Knowing God when you doubt he is there
This article is based on a talk by David Couchman at Above Bar Church, Southampton, on 17th July 2005, and at Alverstoke Evangelical Church, Gosport, on Sunday 30th October 2005. It may be used in print and on other web sites, subject to the copyright notice below.
I was at a meeting recently that was reporting on some research among Christian 11-18 year olds. Apparently:
- A quarter of them think that there is no such thing as absolute truth
- A third of them think that all religions lead to God
- Only half of them think that Jesus rose physically from the dead, or that the devil exists, or that the Bible is accurate
- Only a third of them look to the Bible for moral guidance
- A third think that after death people face God's judgment
These are all basic beliefs, but it seems that significant numbers of Christian young people have problems believing them. I am not saying this to take a 'cheap shot' at young people! The only reason we do not have the same figures for older people is that the survey only asked teenagers.
Hundreds of Church of England clergy doubt the existence of God and fewer than two thirds believe in miracles.
This is a quote from an article in the Times on Monday 4th July 2005. It was reporting on a new survey which found that only 60% of clergy believe in miracles like the virgin birth and Jesus turning water into wine. The good news is that eight out of ten of them still believe that Jesus rose from the dead.
I am not saying this to take a cheap shot at vicars either! Rather, it makes the point that even people whose day job involves believing these things struggle with doubt and disbelief.
It seems that we are facing an epidemic of doubt among Christians. This article looks at what Psalm 73 says about how to respond to our own doubts and questions.
Intense and personal
Is football a matter of life and death? It's much more serious than that!
Those are the words of the late Bill Shankly, of Liverpool FC. Well, doubt is more serious than that too. It threatens to cut the ground from under us. So this is not just an academic question.
It is intense and personal. I hope you will feel something of this intensity as we go through this Psalm. This Psalm is painfully honest - the writer is open about his doubts and struggles. He doesn't brush them under the carpet. He doesn't pretend that everything is alright.
When we have doubts and questions, one of the worst things we can do is to pretend they are not there. What we need to do is to get them out in the open, face them, and work through them. That is what the writer of this Psalm is doing.
Everyone's problem
There may be a few lucky people who never have any questions at all. But most of us do struggle with doubts. If we think that there is something wrong with us, this will only make things worse. It helps to realise that doubt is everyone's problem. It was a problem for people in the Bible, like the writer of this Psalm.
Not the same as disbelief
Doubt is not the same thing as disbelief. One book about doubt had the sub-title 'Faith in Two Minds.' It is helpful for us to see that the opposite of faith is not doubt; it is disbelief. Doubt is faith in two minds. It wanders around in a sort of no-man's land between faith and unbelief.
Having questions is not sin
People in the Bible were very open about their doubts and questions, but they were not condemned for this. Doubt is not sin - but it will lead you into sin if you do not do something about it. So what we are tackling is really 'what to do when I doubt.'
This Psalm divides very neatly into two parts. In verses 1-14 there is a picture of someone's faith being challenged, and in verses 15-28, there is a picture of how they respond.
Faith is challenged (verses 1-14)
The writer begins by saying:
But as for me, my feet had almost slipped; I had nearly lost my foothold. (verse 2)
That is, I had lost my lock on faith and on God. All kinds of things can make us lose our confidence in God:
- Personal questions - am I really a Christian?
- Questions of belief. Is God really there? Is the Bible true? Questions like those raised by the Da Vinci Code
- Questions of suffering - is God good? Why does he allow terrorist attacks and tsunamis, illness and poverty?
... and on and on.
Some friends of mine went to Africa as missionaries. While they were there, their son was taken seriously ill. He suffered brain damage and ever since then he has been severely disabled - a direct result, apparently, of this couple going to serve God. Where is the justice in that?
This is the question that challenges the writer of this Psalm. Why do good people suffer, while evil people get away with it? Look with me briefly at how he describes the wicked in verses 3-11:
- They are healthy and strong (verse 4)
- They are rich, and they are getting richer - they increase in wealth (verse 3, verse 12)
- They do not have any struggles or burdens; they are always carefree (verses 4, 5, and 12)
- They are proud - they are ever so pleased with themselves, and they are arrogant (verse 6, verse 8).
- They are violent - they clothe themselves in violence; they are callous - they do not care what effects they are having on other people; they are conceited and malicious (verses 6, 7 and 8)
- They say that God is helpless - he does not know what is going on. (verse 11)
By the time he gets to the end of this list, the writer is asking, 'Is there any point in serving God? Is there any point in doing what is right? (verses 13-14)
This is a reasonable question: some people say that if you become a Christian, everything will go well for you. You will be healthy and wealthy, if not necessarily wise.
But this is just nonsense. The reality is that bad people often do well, and people who sincerely try to follow God and do what is right sometimes end up in the pits because of it. So it is a reasonable question.
But the writer of this Psalm was not just questioning in his mind why the wicked got away with it. He was jealous of their prosperity. He says
I envied the arrogant. (verse 3).
Doubt is never just a question of what we believe. It is a matter of our heart and our will as well as the head.
Sometimes, we have reasons for wanting not to believe. Someone once said that a doubter cannot find God for the same reason that a thief cannot find a policeman.
We may think that responding to doubt is just a case of sorting things out in our minds, of understanding them. But it is not just that. We are very complicated creatures, and there is a whole tangle of things going on inside us, all at once - things we know and believe and hope and fear.
So responding to doubt is not just about trying to sort out the questions in our minds. It is that, but it is more than that. This man's doubt is all tangled up with envy of the wicked.
Did you notice how he starts out saying:
God is good to those who are pure in heart. (verse 1)
But by verse 13, he is saying 'it's a complete waste of time being pure in heart:
In vain have I kept my heart pure.
He is into self-pity and misery, and envy, and questioning God's justice. Do you identify with any of those feelings? If I am honest, I certainly do, sometimes.
So the basic challenge to his faith, in verses 1-14, is: why do the wicked get away with it and prosper, while those who try to do what is right suffer? Is God there? And if he is there, does he care?
Faith responds (verses 15-28)
As we look at the second half of the Psalm, we are going to see how he responds to his doubts, and what we can learn for ourselves.
Can I just say here that we may need physical rest. Doubt is sometimes in the body, not the mind or the spirit.
In the film 'Lord of the Rings,' there is one part where Frodo has been taken captive in a tower, and his faithful helper Sam charges up the stairs to rescue him. In the darkness, the flickering light from below casts a giant shadow of Sam on the wall, terrifying his enemies. But in reality, Sam is quite small, and mostly harmless.
Tiredness and discouragement make our doubts cast giant shadows. Sometimes what we need is as simple as food and sleep.
As the writer of the Psalm works through his doubts, he goes through four steps:
(1) Focus on God's people (verse 15)
He says
If I had said 'I will speak thus,' I would have betrayed your children. (verse 15)
When we have doubts, we naturally want to share them with our friends. But the writer of this Psalm says 'I won't do that.' I won't undermine the faith of others. 'I won't let God's people down.'
When we face doubts, we can easily become focused on ourselves and our questions. But the first thing he does is to change is point of view, away from himself and onto God's people. If he starts sharing his doubts around, how will it affect them?
This may strike us as a very odd place to start. But people in the Bible understood better than we do that we are not just isolated individuals. We are part of a community - part of a body, to use the New Testament picture. And our words and actions do not just affect us - they affect the whole body.
So when we have doubts and questions, he is saying that it is not a good thing to share them around. Do not undermine other people with your doubts. Think twice; speak once.
This is not the most positive way to respond to doubt, but it is a start. It is better than just wallowing. He focuses on God's people, and he says, 'I'm not going to let them down.'
Does not undermining other people mean that you cannot talk about your questions to anyone? No, it does not mean this at all.
In fact, when you have doubts, one of the most helpful things you can do is to phone a friend.
But choose that friend carefully. Do not share your doubts with someone who is not sure what they believe.
Do not share your questions with someone who will be unsettled by them. Choose someone who will understand the questions, and not just brush them off. Choose someone who can help you work through them. Find someone who 'has the t-shirt.'
(And if you have the privilege of someone coming to you and wanting to talk through their doubts and questions, please do not hurry to put them right! It is the last thing they need! What they need is someone to listen carefully to them, pray for them, and when it is appropriate, pray with them - to understand them, not to scold them.)
(2) Focus on God's place (verses 16-17)
The writer says
When I tried to understand all this, it was oppressive to me.... (verse 16)
One translation says 'it was a wearisome task.' If you have been through any serious times of doubt in your life, you know what he means when says that it was a wearisome task.
We think we ought to be able to make sense of everything. But we are very small, and very limited, and we do not have answers for everything.
We think that if we were spiritually mature enough, we would understand what God was doing. But this is not so. God's ways are completely beyond us, and they do not necessarily make sense to us.
As long as we are struggling along convinced that we ought to be able to make sense of them, it will be oppressive to us. So what are we supposed to do when we do not have the answers? What does the writer of this Psalm do? He goes into the house of God.
When I tried to understand all this, it was oppressive to me, until I entered the sanctuary of God. (verse 16-17)
Where before he had just been looking at things from a human point of view, now he went to God's place, and started looking at them from God's perspective.
This verse really challenges us to ask how am I looking at things? He says that it was a wearisome task until I entered the sanctuary.
So what does it mean to enter the sanctuary? The sanctuary was the place where people could meet God. Today, we do not have special places, or special buildings - we can meet God anywhere.
One thing it means for us today is to pray. To tell God what we are feeling. To be honest with him about our negative emotions. God is not interested in our pretence of spirituality. He is interested in us being real with him. It may sound odd to suggest praying, at a time when you are not even sure whether God is there. But this is exactly what you need to do.
Read the Bible. It is much more realistic than we are. Plenty of people in the Bible struggled with doubts and questions, including the writer of this Psalm.
Then worship. Go into church and join in the services. Put some worship songs in your mp3 player or CD player. It is surprising how this can sometimes lift our spirits, and suddenly, everything that looked so dark and gloomy doesn't look quite like that any more.
Often when we have doubts and questions, we are tempted to give up on Christian friends, on praying, on reading the Bible, on worshipping God - but this is just the time when we most need to keep going.
So he focuses on God's people, and he focuses on God's place.
(3) Focus on God's purposes (verses 17-20)
The third stage is that he focuses on God's purposes.
The thing that was causing him to doubt was that rich people were getting away with it. There is no justice. Doing what is right is a waste of time.
But now, in God's sanctuary, looking at things from God's perspective, he takes the long view. In the short term, yes, the wicked may get away with it, but in the longer term, he says:
Then I understood their final destiny.
Surely you place them on slippery
ground;
you cast them down to ruin.
How suddenly are they destroyed,
completely swept away by terrors!
The wicked are not going to get away with it. They may be doing fine now, but there is a world of pain ahead of them.
Some of our doubts and questions would be helped if we took a step back from whatever is challenging us, and thought about where things are going in the long term. What is this going to look like five hundred years from now?
What he is doing at this point in the Psalm is to work through the particular issue that is causing his doubts. We need to do this too. As we said earlier, we cannot always find answers, but often we can. And where we can, we should.
Read a Christian book. Your particular doubt or question is not brand new. People have been wrestling with these things for two thousand years and more. Whatever is bothering you, someone, somewhere, has thought through it, and has something helpful to say about it.
The writer of the Psalm focuses on God's purposes - on what God will do in the long term.
(4) Focus on God's praise (verses 21-28)
By this stage, he is beginning to get through his doubts and questions, and he starts to praise God for the things he is sure about.
Someone once said that the world around us encourages us to doubt our beliefs, and to believe our doubts. But we need to believe our beliefs, and doubt our doubts. When there are things you are not sure about, get back to the things you are sure of.
That is what the writer of this Psalm is doing here. Very briefly, notice that he praises God for:
- His presence with him, verse 23, 'I am always with you; you hold me by my right hand.' There may be times when it feels as if God has let go of us, but he hasn't. As one commentator said, 'God may be dark, but he is never distant.' God holds on to us, even when we don't hold on to him.
- His guidance, verse 24 'You guide me with your counsel...' I do not think he is talking here about guidance as in 'what job should I do?' or 'where should I live?' He is talking about God giving wisdom to understand the issue he was dealing with. He is saying, at a human level, when I try to understand this, it is oppressive - but God helps me to work through it.
- His hope, verse 24: 'and afterward you will take me into glory.' When we look at all the pain and injustice in the world, we need to remind ourselves that there is a great reversal coming.
- A life that is centred on God himself, verses 25-26: 'Whom have I in heaven but you? And earth has nothing I desire besides you.' He had begun to envy the wicked - their health and wealth. Sometimes we have problems because something else is more important to us than God is. Because God does not give us what we want, or what we think he should give us. Here, he gets things back in balance, and says that God is more important than anything else.
- His justice, verse 27 - this is the exact point that has been causing him sleepless nights, but now he says 'Those who are far from you will perish; you destroy all who are unfaithful to you. But as for me, it is good to be near God. I have made the Sovereign Lord my refuge.'
- Finally, verse 28,at the end of the Psalm, testimony to God's deeds, 'I will tell of all your deeds.'
Do you see how far he has come? He starts out saying 'my feet had almost slipped.' - I had nearly lost it. In the middle of the Psalm, he says, 'I won't undermine other people with my doubts. I'll keep my mouth shut.' And now at the end, he says, positively, 'I'll tell of all your deeds.' That is a positive place to finish.
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