Faith and Doubts (Apr.19, 09)

Faith and Doubt: M 1 (DRAFT) 2009 04 19

Title: Faith and Doubt

Text: John 20:1-18

Big Idea: A path to faith is to doubt our doubts.

The last couple of months I have talked about a mother named Rachel Barkey.

She is married to Neil. She is in her thirties. They have two young children, Quinn and Kate.

I have shared about how her cancer has returned, spreading to her liver and bones. There is no medical cure.

Rachel says the hardest part of all this for her is leaving her husband Neil and her children, Quinn and Kate. She has said that loving Neil and helping him has been the most wonderful privilege; and being a mother, is a gift that she did not deserve. She feels that Quinn and Kate are treasures that were entrusted to her for a time, and she is grateful to have been their mother for these years.

In a more recent e-mail Rachel shared that she is now essentially bed-ridden. The pain in her back and the constant nausea make it difficult for her to be upright for more than a few moments each day. But in the midst of these horrendous circumstances, Rachel feels God’s comfort and is assured that she is not alone—God is with her.

But there are other people around her who are asking, “Here’s a mother of young children; how could God let this happen?”

Stories like Rachel’s can make us ask: “Where is God? Does God really exist? And if God exists, does God really hear our prayers? Is there really life after death?”

Do you ever ask questions like that? Many of us who consider ourselves to be believers in God, if we are honest, at times, have doubts. Is there really a God? Does God hear my prayers? What will happen to me when I die?

Even people we would consider spiritual giants have doubts, too. Mother Teresa in a letter to a spiritual confidant, the Rev. Michael van der Peet, wrote: "Jesus has a very special love for you," she assured Van der Peet. "[But] as for me, the silence and the emptiness is so great, that I look and do not see — Listen and do not hear ... I want you to pray for me..."

People who believe in God have doubts.

Atheists and agnostics have their doubts, too.

I remember, when I was working for Sony, a brilliant scientist approached me and asked if I would have lunch with him. At lunch Shintaro told me about some ground-breaking work that he was doing in physics, measuring certain aspects of spheres that apparently had never been measured before. He was getting ready to go to Vienna, Austria to present his new findings at a science conference.

At lunch, he asked, “You are a Christian. Right?” I said, “Yes.” He said, “I have never believed in God. I am an atheist, but as I study these spheres I see evidence of this beautiful design. I see this amazing symmetry in the world, and I am starting to doubt my atheism. I wonder if there might be some kind of designer. I would like to know why you believe in God.”

Richard Dawkins, the brilliant physicist and author of The God Delusion, in an interview with the New York Times said: “I cannot know for certain, but I think that God is very improbable, and I live my life on the assumption that he is not there.” Even Dawkins, the famous atheist, says, “I cannot know for certain, but I think it is probable that God does not exist. I live my life on that assumption.” So, Dawkins too is putting his faith in an assumption, that there is no God. He is a person of a faith in that regard.

Thoughtful, intelligent atheists like Richard Dawkins, Chris Hitchens, Sam Harris, and Daniel Dennet have their moments of doubts about their atheism as well.

Elie Wiesel, the writer and holocaust survivor, when asked to describe his faith, used the word “wounded”: “Our tradition teaches that no heart is as whole as a broken heart, and I would say that no faith as solid as a wounded faith.”

Like Wiesel, many of us believe and we doubt.

Doubt, as Wiesel says; can be a friend; it can make our faith more solid.

Doubts can make our faith more resilient as we wrestle through them.

Wrestling with doubt honestly can make us more humble and motivate us to learn, and can help us shed false views of reality.

Frederick Buechner says, “Doubt are like ants in the pants of faith; they keep it alive and moving.”

If there really is a God, then we do need to be intimated by our doubts.

A pastor, who serves in the San Francisco Bay Area, said, “I was talking with a friend recently

who said, ‘I never read books like The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins, because I’m afraid if I read it, it would undermine my faith’.” The pastor says, I’m not saying that you should, or that you need to read every book like that one. You may not have that need, but if you don’t read it and avoid it because you are afraid it will destroy your faith, then what you’re really saying is, “Deep down inside, I don’t believe that Jesus was really right.” It’s impossible to trust Jesus if way down deep inside, you don’t think He was right.

Today we are going to begin a new series on faith and doubt. We will explore such questions as:

Is there only one way to God?

How can a good and powerful God allow suffering?

Do faith and science contradict each other?

If you would like to read a companion resource I would recommend a book by one of teachers and mentors, Tim Keller, who pastors in Manhattan--The Reason for God.

Last Sunday was Easter, and I’d like us to look again at John 20.

The Empty Tomb

1 Early on the first day of the week, while it was still dark, Mary Magdalene went to the tomb and saw that the stone had been removed from the entrance. 2 So she came running to Simon Peter and the other disciple, the one Jesus loved, and said, "They have taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we don't know where they have put him!"

3 So Peter and the other disciple started for the tomb. 4 Both were running, but the other disciple outran Peter and reached the tomb first. 5 He bent over and looked in at the strips of linen lying there but did not go in. 6 Then Simon Peter came along behind him and went straight into the tomb. He saw the strips of linen lying there, 7 as well as the cloth that had been wrapped around Jesus' head. The cloth was still lying in its place, separate from the linen. 8 Finally the other disciple, who had reached the tomb first, also went inside. He saw and believed. 9 (They still did not understand from Scripture that Jesus had to rise from the dead.) 10 Then the disciples went back to where they were staying.

The text goes on to say:

(Mary stood outside the tomb crying. As she wept, she bent over to look into the tomb and saw two angels in white, seated where Jesus' body had been, one at the head and the other at the foot.

They asked her, "Woman, why are you crying?"

"They have taken my Lord away," Mary said, "and I don't know where they have put him." At this, she turned around and saw Jesus standing there, but she did not realize that it was Jesus.

He asked her, "Woman, why are you crying? Who is it you are looking for?" Thinking he was the gardener, she said, "Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have put him, and I will get him.")

In this passage we read that Mary went to the tomb and saw that the stone had been removed from the entrance. She said, “They have taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we don’t know where they have put him!”

When Mary saw the empty tomb, she assumed that Jesus’ body had been stolen by some grave robbers. She was so convinced of this that when she actually saw Jesus risen from the dead just moments later, at first she didn’t recognize him. She assumed that Jesus was the gardener, and said, “Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have put him, and I will get him.”

John, on the other hand, according to verse 8, reached the tomb, and when he saw that it was empty, though he did not know from the scriptures that Jesus had to rise from the dead, he believed that God had performed some kind of miracle.

We may tend to think that Mary didn’t have faith (that she “doubted” that Jesus’ could have risen from the dead), and John had faith, but they both had faith, faith in a framework, that neither, at least at that point, could conclusively prove. Mary had faith that Jesus was dead, and assumed (reasonably) that people don’t rise from the dead. Jesus’ body was missing, and so Mary concluded that his body must have been stolen.

We may tend to think that some people have faith and other people have doubt, but everyone has faith, everyone has a way of seeing the world. Even a person’s doubt, reveals that they have a “faith” or way they tend to see reality, they have “eye glasses” (through which they see the world).

Tim Keller, points out in his book, The Reason for God: “When we unmask a so called ‘doubt’ we see an alternative underlying belief, or an underlying way people see the world.

For example, if you say ‘It is absolutely impossible for a human being to rise from the dead’ you are making a faith statement that our universe is all there is and nothing from outside of our world can break in and suspend the normal laws of nature, and therefore a miracle is impossible.”

You are assuming that the world is like this plant terrarium and nothing can break in.

Now believing that the world does not have a plastic covering like this plant terrarium, and that there is a God or some kind of transcendent reality that might break in, is a faith position, but it is also a faith assumption to believe that the world in effect has some kind of plastic covering like the terrarium and there is nothing outside of the world that could break in and suspend the laws of nature.

Both are faith assumptions.

Both a ways of seeing reality.

One person says there is God.

Another, their material stuff is the only thing that is real—there is no God.

Both are faith statements that no can absolutely prove.

In the Count of Monte Cristo, Edmond is framed and sent to jail unjustly. He’s about to beaten by the jailor and Edmond says, “God will give justice.” The jailor says, “God is never in France this time of the year.”

Both are faith assumptions.

One assumes God sees. The other that God does not see.

And if you say, “I don’t care one way or another; it doesn’t matter” you still then have faith that there is no God who would hold you accountable in some way (It’s a way of seeing the world).

Mary sees a person outside the tomb that she thinks is the gardener, and asks, “Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have put him and I will get him.” Jesus says to her, “Mary.” In that moment Mary recognizes him and says, “Rabboni!” In that moment Mary in effect now doubts her assumption that someone stole Jesus’ body, and comes to believe that Jesus has risen from the dead.

Mary was not the only follower of Christ who at first assumed that Jesus did not rise from the dead. Jesus’ disciple Thomas (as we see later in John 20) does not at first believe. He wants proof that Jesus has risen from the dead. Jesus shows him the wounds in his hands and side, and Thomas believes—he cries out, “My Lord and my God.”

Engaging doubt as I said can be very healthy for someone who considers themselves a believer, but engaging in doubt as a skeptic (about your way of seeing the world) can also be healthy.

If you consider yourself a skeptic, but are open to possibility of having faith in God, if so convinced, then learning to doubt your doubts may be the starting point of faith in God for you. 2x

Like Shintaro, people who have trouble believing in God will sometimes ask me, “Why do you believe?” and I typically say there are several different reasons why I believe.

One is because of the historical evidence that Jesus Christ rose from the dead. Last Sunday, if you were here, we briefly looked at some of the evidence for the resurrection.

Of course there are no airtight arguments for God’s existence, but there are good reasons for believing.

Mark Twain, said “Faith is trying to believe what you know ain’t so.”

But, real faith is believing what you really believe is true.

One of the reasons, I believe in God is the historic evidence for the resurrection.

Respected New Testament scholars like N. T. Wright have argued that the empty tomb and the accounts of personal meetings with Jesus after he rose from the dead--the resurrection--become more historically certain when you realize that they must be taken together. If there had only been an empty tomb, and no sightings, no one would have concluded that a resurrection had taken place.

They would have assumed that the body had been stolen. Yet, if there had only been eye witnesses of the sighting of Jesus, and no empty tomb, no one would have concluded that it was a resurrection either, because accounts of people seeing departed loved ones happen from time to time.

Only if the two factors were both truly together would anyone have concluded that Jesus was raised from the dead.

Historic evidence is clear that the tomb of Jesus was empty.

Paul’s letters show that those followers of Christ proclaimed Jesus’ resurrection from the very beginning, and so the tomb must have been empty. No one would have believed the preaching of Gospel if the tomb wasn’t empty.

Paul also wrote in a public document in 1 Corinthians 15 that there were hundreds of eye witnesses to Jesus’ resurrection, many of whom were still alive at the time’s Paul’s writing. (And Paul encouraged people who were skeptics to talk to the people who had seen Jesus risen from the dead.) If this was not the case, Paul’s letters and the Christian movement would have never have gotten off the ground.

As we also saw last week, one of the most compelling evidences that Jesus rose from the dead was the fact that Jesus’ disciples went from being fearful cowards, who fled for their lives when Jesus was arrested on Thursday night (the eve of good Friday), to being fearless proclaimers of the message that Jesus had risen from the dead the following Sunday. From Thursday to Sunday, they went from zeroes to heroes.

All of those early disciples of Jesus, with the exception of John, died for their belief that Jesus rose from the dead.

The only plausible explanation for this radical transformation in their lives was that they believed that Jesus actually rose from the dead.

People don’t die for something they know is a lie—they don’t die for a hoax.

The second proof, a more subjective proof, that enables me to believe, helps me doubt my doubts, is that my life has been powerfully transformed through Jesus Christ. Many you have heard my story, and so I am going to give you the opportunity to hear some else’s story. I invite Patrick Elaschuk, who is involved in leading our international mission here at Tenth, to come and share part of his story.

I was not raised in an environment of faith. Even going though high school I had no idea of who Jesus was and was not too interested. After moving to Vancouver from Vernon after graduation, I began asking questions like, “how can God exist if the world is so messed up?”

Through a serious of God inspired events. I was invited to church one Easter by a friend and started a journey of faith in Jesus Christ, and I began to change.

* As I was growing as a new follower of Jesus Christ, I had a new sense that stealing, lying and cheating were becoming more wrong than before.
* I had a new sense that sex outside of marriage was no longer right.
* I had a new sense that somehow, someway, there was a God out there who cared for me and wanted me to know Him.



I began to change my lifestyle because of these new convictions.

I also felt a compelling strange new desire to go into the world and make a difference. Before that, I was far more concerned with me, myself and I and promoting my own agenda. After my first exposure to extreme poverty in Fiji, my perspective on the world radically changed; my own mother noticing significant differences in me.

Fast forward 10 years, I was married with 2 children living in an urban poor slum in Davao City Philippines. Why the Philippines, you may ask? Jesus compelled us to leave a degree of comfort and follow Him to a place where He was inviting us to serve in an outreach clinic. A combination of opportunity, peace, and unity as a couple helped us discern that. Inneke served as a midwife delivering babies to the urban poor and I built the relational foundation for a church. Moved by the killing of 15 year old youth I introduced to Jesus named McCoy, who was gunned down by a vigilante group called the Davao Death Squad, Inneke and I began ministries for the urban poor related to education, health care, and micro enterprise.

Even while serving as a missionary I had serious questions about faith in God when I met children under the age of 6 that begged for food on the streets or know youth that have been unjustly killed.

I still don’t have all the answers for that, but seeing God’s love reflected through people who sacrificially give their lives for the poor in places like the Philippines—helps me continue to believe in God and that God is good. When God’s people continue to give up self driven pursuits for the pursuits of God, God becomes far more visible to us all.

Patrick has had a powerful life change—leading him to experience a change in his personal life, making him a far more giving person that he can only explain by God.

I’ve never heard someone say, “I just converted to atheism; I used to be self-centered so I will move to a slum to help the poor.” I’ve never heard anyone say, “I just became an atheist, “I used to be player, but know I will be faithful to my wife.”

But, I’ve heard many people talk about how God has transformed them so that they are now more giving and generous and faithful.

I believe in God because of the historic evidence for the resurrection and because Jesus has changed my life and the lives of countless others.

But, I have doubts, too.

As an undergraduate I studied both business and philosophy. As a philosophy major, I was encouraged to doubt. From a philosophical perspective, there is nothing that we can know with absolute psychological certainty. I think that I am here and that you are here, but it is based on the assumption that I right now am not having a dream, that my senses are conveying to me a picture that at least somewhat corresponds to reality.

I have doubts. I wonder.

I welcome them, so does Jesus.

The Gospels portray Jesus as one who welcomes us with our doubts.

As we saw, when Jesus later in John 20 met Thomas, one of his disciples sometimes referred to as “Doubting Thomas,” he encouraged him not to surrender to his doubt, but to believe.

He responded to his request for more evidence. Jesus said, “Put your finger here in my hand, and put it in my side.”

In Mark 9:24, a man, filled with doubts, approaches Jesus and says, “I believe, help my unbelief” ; and Jesus welcomes him and blesses him and brings healing to his son.

Today and in the weeks to come pray that God would not only help us to find faith, and the things that are worthy of faith, but to doubt the doubts that are worthy of doubt.

Let’s pray.