Resolving Doubts

by on June 14, 2012

We all have doubts. The question is: what will we do about them?

If you want to resolve your doubts, you need to engage with doubt, to push your doubts to their limits, and see what remains.

In my experience, when we take our doubts seriously, we have the opportunity to emerge on the other side of our investigation with a far sturdier intellectual foundation for our lives.

One of the first steps is to make sure you’re listening to both sides of the story. I often share the following analogy with students: Imagine there’s a certain girl (or guy) that you like, but every time you try to have a conversation with her, it is kind of awkward and uncomfortable. The rational choice, all things being equal, would be to move on and find someone else to date. However, if you happened to know from her friends that she really likes you, and therefore gets a little self-conscious around you, it would make a lot more sense to invite her out for coffee and see what might develop.

I’m not trying to make a point about good dating strategies, but about how our access to information shapes our rational choices. If all you hear, day in and day out, is skepticism, apathy, and hard questions about a belief system – any belief system – the rational tendency will be to weaken your commitment to that perspective. Unless – and this is crucial – you happen to have insider information that you are basing your life upon a rigorous, evidence-based, true set of beliefs.

If you are struggling with doubt, I’d recommend that you begin by refreshing your understanding of the best reasons to believe in the existence of God. These resource pages will introduce you to a variety of reasons for theism (the idea that one god exists) to the reliability of the Bible to evidence for the bodily resurrection of Jesus. I recommend you get started here because, if you’re currently experiencing doubts, one of your main needs is to understand how Christianity can be rationally established. It doesn’t hurt that it is free!

However, for more developed content, I have carefully selected some amazing books. This is a good next step if you want to find the absolute best content in your search for God.

At the same time, we need to recognize there are two primary ‘emotional tones’ to doubt: outright challenges to faith and the curious exploration of uncertainties. Accordingly, I’ve organized other materials around these two approaches:

  • If you’re pretty skeptical about the Christian faith, I invite you to read my series on atheism, agnosticism, and the new atheists.
  • On the other hand, if you’re in the mode of looking to find God, but still need some important questions resolved, I invite you to interact with my series on searching for God.

Finally, new content on resolving your doubts will continue to be posted at the Reasons for God blog.