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

What Will You Do With Your Doubt?

DISTRESS

Richard Beck shared some of his thoughts on Christianity as something that for many of us is our “native religion”…something we were born into and that is, to quote Wendell Berry, “an intimate belonging of our being; it informs our consciousness, our language, and our dreams.” With Christianity so foundational to our identities, doubt is a scary (and necessary) thing. What will you do with your doubt?

Richard observes that:

A lot of people who have decided to leave the faith are still, for lack of a better word, shadow Christians, still haunted by God. In the words of Flannery O’Connor, Jesus remains for many this wild, ragged figure moving from tree to tree in the back their minds.

But for others the “better possibility” has been for us to intentionally step out of the liminal space, away from the cognitive dissonance, to invest in, cultivate, and renew our native religion.

For those of you who are in the thick of your doubt, you might want to pick up a copy of Greg’s book, Benefit of the Doubt: Breaking the Idol of Certainty.

Image by Davi Ozolin via Compfight

Related Reading

Past Sermon Series: Faith & Doubt

Faith is sometimes understood as the lack of doubt. As a result, doubt can be seen as the enemy of faith. But Biblical faith can withstand doubt and even be strengthened by it. God wants His people to wrestle with Him on the things that matter in their lives. We must not be afraid of struggling with deep…

The Lord of Legend and Love

However secularized a person may be, if they have any sense at all that life has a meaning, they know it must have something to do with love. Indeed, one could argue that all of our intuitions about morality and the meaning of life are at root an intuition about the supremacy of love. At…

Do You Argue With God?

Image by michael_swan via Flickr In sharp contrast to many today who seek the comfortable feeling of certainty as a way of feeling at peace with God, biblical heroes are better known for their willingness to be uncomfortable and to honestly wrestle with God. Like Jacob who wrestled with God through the night (Gen 32), the heroes…

Topics:

Benefit of the Doubt Is Here!

Benefit of the Doubt is finally here and you should definitely get yourself a copy! Frank Viola interviewed Greg about the book recently and you can read it over on Frank’s blog Beyond Evangelical. In fact, Frank is so enthusiastic about the book that he added it to his Best 100 Christian Books Ever Written list. Wow. Also,…

Honesty, However Ugly

For last week’s sermon at Woodland Hills Church, Greg spoke about the importance of being honest with God about our struggles and doubts. This is part of what it means to be in a genuine relationship with God, and the Bible is full of characters who demonstrate this for us. Is it difficult for you…

Why Isn’t God More Clear?

Ever wonder why God isn’t more clear and obvious? Here’s Greg’s take on that question.