Hindsight
…and if Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is vain, your faith also is vain.  
I Corinthians 15:14

Do you ever have doubt?  My interest in doubt has grown since I read John Ortberg’s book, “Faith and Doubt: What if the most important word is the one in the middle?” Pastor Ortberg believes that the very nature of faith demands that uncertainty or doubt be present or faith is not faith!  Faith AND Doubt.  I find that idea very helpful. 

Hebrews 11:6 says, “And without faith it is impossible to please Him (God)…”  I find that verse very helpful!  It tells me that God will give me enough evidence to believe but never enough evidence to eliminate faith.  For some mysterious reason faith is a very important thing to God. 

My problem is facts are more important to me than faith.  I have to admit I am uncomfortable with the fact that God won’t resolve my doubts and make my faith into concrete reality right now.  I really wish He’d write scripture verses in the sky with clouds in Helvetica font so that I and all the unbelievers of the world would be absolutely convinced!  But He won’t or at least hasn’t done that yet.  Everyone I mention that to thinks it’s an awesome idea and are going to submit it to Him in prayer.  I have searched and searched for Biblical scripture that would explain God’s reasons for why faith is so important but I really haven’t come up with any that truly satisfy my soul.

Another interesting thing to me is how this difficulty of “Faith AND Doubt” is dealt with by different people.  Dr. Bart Ehrman, who has written a couple of New York Times Best Sellers concerning Christianity, is the professor of New Testament at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and is an agnostic.  How does an agnostic become a New Testament professor of anything, anywhere?  I don’t know.  But Dr. Ehrman says when he was a Christian he experienced some pain and suffering and it caused him to go down the unbelief road of agnosticism.  He gave up on the resurrection and called it vain.  His “Doubt overwhelmed his Faith.”  For him it’s no longer faith AND doubt, it’s just doubt.

I believe the resurrection happened, I’m a card carrying unionized follower of Jesus.  But I think when I die I’ll go through that long tunnel of bright colorful lights, like the one you see in movies, get beamed into the presence of St. Peter like Scottie on a segment of Star Trek and say, “Wow, this stuff is really true!”  I think I’ll be surprised.  I truly do believe, but I still think I’ll be shocked.  The wonder and bewilderment might be because of the majesty of heaven but I think it’ll mostly be because something in which I placed as much faith as I could muster up, actually happened.  My face will have that startled, stunned, astounded look, like when I asked my wife to marry me and she said, “Yes,” and I’ll be totally thrown off my guard with the abrupt sudden new reality.

I hope you have doubts too.  Without doubts the shock and awe of arriving in heaven’s reality would seem somehow, to me, to be diminished. 

The key is to let God know about your doubts.  I think He sits up in heaven and says to the angels, “Boy is that guy going to be surprised!”  I think it makes Him smile.

I don’t know why faith is so important to Him but I know the resurrection is true and I know my faith is not in vain, because of fulfilled prophecy, eyewitness accounts, it’s impact on the Christian church, day and book,  and especially because of changed lives.  (see sermon 4/22/2012 on the GateWay web site if you want to delve into that more)  Agnosticism and atheism have never changed someone so profoundly that an they went out and started a church, hospital, orphanage, crisis pregnancy center, mission, food pantry, or giveaway center.  Yet, thousands of believers in Jesus have started hundreds of thousands of those places.  To serve others while they waited for heaven.

I’ll go with faith.  I’ll keep my “Faith AND my Doubt!”