Doubting God

The well-known story of “Doubting Thomas” is recorded in John 20. After the resurrection of Jesus, he refused to believe unless he saw Jesus for himself, and when Jesus appeared to him and invited him to touch the crucifixion wounds, Thomas replied “My Lord and my God.”

It’s a great story to include in the gospels because who among us has not doubted God? Haven’t we all, at one point or another (perhaps even right now), found ourselves saying “If I could just see him… If I could just be sure… If he would just reveal himself….”

Doubt is normal but it darkens the soul. It is the shadow that makes it hard to see. It is the fog that diminishes our visibility and obscures our clarity.

Many of us quietly affirm “I’ll believe it when I see it.” But the biblical truth is just the opposite: “We will see it when we believe it.”

Our doubt is understandable. Pain, disappointment, suffering, and loss can all birth spiritual doubt within us. But sometimes our inability to believe subtly turns into a reluctance to believe. We may start out benignly saying that we can’t believe, but it becomes more malignant when we refuse to believe.

Importantly, doubt is not always something we can think our way out of, because it often emerges more from the heart than the head. “Where was God when…?” “Why did God let this happen?” “If God really cares, why didn’t he…?”

Ultimately, much of the doubt we harbor shifts its focus. We may start out doubting God’s capacity but, almost imperceptibly, we end up doubting his character. That’s deeper and more difficult to resolve.

As we return to the story of Thomas in John 20, there’s a crucial declaration at the end of that story. Jesus says to Thomas, “You have believed because you have seen me, but blessed are those who did not see and yet believed” (v.29). And then John tells us why he wrote his entire gospel and included this story; “…so that believing you may have life” (v.31).

I understand how pervasive and persistent doubt can be. It runs deep within us and it keeps coming up like weeds in the garden. We all have plenty of temporal and existential reasons to doubt God; not his existence, but his love, compassion, presence, goodness, and capacity. We think it would be easier to believe if we could just see. What might happen if we switched that around this week? What if we would believe first, so that we might see second?

Has doubt crept in or taken root in your heart? I can’t explain God to your satisfaction, but I can invite you to experience him for your transformation.

If we will plant the seed of belief, we are best positioned to become trees flourishing by the Water. Believing is seeing.

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Amazon.com.au or Amazon.com

Spiritual Pretense (and a book update)

Pretense is a common part of life. On a recent trip to Disney World, I saw countless children dressed and pretending to be princesses, adults outfitted like Star Wars characters, and even one or two Woodys from Toy Story. There’s something fun about assuming a persona that is not us, pretending to be someone we are not. It might be with costumes or, in a slightly less obvious way, putting on an accent, or creating rosy Instagram images of our lives.

Pretense is everywhere, and much of it seems innocuous.

Spiritual pretense seems equally prolific but with considerably more sinister implications. Have you seen it? It can be hard to detect at times, though eventually the mask drops (perhaps just for a moment) and we see the real heart or face. Sometimes it is more obvious within families. The Sunday spiritual giant is the Monday secularist. The pulpit piety suddenly falls away and exposes weekday impropriety. The quoting of Scripture and delivery of earnest public prayers gives way to selfishness, anger, impatience, or abuse behind closed doors.

There’s an aspect of spiritual maturity that is appropriately aspirational for us all. It’s who we want to be, and therefore who we try to be. I get that, and encourage that. Our hearts tend to follow our actions as much as the other way around. It’s a good thing to aspire to spiritual maturity.

But we’ve also discovered that people often admire and follow spiritual maturity, and if we pretend to have it they will admire us and follow us. The allure of influence can seduce us to become spiritual pretenders. Such pretense wounds both ourselves and those around us.

Spiritual pretense substitutes for the disciplined spiritual life and, as such, it has little substance and no real grounding. It’s hollow, powerless, shallow, and impotent. And since it is not real, it is like cancer to our souls. It requires performance but not transformation, and as such it keeps us from an authentic flourishing life. Spiritual pretense hurts us first and foremost.

On the other hand, spiritual pretense is also a danger to those around us. Precisely because it lacks substance, it has nothing genuine to offer. It is the shiny toy that breaks if someone taps it with any force. It is smoke and mirrors, leaving a wake of confusion, disappointment, woundedness, and resentment.

I want to aspire to spiritual maturity, and imagine you do too. But if I pretend to be what I am not, my words will be nothing more than faint echoes of the real thing. If I satisfy myself with pretense, I will deliver to myself and the people around me something that offers much but delivers little.

How do I identify spiritual pretense in myself? I suspect we need little guidance at this point, but if we find ourselves making exaggerated spiritual claims about our journey or living a life that is spiritually inconsistent between our public and private life, we might need to pause, reflect, repent, and restart.

How might I identify spiritual pretense in others? This is much harder and so we are more easily duped, but surely the character of Christ (marked by humility, grace, truth, compassion, gentleness, love, justice, etc.) is the ultimate test. Spiritual maturity is not what you tell me you have, but what you show me you have. It’s not about what you say but how you live.

It’s fine for kids to wear costumes, but the stakes are different and higher in our spiritual lives. Let’s aspire to know Christ more fully and refuse to be spiritual pretenders this week.

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Before You Walk Away: When the violence, vengeance, anger, or apathy of God drives you to the brink

Friends, I’m happy to say that my new book is available in Australia through this link at amazon.com.au.

In the USA, it’s available through this link at amazon.com.

In the next week, I expect it to also be available as an ebook/Kindle version, for those of you who would prefer that format.

As the back cover of the book notes, “This is not a book for everyone.” It addresses the common questions about God’s violence in the Old Testament, the problem of evil and suffering, the cruelty of the cross, and the prospect of eternal conscious torment in hell, and I’ve written for people whose faith (or prospective faith) is challenged by some of the traditional teaching on these topics.

My Latest Book (Just Released)

Dear friends –

I’m honored and delighted to announce the release of my latest book.

Before you walk away: When the violence, vengeance, anger, or apathy of God drives you to the brink

This book has been a two-year project for me, starting in May 2022. It is driven by the deep questions I have heard from so many others and grappled with myself.

How do we reconcile the violent God of the Old Testament with the peacemaker we see in Jesus? Where is God in our suffering, and does he really care? Is bloodshed (on the cross) the only way to appease God’s wrath? If so what is he really like? And what about eternal conscious torment in hell? How does eternal suffering reflect God’s love and grace?

These questions keep so many people from faith, and drive so many others from faith.

In this book, I seek to explore biblical ways to reconsider the character of God and the common message of the evangelical church. He is not whom we have been told he is.

If you’re interested (and live in the United States) the book is available here.

The goal of the book is not to engage in an intellectual wrestling match with academics, but to reach out to anyone whose faith is on the brink because of these deep challenges. I hope and pray that the book stirs up conversations over dinner tables and in coffee shops, and reopens the door for faith. If you read the book, I’d be glad to dialogue more with you about it. And I’d welcome your feedback and reviews.

Thanks for your encouragement and support. I’m deeply grateful to be on this journey of faith with you, and ultimately hope this book honors the character of God and reflects faithfulness to the Book.

Grace and peace.

David

He is Hidden

We hear it often, and we have likely asked it ourselves, “Where was God when…?”

The question implies both an answer and a non-answer at the same time. We don’t know where he was, but we do know where he wasn’t. He wasn’t here. He wasn’t close. Wherever he was, he was somewhere other than where we needed him to be.

The ancient Israelites felt much the same way during their slavery in Egypt. Their four hundred years of enslavement and hard labor in Egypt surely pushed them to the brink. How many of them, generation after generation, abandoned faith and hope? Where was God?

It was a long wait, and countless people never received an answer. Yet, we read in Exodus 2:24-25 that the Israelites, feeling overwhelmed by their bondage, nevertheless cried out repeatedly to God, “so God heard their groanings, and he remembered his covenant with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. God saw the sons of Israel, and God took notice of them.”

Where was God during their captivity? He was not absent but hidden. He was fully present but not fully experienced. He was with them but not known by them.

To say that he is hidden is not to say that he is hiding. It is to say that for whatever reason, we cannot see him.

I wonder if sometimes our pain might obscure our vision of God? I wonder if sometimes our anger, or fear, or sin, or shame dulls our spiritual sensitivity or clouds our spiritual sight? We assume perhaps too quickly that our suffering proves there is no God or he is not here. But perhaps we just can’t see him through the tears. Yet, he looks upon us, hears us, remembers his covenant with us, and takes notice of us.

The hidden God is not an uncaring God. And while sometimes he might shroud the mountain with fog so that we are not ruined by his glory, yet he inhabits the darkness. He is near; always near, though not always evident.

This is the gist of faith. We seek him even when he seems hard to find. And we look for him through the mist and tears, and declare our unyielding allegiance to him and our unrelenting confidence in him, whether he comes into sharp focus or not.

God is everywhere and there is no place he cannot be. If that be true, and it is, then we cannot speak sensibly of his absence but only of his hiddenness. And then we might ask, “Why would he hide?”

In the garden of Eden, it was not God who hid from Adam and Eve but they who hid from him. Has that not largely been the pattern of humanity ever since? We spend so much time hiding from him throughout our lives, our sin driving us to fig leaves and hiding places, that when we look out we can forget that his hiddenness might be of our making.

Have you cried out for him and heard nothing? Have you sought him and found nobody? He is not absent but hidden. And whatever the reasons might be, whether of his doing or of ours, perhaps we can pray: “God, hear my groanings, remember your covenant, see me, take notice of me, and deliver me from this bondage.”

If we will draw near to him, he will draw near to us (James 4:8).