Thank God for Doubt

How Questions Deepen Your Walk with God

By Katherine O’Neill

Long ago, when I was starting high school, my father said: “You’re going to encounter a lot of new ideas, some perhaps challenging, some seemingly at odds with your faith. Don’t worry. Don’t dismiss it. Just ask yourself the question, ‘Is it true?’ because if it’s true, then it comes from Jesus, who said ‘I am the Truth.’” It was perhaps the single most helpful piece of advice I’ve ever received.

Doubt is not a problem. If we’re honest, we can all probably point to things in the Bible that bother us. Maybe it’s angry, vengeful statements that don’t sound like a loving God, or weird stories that don’t seem to bring us any closer to Him. Or maybe there are specific doctrines in our faith that trouble us, ideas that we wrestle with: We are taught this, but I don’t know… God has no problem with this. It’s a sign that we are serious in our faith.

Drawing Near Through Doubt

After all, doubt has a noble pedigree. In Luke’s gospel, when the angel announces to Mary, a virgin, that she will have God’s child, she asks: “How will this be?” (Luke 1:34). In Genesis, when God promises Abraham that Sarah, then 90, will have a son, he just laughs—and nine months later, they name their newborn “Laughter,” because God has the last laugh on that one (Gen. 17). And we all remember Thomas, who demands proof of the resurrection and actually receives it: he touches Jesus’s wounds (John 20). These great people of faith experienced doubt, and God wasn’t angry about it. On the contrary: it brought them closer.