What Do I Do With Doubt!? (part 2)

Yesterday I published part 1 of this post...  Today I want to dig a bit deeper...

WHAT CAUSES DOUBT?

In my context working with Jr High & High School students, I typically encounter a few different causes for doubt...

Justifying Behavior

Sometimes, I'll talk with a student who is trying really hard to justify their actions, to the point that they start to abandon their faith/morality so they feel less guilty.  It sounds something like, "I don't understand why a loving God wouldn't want me to be happy. What's really wrong with me sleeping with my girlfriend if we're being smart about it? ... Christianity isn't even relevant today."  

I think you have to call it like it is.  If you really are just trying to justify something that you know isn't right, be honest about it. I know there's less guilt involved when you try to deconstruct your faith or moral structure, but in my experience that just creates an an internal itch you can't quite scratch.

Tragedy

This is tough.  We live in a broken world  Things are not the way they are supposed to be.  There is senseless violence, disease, natural disaster, abuse, death, and hunger everywhere.  How can a good God allow this to happen?  How could God allow horrible things to happen to someone that I love who also loves the Lord?  

Sometimes I talk with people who need permission to be upset with God.  Look at the emotion that is expressed throughout the Psalms.  In Psalm 6, David cries out, "My soul is in deep anguish. How long Lord, how long?"  Acknowledge that at times this world is unfair and cruel.  Express frustration towards God.  And praise God for the gift of Jesus Christ as God's redeeming work in creation.

Intellectual Issues

This is what come up most often in my world...
"It was just easier to believe in God as a little kid."
"Did you see the Bill Nye creation/evolution debate?"
"There are more and more things that challenge my belief in God as I get older."

Adolescence is a crazy crazy time, but it's also really exciting.  In many ways it's like we are trapeze artists. We grow up swinging on one bar where everything in the world is Black & White.  It's a wonderful thing.  But as we grow up, our brains develop the ability to think more abstractly.  Things we were once so clear on become increasingly "gray."  We need to be willing to let go of the bar that we grew up swinging on and be willing to reach forward in faith and grab a new bar that feels quite foreign.  I think that this is a place that many people try to ignore their doubts and try to swing on the "Black&White" trapeze bar long after it's time to let go.  These people will end up having a lot to dig up and struggle through later in life... 

I think one of the greatest comforts in the intellectual questioning process is that God is big enough to handle my questions.  As I continue to wrestle with intellectual roadblocks and challenges the rest of my life I know that the God I worship is bigger than my understanding and will not be shaken by my questions.

Find people who can offer up resources and wrestle through these intellectual issues alongside you.  Keep asking questions!  Keep rebuilding and rethinking.  Be open to what it is that God has for you in the struggle, and wrestle alongside others!

"I Do Believe, Help Me Overcome My Unbelief..."

In Mark 9, Jesus is approached by a man whose son has been possessed by a demon.

Jesus asked the boy’s father, “How long has he been like this?”
“From childhood,” he answered. “It has often thrown him into fire or water to kill him. But if you can do anything, take pity on us and help us.”
“‘If you can’?” said Jesus. “Everything is possible for one who believes.”
Immediately the boy’s father exclaimed, “I do believe; help me overcome my unbelief!”

May this be our prayer as we continue to wrestle with doubt the rest of our lives... "We do believe, Lord help us overcome our unbelief."   

What Do I Do With Doubt!? (part 1)

As I work with teenagers, one of the most common topics that comes up is doubt.  

"Can I be a Christian if I have doubts?"  
"I grew up so certain about what I believed... but I don't feel like that anymore..."
"I'm having a hard time with something... I feel like I'm going to get in trouble if I bring it up... I don't get how some of the things I heard about God growing up fit with things I'm learning in school... Don't tell my parents..."

I consistently find myself saying, "It is OK to have doubts!  It is important that you ask tough questions and wrestle with them!  That's one of the main ways you grow in your faith!"  

We have a few options when we're faced with doubt... We can throw up our hands and walk away from faith, we can suppress our doubts and shove them down inside of us where they will eventually begin to rot and get smellier and smellier, or we can face tough issues head on and gear up for a wrestling match!  

One of my favorite images when thinking about doubt is the story of the 3 little pigs.  When we come to faith we "construct" a straw hut.  It works as shelter and we feel at home in it!  However, sooner or later life huffs and puffs at us and things we seemed so certain of suddenly start collapsing around us.  At that point we have the opportunity to either give up or rebuild after rethinking our design... And eventually life is going to huff and puff again and again and we are consistently faced with the choice of walking away or reconstructing an increasingly strong shelter.

I encourage you to wrestle!  Ask questions!  Find people you trust and who care about you and ask them to wrestle/struggle/question with you!      

(More on this tomorrow...)

Remain in the Vine!

It's true.  

I was in a Nerd Gang.  For a while growing up I invested a ton of energy and time and turned my back on core values to try to be accepted by a bunch of guys that seemed so cool at the time.  Looking back I realize that we were all nerdy kids in advanced Math & English classes, yet we strutted around like hotshots and did a lot of things I'm not proud of.  

In John 15, Jesus says,

“I am the vine; you are the branches. Those who remain in me, and I in them, will produce much fruit. For apart from me you can do nothing. Anyone who does not remain in me is thrown away like a useless branch and withers. Such branches are gathered into a pile to be burned. But if you remain in me and my words remain in you, you may ask for anything you want, and it will be granted! When you produce fruit, you are my true disciples. This brings glory to my Father."

I have spent far too much of my life trying to find my identity in people and things that are simply inadequate!

Jesus promises Life! Jesus promises to remain in us and help us become the men and women we were designed to be!  Jesus invites us into relationship and a life worth living.

It is very easy for me to forget who I need to be living for... myself or the Lord.  I think that when I am at my worst it is often because I am attempting to find my identity apart from God.  (My ongoing prayer is that my identity would be so intertwined with the Lord that there would be no difference)

Remain in the Vine.  Save yourself head and heartache.  We are called to seek the Father and become more and more like Christ so we can continue on the journey before us.  

The Woman at the Well

I love John 4.

The first half of the chapter zooms in on an outcast woman who encounters Jesus, and it changes everything.

This woman has been married five times and is with yet another man that she is not married to.  She has an identity issue.  She is continually trying to find hope, security, and acceptance in guys, and it is just not going to happen!  Granted she likely has few other options as a first century Samaritan woman who culturally needs to be connected to a man to survive.  However, to me that just amplifies the reality that when everything around us screams that life is found in earthly things (sex, possessions, etc...), we must cling to the Lord and figure out how to pursue him in everything. 

As their conversation ends, the woman heads back into town and starts exclaiming to her neighbors, "Come! See a man who told me everything I ever did! Could this be the Messiah?!"

There's a great scene in "Planes, Trains, and Automobiles" where John Candy and Steve Martin are unaware that they are driving down the expressway towards oncoming traffic.  Another car comes alongside them and screams, "YOU'RE GOING THE WRONG WAY!!!"  But John Candy sloughs it off saying, "How do they know which way we're going?"  The scene ends in a near-death experience as the men squeeze between two oncoming semi-trucks.

This woman becomes the one of the first people to point others to Christ!  One of the first evangelists!  She doesn't know a whole lot about Jesus, but she now realizes that she has been headed one way and after encountering Christ she has found new hope and new direction!

My prayer is that my identity would be found in Christ, and that I would be known for an overflow of joy and hope that comes from security in the Lord.  May this be true of you as well...