"The Gift of Doubt"

Here is a quote I found a few days ago which I found interesting ...

"If faith never encounters doubt, if truth never struggles with error, if good never battles with evil, how can faith know its own power? In my own pilgrimage, if I have to choose between a faith that has stared doubt in the eye and made it blink, or a naive faith that has never known the firing line of doubt, I will choose the former every time."

~Gary Parker, from the book "The Gift of Doubt"

I think that doubt is important to a growing faith. Strength seems to come from struggle. I go through this where I know that I wrestle with certain "pet" sins for example, and I wonder why I don't make more dramatic progress over them. I also struggle with the horrible things going on in Indonesia and parts of Africa, and here at home ... with a lot of it done in the name of religion. Why doesn't God deal with this stuff! I guess what I'm saying is that I don't always have the complete and final answer to every question. [Which is not a surprise to those that know me! ] I think that with doubting, when we focus on one obstacle, we end up missing the big, overarching picture. Let me relate to you a story that was told to me that has helped me with this ...

Suppose a person saw his wife of 20 years holding hands with a man at the mall or wherever. Doesn't it look reasonable to assume she is cheating on her husband? If we just look at this bit of evidence one could possibly say 'Yes, she is. There is nothing to indicate she isn't cheating.' But that leaves out a lot of stuff doesn't it ...?

It leaves out the history of 20 years of marriage. Where the man knows her well enough, day in day out, to know she would not cheat this way. So although it may look like something fishy is going on, there has got to be another explanation!

Now lets say you found out she got a phone call from a man she helped lead to the Lord 20 years ago or something like that. He happened to be in town and she hasn't seen him in 2 decades! So they got together and were reminiscing, showing family pictures ect. He was getting ready to leave town for a foreign country lets say and she might never see him again. Sooo, like a brother and sister they were holding hands and talking in the mall ...

What I'm trying to show with this story is that there is usually a lot of other evidence that should be considered before making a final decision. Some of it we don't see. This goes for our friendships, relationship to God as well as our doubting. There is the history of the relationship. There is all the evidence there is a God, that He created you, the New Testament is historically trustworthy, that Jesus performed miracles, rose from the dead, that God wants to spend eternity with YOU. So even if everything is the pits right now and God seems absent ... you can factor all this other stuff in. Then its a bit easier to say for me, 'Even though I might not have an explanation of what is going on right now, I know there has got to be one because there is way to much evidence that Jesus is the Son of God, I can trust Him and His love for us as demonstrated by scripture and the Cross. With that I can have confidence that this situation or mess I'm in will eventually make sense and I'll see its fairness and see it from His point of view later on.