We run our website the way we wished the whole internet worked: we provide high quality original content with no ads. We are funded by your direct support for ReKnew and our vision. Please consider supporting this project.

The God Who Embraces Our Doubt
Lawrence OP via Compfight
Zack Hunt over at The American Jesus posted some of his thoughts on doubt, and it seemed fitting on this week before the Doubt, Faith & the Idol of Certainty conference to share what he had to say. We’re thinking he must have stumbled on Greg’s book or maybe God is doing something larger and more beautiful than we can imagine. Maybe God is inviting us to get real, to speak out loud all of the hidden questions and doubt, to bring them out into the light of day. The light is where God can speak and heal and love us.
From Zack’s blog:
The real problem we have in the church is not with doubt, but with our inability to make space for those who do have doubts about their faith, who are going through the exact same struggle the people of God have endured for as long as their have been a people of God.
Too often we don’t do a very good job of giving our brothers and sisters the freedom ask the question they need to ask and share the pain that’s ripping their faith apart. Too often we treat doubt as if it were some kind of sin or disease and doubters as if they were lepers to be shunned. As if any display of weakness will reveal the church’s imperfections to the world and anger God.
Contrary to the God of the Bible who listens to our questions and embraces our doubt, who even when we shout to the heavens “My God, my God why have you forsaken me” does not pour out his wrath, but showers us with love; contrary to the very God we claim to worship, we as a church too often dismiss doubts as “just a phase,” dishonor heartfelt questions by telling people “just to believe,” and compound the pain of the suffering by blaming those who suffer for “not having enough faith.”
Category: General
Tags: Bible, Doubt, Faith, God, Honesty, Jesus, The American Jesus, Upside-Down Kingdom, Zack Hunt
Related Reading

The Key to Understanding Revelation
The most important key to interpreting John’s violent imagery is found in the heavenly throne room scene in chapters 4-5. (For the first entry in this series on the violence in Revelation, click here.) This throne room represents heaven’s perspective on events that are occurring on earth, which is contrasted throughout Revelation with the false…

Reflections on Divine Violence in the Old Testament
As some of you know, for the last five years I’ve been working on a book addressing the problem of divine violence in the OT. (For alleged violence in the NT, see Thomas R. Yoder Neufeld, Killing Enmity: Violence in the New Testament (Baker Academic, 2011). It will be a highly academic tome, approximately 600…

The Longing of Advent
The Advent season is a time of anticipating the coming of God, in Christ, a time of turning our imagination toward the revelation of God’s love for us. This after all is the deepest longing of our heart, and our natural longings always point us to something real. We grow hungry only because there’s such…

Podcast: Can We Really Have a Personal Relationship with Jesus?
It’s all about parts and wholes in this rip-roaring journey through the historical development of certain pietistic trends as Greg introduces his listeners to Depeche Mode Theology. http://traffic.libsyn.com/askgregboyd/Episode_0228.mp3

Quotes to Chew On: Doubt
Gisela Giardino via Compfight Marcus Goodyear wrote an article back in 2011 reflecting on Mother Teresa’s experience of doubt. Many now know that although Mother Teresa worked tirelessly in the slums of Calcutta, she struggled with doubt and spiritual isolation most of her life. Marcus finds this comforting in some way, and he relates to…