Within the Benefit of the Doubt

“There is nothing more dreadful than the habit of doubt. Doubt separates people. It is a poison that disintegrates friendships and breaks up pleasant relations. It is a thorn that irritates and hurts; it is a sword that kills.” ~ Buddha

If you’re like me, you’ve experienced a fair share of doubt in your life—doubt in yourself, doubt in God, and doubt in your calling. It won’t surprise you for me to say that doubt isn’t a new, 21-century thing. I believe the phrase you are searching for is, “Well, duh!” But the seeds of doubt can be traced back all through the Bible and presumably through known history. It is impossible to live life without some form of doubt, especially in a society that places God against so many obstacles; in order to believe in God, one must doubt the conclusions of very intelligent men and women.

We are conditioned to doubt the words of strangers; thinking whatever they tell us serves some sort of self-reward or agenda. We tell lies to make ourselves look better or to appear more suitable for whatever it is we are trying to do, even if it is only a little puffery. Everyone does it at some point right? So, was Jesus any different?

The disciples seemed to think not. We always hear of doubting Thomas, but every single one of the disciples was guilty of doubt. In fact, there are several times listed in the Gospels when Jesus has to call them out on it and say, “Do you have such little faith? Why do you doubt?” (Matt. 8:26; 14:31; Luke 12:27-28; et all). Peter could not walk on water, the disciples were fearful in the storm, and (here’s the big one) when Christ was crucified on the cross, the disciples just gave up. That is the biggest insult I could ever think of to a ministry. In that time, Jews expected a Messiah-King to ride in on a white horse and smite the Romans for their oppressions. They expected him to take the lead and rule over Jerusalem, Judea, and the entire world. Then here comes Jesus, a carpenter from a small town, riding a donkey. Yet somehow the disciples saw Him for who He was—the messiah. They followed Him, though doubting His power at times. They witnessed miracles and heard his teaching, but when he was crucified, they scattered, thinking their great leader was no more. The Messiah had come and died before he took His throne.

Now, we know how Christ’s story really happened. He didn’t just die and rot, but died for our sins and rose again. Here’s the interesting part of the story: the first act of forgiveness that Christ expressed after He rose from the dead was forgiving the disciples of their doubt. “Why are you troubled, and why do doubts rise in your mind?” (Luke 24:38) He rebukes them for his doubt, then as a sign of forgiveness he places the ministry he began into their own hands. We know this as the Great Commission. Christ as a leader was not one to take charge and rule from a throne; He was a facilitator and a mentor, allowing others to lead. By following that example his name and power spread over the entire earth.

Jesus forgives us of our doubts. He does not hold them against us. So long as we continue moving and worship Him through our service, we are forgiven. There will be times when you feel far away from God; you may doubt His existence or His calling, but take heart. Have faith. Desire to do God’s will and all shall be aligned in the end.

Jude 1:24 “To him who is able to keep you from falling and to present you before his glorious presence without fault and with great joy—to the only God our Savior be glory, majesty, power and authority, through Jesus Christ our Lord, before all ages, now and forevermore! Amen.”

The Pen

It’s amazing how a simple sentence can change your mood in an instant; how it can make you imagine stories and situations you would have never thought of on your own; how you can change somebody’s mind or opinion forever. I recently came across a site where people can send in a single sentence to be posted—a sentence to tell a story or help define them. It’s called, quite obviously, One Sentence (http://www.onesentence.org/). Here are a few of the submitted sentences:

“Despite his exasperation, I enjoyed the irony of holding the door for the hotel doorman.”

“I didn't recognize the voice or the number, but the message said, ‘I just thought you might like to know I'm pregnant.’"

“Today, after weeks of avoiding the required parts of my assignment, I had to ask my socially-awkward Japanese pen pal about his sex life.”

“When he was a little kid, my now-gay brother asked my mom when he would turn into a girl.”

Words in today’s culture are, in my opinion, severely misused. In this society of technology—with computers are our fingertips—we take the power of words for granted. With the accessibility of email, we take less time to think through our letters before sending them, leading to more spelling errors, illogic, and often, because of the separation, many rude remarks. With the Internet, gossip spreads faster and news is instantaneous. Even with all of this exposure and dependency on words, most people probably don’t know half of all available words in the English language.

Now, being a wordsmith, I enjoy finding new words. In school, I would love vocabulary lessons because it gave me an opportunity to learn a new way of expressing a thought. Why say ‘dull’ when you can say ‘insipid’? When you hear a word like that, it bears a weight and gives the sentence or thought a certain color (yes, I am an artist, too). If I were to say, “That lecture was dull,” people understand but it leaves the sentence gray and, well, dull. By saying “That lecture was insipid,” you can almost see spite pouring out of the words.

I would also argue that we say too much in our society. Now, I’m not suggesting we all take vows of silence, but that we think about what we’re about to say to that it is concise and truthful. Jonathan Swift, 18th century Irish satirist, wrote a novel called “Gulliver’s Travels.” In it, he described a Utopian society of horses, called the Houyhnhnms. The interesting thing about the Houyhnhnms is that when one approached another, there would be a brief, customary silence before either began to speak. Swift’s character, Gulliver, stated that it made him think about what he had to say. How brilliant would it be if our society thought before it spoke?

I’m going to issue a challenge to my readers. The challenge is to think of a story in your life—whether it is happy, sad, etc.—and write it in one sentence, conveying the depth and emotion it deserves. You then can, of course, submit it to One Sentence if you wish. Try to research different words to express yourself, using engines like rhymezone.com or other thesauruses. Finally, please choose your words wisely.

Belief in the Old Testament

Is it possible to fully believe in the New Testament without believing fully in the Old? I think I’ve heard of denominations that completely disregard the Old Testament, and I think that is a bit extreme. Jesus, himself, was raised on the Old Testament (OT) Scripture, so it is important to know and understand it to recognize the cultural context of the Jews of the time, but can one still not believe it completely?

I am a college student. In the classes I am taking, my faith is being challenged. There are so many things about the OT that ring questionable. Particularly in my class about world history, we talked about ancient Mesopotamians. They have this story, called the Enuma Elish, which describes their views on the creation of the world. Mesopotamians were polytheistic and animistic (Sherman 10; Wikipedia). They also believed in manipulating gods in order to gain favor and fortune (Sherman 10). These ideals are completely opposite of what we know the Jews. However, records of the Mesopotamians and the Enuma Elish predate the Jews and the OT (Sherman 11, Bratcher). When looking at the Enuma Elish compared to OT, there are many similarities (Bratcher). Both accounts see creation as a separation of water (Bratcher Tablet IV; Genesis 1:2, 6-7 New International Version) and both make mention of monsters of the sea (Bratcher Tablet I; Psalms 74:13-14). Going further with the Mesopotamians, we see them creating a system of writing and recording the oldest known story—The Epic of Gilgamesh (Sherman11-12). This story contains a similar flood story (EoG Tablet XI) to that found in Genesis 6, as well as various other parallels. These were but two of many ancient flood stories. It seems that nearly every culture has a story of a giant flood, so it is relatively safe to assume that there was indeed a massive flood that obliterated much of the earth.

But what makes the OT’s version more believable those others? Bratcher makes reference to what he calls a “common cultural pool” when dealing with the Enuma Elish on his web page. He conceives that there are similarities within texts and stories of the ancient world on account of shared experiences, ideas, and phrases among the cultural groups. If that is true, then what happens to the authenticity of the Scripture? If it was written in opposition to common ideologies, then can it be taken as proof of this everlasting, sovereign, loving God?

Many stories in the OT (and even in the NT) seem far too extraordinary to be taken literally. Is it sacrilegious to propose reading Scripture as metaphor or allegory? Many Biblical interpreters have done that in the past—as far back as the Roman Empire (Klein 25), but was it with the cynicism that I have? I have recently studied the book of Job in one of my classes. The professor, whom shall remain nameless, stated that the prologue and epilogue of the book (i.e. Chapters 1-2, 42:7-17) were added in later manuscripts. That means that the whole back-story of God allowing Satan to test Job was not in the original story. All there was were speeches about Job’s suffering for no apparent reason until God spoke to him. Should we then take the prologue literally, or disregard it as being console to the Hebrews who feared suffering of the righteous? The book itself is not of much help, as it does nothing to give an answer to suffering, only basic thoughts of causation. Klein suggests finding the truth in each of the speeches and applying it to life even though God sides with Job in the end, rebuking his friends (395-396). Perhaps it is normal to feel discontent with the OT.

Another challenge of faith came to me in a Philosophy course. The professor, again to remain nameless, began the course asking us the popular atheistic question, “Can an omnipotent God create a stone so large that He could not lift it?” I quickly found a website by Adrian Barnett which has since been taken down (it remains credited at the bottom). The rock question deals with whether or not God can do the logically impossible or logically inconsistent. Barnett, an atheist, made great statements against the question—including where God would stand to lift this rock, that logical inconsistencies are simply “not there to be done,” and refuting the popular response that God’s ways are outside of our logical understanding.

This question, as well as other discussions in the class, got me to question God, as well. Namely in this case, I questioned how God could truly be omnipotent and Good (oh, yes—with a capital ‘G’). His omnipotence was questioned with the rock question and his Goodness with the problem of evil. Evil exists in the world, I doubt anybody would deny that, but where did it come from? It existed before the Fall, because the tree in the garden was simply of the knowledge of good and evil. The serpent, we say, was evil—Satan incarnate. So where did it, evil, come from? Well, logically, if God created all things, He created evil. Perhaps He did not set out to specifically create evil, but He created Satan. I’m sure a lot of Christians would argue that He didn’t know that Satan would betray Him, but if God were omniscient, He would have. God created free will, and with free will came a consequence of evil. It is impossible to have free will without the possibility of evil. My professor tried to explain it in terms of possible creations. Say that one possible way to create the world gave a 1 standard of good with a 1 standard of evil, another world had a ratio of 3:1, and a third had a ratio of 5:4. He/she had us decide which we would choose; some of us chose the equal one because it gave the most opportunity for free choice, some chose the second option because it had the most good with the lowest amount of evil, and still others chose the final option because it had the most good still overshadowing the evil. The professor then concluded the exercise by stating that God would have chosen what He saw as the best combination.

Perhaps none of this made sense. Maybe you don’t understand my confusion. More than likely I just started leading you down my path to said confusion. There were certainly a lot of questions in here to answer. But it is my goal and my purpose to help you to think about things you might not want to think about. As the great Socrates once said, “Life without inquiry is not worth living” (Sherman 68).

-Quizzical Thought

Works Cited
Barnett, Adrian. “Can God create a rock so heavy that he cannot lift it?” Adrian Barnett’s Web Page. May 6, 2004. September 17, 2008.

Bratcher, Dennis. Enuma Elish: “When On High…”. 20 July 2006. 2 November 2008.

Epic of Gilgamesh, The. England: Penguin Group, 1999.

Holy Bible, New International Version. Grand Rapids, Michigan: Zondervan, 1984.

Klein, William W. et all. Introduction to Biblical Interpretation. Nashville, Tennessee: Thomas Nelson Inc., 2004.

“Mesopotamia.” Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia. 30 October 2008. Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. 2 November 2008.

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