Dealing with Doubt - Part 2

This is a continuation of Friday's post on Doubt, written by Michael Patton, originally posted at the Gospel Coalition blog.


4. Help them to focus on the things that make or break their faith.

It could be something as small as someone at school ridiculing them for believing that a donkey talked, discovering an apparent discrepancy in what Christ said in Matthew compared to Mark, or hearing a science class presentation on the theory of evolution. However, for those who have never been prepared for this crisis, they cannot discriminate between essentials and non-essentials. For many, everything is essential. Their theology is a house of cards. Once one card falls, no matter how small, the entire house comes tumbling down.

We can do much to lessen the effects of this crisis if we can help those going through it gain some perspective. Someone may be questioning the legitimacy of his belief in the rapture, whether to include the Apocrypha in the canon, whether hell is eternal, whether God changes his mind, whether Christ can work through other religions, or the inerrancy of Scripture. Whether the crisis of faith is brought about due to intellectual or emotional reasons, start by encouraging doubters to consider core issues of the faith and then move out from there. I think the primary core issue of the Christian faith is the resurrection of Christ. All dominoes fall from there. It is also the easiest to rest our intellectual head on. I have yet to meet someone who was going through a prolonged crisis of faith who was well established in the historicity of Christ's resurrection.

5. Encourage them to live according to the faith they still have.

Doubt is not unbelief. Doubt is the bridge that connects our current faith to perfect faith. That bridge will stand until death or Christ returns. However, those who are going through a faith crisis don't naturally see things this way. Once doubt come in and infects their life on a conscious level, they interpret it as outright unbelief. They don't know how else to process it. They think that they are on an inevitable road to complete unbelief.

Unfortunately, because they think this way and many Christians treat them as if they had a plague, they begin to immediately live as unbelievers. If sin were not the instigating problem before, it definitely becomes the chronic problem now. It is important for those who are struggling with doubt to not let their doubt influence their lives so that they start living as if they are unbelievers. Encourage doubters to continue to live as Christians, even if they don't feel like one anymore.

HTW: The Gospel Coalition