Dan is not his real name, but he is a very real person. I’ve known Dan for a very long time. In fact, I grew up with him in Denver. We went to the same church, where we attended Sunday School and Catechism and youth group for 12 years. We learned reading and writing and arithmetic at the same Christian school, where the Bible and Christian teaching were central to the curriculum. Dan and I had the same background, but I am a minister who preaches the Christian faith that the Heidelberg Catechism says is "beyond doubt," and Dan is a doubter. Actually, I’m almost glad he is a doubter; he used to be a fierce and aggressive unbeliever, but he has migrated to warm and gentle doubt.
I care deeply about Dan, but I don’t understand him. How can it be that he is a doubter after he received all the same education I had? Where did his doubt come from? Why did doubt arise in his mind? If you know a Dan or if you are one, you know that this is not a theoretical question. It is intensely personal and practical, because if you know what caused something, you can deal with it better. I have a friend who runs a major research institute in Grand Rapids, Michigan. The doctors and scientists at that institute are passionately engaged in the search for the causes of cancer and neurological diseases, because if you can find the cause, you can begin to work at a cure. I’m not saying that doubt is a disease; that’s too negative and simplistic a judgment on something as complex as doubt. But it is a fact that doubt plagues many people and it causes a lot of difficulty in life. I need only think about Dan and how much happier his life would be if he could move from his honest doubt to simple faith in Jesus Christ. So I want to think with you for a few moments about where doubt comes from, so that you can have a clearer idea about what to do with it.
As I look at our text in Luke 24, I am struck by what a surprising question Jesus asks here. And I can’t help but think it is a disappointed question as well. "Why do doubts arise in your minds?" For centuries, the people of God had wrestled, like Job, with the absence of God, the hiddenness of God, the silence of God, the inactivity of God. "Why?" they had cried. "How long, O Lord? Where are you? When will you come?" Now God has come in the flesh in the person of Jesus, and these disciples had confessed him as the Christ, the Son of the Living God. Of course, when he was killed, their faith had been severely damaged. Maybe it had died entirely.
But now the Risen Christ stands before them, living proof that Jesus was God, that God cares, and that God has acted in Jesus to save his people. This is a time for faith as solid as a rock, if ever there was one. Instead, the Risen Christ encounters rising doubt. So he asks, "Why? Why do doubts arise in your minds?" He doesn’t ask because he doesn’t know, but because he wants his doubting disciples to confront their own doubt, to think about their doubt, to doubt their doubt. So let’s try to answer Jesus question for a few moments today. Why do doubts arise in our minds? Our answer will help us decide what to do about our doubt. If you know the cause, you can find the cure. To help you keep track of a sometimes complex discussion, I’ll tell you that over the years people have answered Jesus’ question with three words—God, Satan, and you. Doubts arise from our encounter with God, from the machinations of the Devil, and from our own selves.
This story suggests that some doubt arises from the sheer mystery of God. It doesn’t come from God, but it arises in our encounter with the mystery that is God. Here the disciples’ doubt arose as a reaction to something they had never experienced or expected—the conquest of death by Jesus. God had done something that could not be done. Death is final and everyone knows it, but here is Jesus alive and well. Having the risen Son of God right in front of them should have moved the disciples to faith, but it moved them to doubt instead, because it was so alien to their experience, so wholly other, so mysterious.
That makes sense to me, but I suspect that this God related doubt usually arises from exactly the opposite experience of the mystery of God. We doubt not because we are overwhelmed by God’s presence in the person of Jesus, but because we are devastated by God’s absence in our lives. We doubt not because God has spoken to us in a direct way, but because he has been silent in spite of our fervent prayers for a word from God. We doubt not because we are stunned by the miracles he has done in our lives, but because we are discouraged by what seems to be the divine inactivity that allows us to suffer inexplicably. We hear Job talking about the mystery of God’s absence and silence in Job 23:8 and 9. "If I go to the east, [God] is not there; if I go to the west, I do not find him. When he is at work in the north, I do not see him; when he turns to the south, I catch no glimpse of him." As I’ve said before, I’m not at all sure that Job actually doubted. But some of us do. God’s ways with us are so darkly mysterious that doubts arise in our minds about God’s goodness and mercy.
So, some people say that doubt is simply a natural reaction to the sheer mystery of God. In fact, they say, it is a virtue, a good thing, an important part of the life of faith, the necessary response of finite mortals to the Infinite and Eternal God. Frederic Buechner calls doubt the "ants in the pants of faith," something that stirs us up for good. In a book entitled, In Defense of Doubt, Val Webb says that doubt is not a negative, but a positive; not a sign of weakness, but a sign of strength; not a force of evil luring us away from God, but a tantalizing carrot enticing us into new territories of truth. And Flannery O’Connor said that the agony of doubt is worth it. "I know what torment this is, but I can only see it… as the process by which faith is deepened. A faith that just accepts is a child’s faith and all right for children, but eventually you have to grow religiously."
Sentiments like that are very popular in this postmodern age, where tolerance is the chief virtue and all truth is called into question. In much contemporary thought, doubt is seen as simple humility. Leading thinkers say it is arrogant to claim certainty, to be sure of what you believe. I’ve heard some Christians talk that same way. A truly humble and open minded person will have doubts, they say. Only arrogant and immature people are sure. I wonder how many of us believe that the mystery of God should lead us to doubt, rather than faith.
Consider, then, what G.K. Chesterton said in Orthodoxy about the central confusion of this age. You will have to listen carefully to this, because it is not only difficult, but also absolutely contrary to the way anyone thinks today. "What we suffer from today is humility in the wrong place. [It] has moved from the organ of ambition [and] has settled upon the organ of conviction, where it was never meant to be. A man was meant to be doubtful about himself, but undoubting about the truth; this has been exactly reversed." We are supposed to be humble about ourselves, not about the truth God has revealed to us. Instead, vast portions of the church are confident about their own ability to judge the truth but are filled with doubts about the truth itself. So in this cultural climate doubt becomes a virtue and an important avenue to truth. Christians once said with St. Augustine, "Credo ut intelligam" Latin for "I believe so that I may understand." Now Christians have bought into Descartes’ approach to understanding. "Cogito, ergo sum" Latin for, "I think, therefore I am." This has led to "I doubt, therefore I know."
I know all of that takes us far from the Bible itself, so let’s go back to our text. Does it seem to you as though Jesus is encouraging doubt here as a healthy thing, as a necessary step on the road to discovering the mature truth about God? Then why would Jesus do everything short of performing back flips to get his disciples to stop doubting and believe with certainty? The mystery of God may have moved these disciples to doubt, but that isn’t where Jesus wanted them to be. Doubts may arise in our minds because we do not understand the mysterious ways of God, but that is not what God wants. Humility? Yes. Awe? Absolutely. Questions? The Bible is full of them. But doubt? Listen to the way Jesus speaks. "Why do doubts arise in your minds? Look at my hands and my feet. It is I myself. Touch me and see…." And watch what he does. "He showed them his hands and feet… and he took a piece of fish and ate it in their presence." To remove their doubt.
Well, then, does that mean that doubt comes from the devil as he takes our experiences of God’s mystery and turns them into doubt? Some are sure of that, but in fact the Bible never specifically says that the Devil is behind all doubt. Jesus was very clear eyed and outspoken about the reality of the Devil, but there is no hint of that here in Luke 24. It is true, however, that the story of the fall in Genesis 3 does suggest that the Devil does work to raise doubt in our minds. In Genesis 3:1, the very first thing the satanic serpent said to Eve was, "Did God really say you may not eat of any tree…?" seeking to sow the seed of doubt. From the first doubt came the first sin. Thereafter the Devil is always known as the Father of lies who will do anything to oppose the truth and destroy faith in God. And that passage in James 1 about asking for wisdom without doubting is followed with a section about temptation. And James says very clearly that temptation comes from the Devil. So James seems to suggest that there is some connection between the Devil’s work in temptation and the presence of doubt in our minds.
So it makes sense to say that doubt is of the Devil, which is why so many Christians say it. And in so far as doubt does come from the Devil, the words of James 4:6&7 are the key to battling doubt. "God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble. Submit yourselves, then, to God. Resist the Devil, and he will flee from you." That’s always good advice, but it doesn’t always apply to doubt. In fact, attributing all doubt to the Devil is simplistic and sometimes harmful, because it totally ignores the human condition.
There is no doubt that some doubt comes from not from our encounter with the mystery of God or from the diabolical workings of the Evil One, but simply from you and me, from human nature. I mean that in two senses. Some doubt arises from the fact that we are sinners and some from the fact that we are finite. Let’s think about that. Some doubt comes from sin. In the Garden of Eden, the devil’s temptation was followed by human choice. The Devil didn’t make Adam and Eve sin; they willed to do so. Ever since, humans have had this tendency to rebel against God. Some doubt comes from that willfulness, from that refusal to live under God in obedience to his revelation of himself and his will. Let me give you two contemporary examples.
Some people doubt the truth of the Resurrection story we are considering today, because they are intimidated by religious pluralism. Christianity is just one religion among the many in the world, they say, so how can we be sure it is The Truth? So they doubt. Now, the Bible says in places like Romans 1 that the existence of many religions is an expression of man’s willful rebellion against God. "For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish minds were darkened. Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools, and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like mortal man and birds and animals and reptiles." (Rom. 1:21—23) Pluralism should motivate us to make disciples of all nations by teaching them about Jesus. Instead, many churchgoers doubt the truth of the Jesus story because of all these sincere, but sinful expressions of human willfulness. That is doubt growing out of sin.
And second, some people doubt the truth of the Gospel of the Risen Christ because of intellectual pride. It isn’t so much that they have convincing arguments against the Gospel. It’s more that they are in love with their own intellect and take pride in being a cut or two above the humble folk who simply believe. I’m thinking here of some of the aggressively atheistic scientists who reject the Christian faith not first of all because it has been proven false by science, but because it seems such a silly superstition that sophisticated people could never believe it. It isn’t science that makes them doubt the Christian faith; it is their intellectual pride that won’t even let them look at something that science can’t prove or disprove. Now, obviously, there is nothing wrong with intellect; it is a great gift. And there is nothing with scholarship, with questions, with faith seeking understanding. But there is something deeply wrong, something rebellious about the intellect that will not finally bend the knee before the risen Christ and say, "My Lord and my God." Some doubt comes from an intellectual pride that is sinful.
But other doubt comes from the fact that we are simply human. With our limited understanding of the mystery of God, we don’t have all the answers. Just a few days before this scene in the upper room, Jesus had been with his disciple in the Garden of Gethsemane. He had asked three of them to accompany him as he wrestled with his destiny. When they fell asleep, he said, "The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak." Those well meaning disciples were not sinful when they fell asleep. They were weary, worn, and sad. Some of our doubt arises because our minds are simply tired. The events of our lives and the tide of history have worn us down and we are filled with anxiety and depression. As our minds whirl around and around, it is hard to keep them fixed on Jesus. So we doubt.
That reminds us of the final cure for doubt. I’ll talk at more length about strategies and methods for dealing with doubt next week, but for now I want to direct your faith and your doubt back to our text. The causes of doubt may lie in our encounter with God or in our battles with the devil or in our own frail and fallen nature, but our text shows us that there is finally just one cure for doubt of any sort. Listen again to these words of Jesus. "Why do doubts arise in your minds? Look…. It is I myself! And he opened their minds so they could understand the Scriptures."
In my conversations with doubting Dan, what I need to say again and again is that Jesus Christ himself is the certainty of faith and the careful study of Scripture is the only sure way to know him. When we doubt, Jesus offers us himself. Jesus is the key that unlocks the mystery of God. Jesus is the victor over the Devil. Jesus is our Savior from sin and our strength in weakness. Jesus is the meaning of the whole Bible. Wherever doubt comes from, you know where to take it for a cure.
Stan Mast
Stan Mast has been the Minister of Preaching at the LaGrave Avenue Christian Reformed Church in downtown Grand Rapids, MI for the last 18 years. He graduated from Calvin Theological Seminary in 1971 and has served four churches in the West and Midwest regions of the United States. He also served a 3 year stint as Coordinator of Field Education at Calvin Seminary. He has earned a BA degree from Calvin College and a Bachelor of Divinity and a Master of Theology from Calvin and a Doctor of Ministry from Denver Seminary. He is happily married to Sharon, a special education teacher, and they have two sons and four grandchildren. Stan is a voracious reader and works out regularly. He also calls himself a car nut and an “avid, but average” golfer.
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