6 Practical Steps to Help Grow Your Confidence in God’s Word
When We Have Doubts
If we are honest, we have to admit that what happened to Eve is a temptation for us as well. Sometimes we have our doubts about the stories we read in the word of God, about its moral convictions and the promises it makes.
We know how truly human the Bible is, and we wonder if it is also fully divine. We question whether Adam and Eve were the parents of the entire human race. Can we square biblical teaching with scientific evidence? Our culture struggles with the Bible’s sexual ethics, and maybe we do as well: two sexes, two genders, and one definition of marriage, in which a man and a woman are united in a lifelong covenant. Is the Bible right about the sanctity of life inside and outside the womb? Is it for or against women? Does it have a righteous view of justice, including racial justice? Does it give us a true perspective on the fundamental unity and the eternal diversity of humanity? Is it really true that our bodies will rise again and that we will all stand before God’s throne for judgment?
In the face of such questions and objections, many skeptics believe (!) that the Bible is “scientifically impossible, historically unreliable, and culturally regressive.”1 Most of us can relate. If we read the Bible carefully, eventually we encounter something we find hard to accept, and maybe difficult to believe at all. The question is this: What should we do when this happens?
I Have My Doubts
Philip Graham Ryken
This book examines 10 Bible stories that address faith and doubt, reassuring readers that doubt is normal for Christians and that God can use times of uncertainty to renew their faith.
By way of answer, here are several practical steps we can take to give us growing confidence in the word of God.
First, we can confess that we are not neutral observers but are predisposed not to believe what God says. This is one of the sad results of humanity’s first, morally fatal transgression. As soon as Adam and Eve ate the forbidden fruit, they hid from God—a clear sign that they were no longer aligned with his divine holiness. God called to Adam and said, “Where are you?” (Gen. 3:9). This showed that the first man had ended up far from God. Adam’s sin has noetic effects on all of us; in other words, it distorts our spiritual ability to reason. Spiritual doubt comes more naturally to the fallen human heart than genuine faith does. Missiologist Lesslie Newbigin reminds us: “We are not honest inquirers seeking the truth. We are alienated from truth and are enemies of it.”2 If this is true, then we need to doubt our doubts and stay skeptical about our skepticism.
Second, we can keep studying the Scriptures. When we do, we will find out how reliable they are. The Bible is easily the best-attested text from the ancient world. We have—by far—more well-preserved manuscripts of the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments than we do of any other history book or sacred text from antiquity. We know what the Bible says.
Furthermore, the general trajectory of biblical scholarship is to confirm rather than to deny biblical history. To cite one notable example, some scholars used to cast doubt on the historicity of David, despite all the biblical evidence to the contrary. Those aspersions were set aside for good when archaeologists discovered a stone artifact at Tel Dan in 1993 and saw “the house of David” among its inscriptions. This proved that David’s reign was engraved in stone as well as written in Scripture. Or consider Luke’s assertion that Jesus was born “when Quirinius was governor of Syria” (Luke 2:2). Certain scholars used to claim that Luke’s timetable was inaccurate. But as more information became available, it turned out that Doctor Luke knew more than these scholars did about the governorship of Quirinius and his census-taking in the Roman world.3
When we have our doubts, we need to study the Bible more, not less. We need to open it up, not set it aside. The overall direction of biblical interpretation encourages us to keep searching for the answers, so that in time we too may come to a better understanding of the truth. If we are wise, we will accept the mysteries, wrestle with the difficulties, live with the questions, and wait for the answers while we keep studying the word of God.
Third, we can recognize that the Bible contains the faithful ring of truth. When we have our doubts, it is easy to focus so much on what we think are problems that we miss the unmistakable signs of authenticity.
There are many things we would never expect to see in the Bible unless they were true. For example, we would not expect so many heroes of the faith—nearly all of them, in fact—to expose so many of their failings in its pages. It is really difficult to imagine an important leader like Peter coming off so badly in the church’s sacred texts unless he himself had insisted on its accurate record of his ignorance, cowardice, and betrayal.4 The best explanation for this unrivaled candor is that the authors of Scripture were telling the truth about themselves because they wanted us to know the truth about the mercy and grace that God showed them.
We could say something similar about Jesus of Nazareth—not about his sins, of course, because he committed no sin, but about some of the troubling facts in his biography. Why would the Bible ever speak of his spiritual struggle in the garden of Gethsemane, or proclaim that he was crucified as a common criminal, or record his words of dereliction from the cross unless these things actually happened? Even if we still have our doubts about certain parts of Scripture, we should recognize that its primary historical claims are true beyond any reasonable objection.
If we are wise, we will accept the mysteries, wrestle with the difficulties, live with the questions, and wait for the answers while we keep studying the word of God.
C. S. Lewis found a realism and attention to detail in the Bible that was unlike anything else in the literature of the ancient world, and this convinced him that its writers were telling the truth. Lewis wrote:
I have been reading poems, romances, vision literature, legends, and myths all my life. I know what they are like. I know none of them are like this. Of this text there are only two possible views. Either this is reportage . . . or else, some unknown writer . . . without known predecessors or successors, suddenly anticipated the whole technique of modern novelistic, realistic narrative. 5
Fourth, we can do what the Bible says, which of course is a lifelong challenge for us all. Some doubters and skeptics want to determine whether the Bible is true first, and then perhaps they will start to obey its teachings. But the first thing Jesus said to Andrew, Peter, and the other disciples was “Follow me!” (Matt. 4:19). Then he sat down to teach them what they needed to know (see Matt. 5:2ff.). Doing and believing go together. Indeed, we do not truly believe in Jesus unless and until we begin to follow him. The longer I live, the truer the Bible gets, not only because I get answers to all my questions but also because I have tested its truth through a lifetime of faith. We learn the hope and beauty of the Bible by living into its teachings.
Fifth, we can pray for the help of the Holy Spirit. We need God’s help to believe God’s word. One of the most important claims the Bible makes about itself is that it was “breathed out” by God the Holy Spirit (2 Tim. 3:16; cf. 2 Pet. 1:21). The Spirit of God is not a subjective feeling but a living, supernatural person—someone who has the divine power to confirm our minds and hearts in the truth of Scripture. John Calvin wrote beautifully about the Spirit’s work in his famous Institutes:
The testimony of the Spirit is more excellent than all reason. For as God alone is a fit witness of himself in his Word, so also the Word will not find acceptance in man’s heart before it is sealed by the inward testimony of the Spirit. The same Spirit, therefore, who has spoken through the mouths of the prophets must penetrate into our hearts to persuade us that they faithfully proclaimed what had been divinely commanded. 6
Sixth, if we are having our doubts about the Bible, we can refuse to give up too soon. I say this partly because our eternal destiny depends on it. Only the Scriptures are able to make us “wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus” (2 Tim. 3:15). But I say it even more because I know that God wants to bless us with growing faith that leads to full assurance. He wants to answer for us the same prayer that the apostle Paul offered on behalf of the Colossians, that our “hearts may be encouraged . . . to reach all the riches of full assurance of understanding and the knowledge of God’s mystery, which is Christ” (Col. 2:2).
When by the grace of God we experience full confidence in the word of God, we are able to testify to its complete reliability and eternally saving power. “The Bible can be trusted,” writes Timothy George, “to be totally reliable on its own terms: its history is historical and its miracles are miraculous, and its theology is God’s own truth.” 7
Notes:
- Timothy Keller, The Reason for God: Belief in an Age of Skepticism(New York: Dutton, 2008), 99–100.
- Lesslie Newbigin, Proper Confidence: Faith, Doubt, and Certainty in Christian Discipleship (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1995), 69.
- For more on Quirinius, see Leon Morris, The Gospel according to St. Luke: An Introduction and Commentary, Tyndale New Testament Commentaries (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1974), 82–83, and Norval Geldenhuys, The Gospel of Luke, New International Commentary on the New Testament (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1951), 100.
- Richard Bauckham, Jesus and the Eyewitnesses: The Gospels as Eyewitness Testimony (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2006), 170–78, cited in Keller, The Reason for God, 105.
- C. S. Lewis, Christian Reflections, ed. Walter Hooper (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1967), 155.
- John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, ed. John T. McNeill, trans. Ford Lewis Battles, 2 vols., Library of Christian Classics 20–21 (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1960), 1.7.4.
- Timothy George, “What We Mean When We Say It’s True,” Christianity Today, October 23, 1995, https:// www .christianity today .com/.
This article is adapted from I Have My Doubts: How God Can Use Your Uncertainty to Reawaken Your Faith by Philip Graham Ryken.
Related Articles
An Open Letter to Christians Who Doubt
Just defining or describing the doubt helps me talk to God more pointedly about it. And in some instances, he gives me insight or perspective that alleviates (but not totally removes) the doubt.
Joel Beeke answers some of the most common—and most difficult—questions that Christians tend to have about salvation.
Podcast: How Should We Respond to Our Doubt? (Randy Newman)
Randy Newman explains that when we struggle with questions about our faith, we should view these not as roadblocks to faith but as natural twists and turns that accompany our lives as Christians.
Anne Bradstreet: Doubting Thousands of Times
The reason I can even have times of doubt and resolution and restored happiness is only because I am alive, because someone created me and is keeping me (and my faith!) going.
