Sometimes I doubt my faith.
Nothing significant causes the doubt, I just wonder if I’ve committed myself to nothing more than a story created by humans to make life easier. Karl Marx’s statement that religion is an opiate for the masses gives me pause and creates a little room for doubt in my brain.
I don’t often doubt my faith but I did last night, sitting in chapel on commitment night.
I can’t think of a more awkward place to doubt your faith than commitment night at summer camp. But there I was, listening to the speaker share out of Genesis, and the doubt bug worked its way into my brain. I imagined what it would be like to just stand up and walk out of chapel, tell the camp that I was done and quit my job at the church. I thought about the interactions I’d have with my wife and my family; I tried to predict how they would respond and what my life would look like outside of the church. All that transpired in my head over the course of 30 seconds and then, just as quickly it arrived, the doubt regressed.
Even though it lasted less than a minute, those moments of doubt can be disheartening. I know that doubts are normal but in the back of my mind I worry that someday my rational mind will overpower my soul and I’ll become an atheist. I know that’s a ridiculous fear but that’s the impact doubts can have.
Last night, though, God not only relieved my doubts but he deepened my faith more than he has in a long time. On commitment night at camp, students are given the opportunity to commit themselves to Jesus. During the message and after my doubt, I began to pray for two students by name. I simply asked that God would move in their hearts and draw them nearer to himself. Then, when the students who made commitments were asked to stand, those two stood up. I got goose bumps, tears welled up in my eyes and 30 seconds of doubt were washed away in the time it took two students to stand up.
God is so good.
I know the salvation of two students is more important than allaying my own personal doubts, but it’s nice to know that God saw my doubt and then proceeded to obliterate it. God did to my doubt what Luke did to the Death Star and I couldn’t be more grateful. I’m grateful because the same God who welcomed new children into his kingdom last night is the same God who keeps an eye on the children who’ve been there for a while and who still need a little help.
How does God allay your fears?
What I fear is not that Christianity does not exist but that it seems awfully hard luck on anyone outside, especially on those who seem like they obviously desire to be righteous but are going about it the wrong way.
Intellectually it is not so much a problem; if there is no other way to save someone, God can reach them in the last microsecond of their life assuming they want to be saved. It just sometimes seems hard to believe that when raised in a church that seems to feel different.
Yeah, God’s justice is a difficult thing to understand and grasp. I wrestle with it because I want to apply my understanding of justice to God but, as Isaiah says, his ways are not my ways. Even the best of us have an extremely limited view of justice and sin; God fully grasps those concepts and knows what’s best.