know I'll get more
of the picture one day that well we'll see how God was actually pulling these things together
yeah I mean isn't that the story of the whole Bible right yeah you know you look at Abraham
sacrifice in the son Isaac being asked to do it and thinking how could I reconcile this with
the promises that this seed is the channel to to keeping God's promises that will bless the Nations
um but that's where trust comes in I think when you look back to someone who or the Hallmarks
of Faith like Abraham he still had doubts and questions and confusion but that's of course what
Faith's all about yeah and I find Solace and when you actually study uh theologians and you study
the past you realize that they had doubts oh yeah they were okay living with Mysteries they were
okay that's changing their minds at times about different things and they they saw themselves as
um as very as a very finite creatures and I think part of again where where doubt can help us is it
calls us a kind of unmasks uh our pretensions and that we are dependent creatures we are
finite and so to kind of grasp for this ultimate knowledge is actually uh it's it's not the human
way and it's not the way to flourishing so we have to live with some of these uncertainties