Wrestling With God: The Kind of Doubt That Grows You

You ever had doubts? I just don't think God's scared by our questions. Because I think that's where you actually grow. Hello there. You're listening to the Girl Talk Podcast. My name is Carol. I'm Kelly. I'm Trisha. And we're glad you're here. You ever had doubts? Yes. I mean big doubts. Big, huge doubts. Is it healthy to doubt? Yes. I'm going to say yes. I'm going to say yes too. What say you, TK? It depends on what kind of doubts we're talking about. All right. Let's jump into it. So when we talk about doubt, I think one of the things that scares us about doubt is that it's a question. And sometimes I think people who ask the questions have a fear. I think there's a fear that the answer to the question will take them farther away from Jesus. So I think there's a fear that goes along with doubt, right? You look like you are dying to say something. I am. So I think this is a failure of the modern church, especially the American church, because so many of us grow up in churches where we're not encouraged to doubt. Like we're not encouraged to ask questions. We're just like, just trust me. That's just why. It's just why. It's just what the Bible says. Just believe the whole Bible. You know, just do it because I told you to. Not, ooh, let's wrestle with that together and let's see what the scriptures say and let's really have questions. And so we're taught to just, and we almost feel guilt. We're taught to feel guilt if we have doubt, if we have questions that are unanswered, because our churches didn't teach us how to wrestle well. They didn't teach us how to wrestle with scripture. They just taught us how to be taught it, not how to wrestle with it. So I just, this is one place I think that the modern church is just, is failing. And I think it's the big difference you see in, in long time Christians who've grown up in the church and, and baby believers who come to know Jesus as a adult, that they don't have, they had doubts. Now they still have doubts and they have, they're questioning and they wrestle and they have, they want answers and they're seeking for truth. And we feel guilty if we start seeking for truth. Do you know, I hadn't even thought of this until you said what you said, but do you think that the modern day deconstruction of faith is tied somehow to that? Yes. Yeah. I think so. Yeah. That's what made me think about that too. So let's just clarify. When we talk about deconstruction, there are a number of people who come out, you know, on social media or on Facebook or wherever, Instagram, and, and they say, I'm deconstructing my faith and they're, they pull it apart and say, I don't believe this anymore. A lot of people leave the faith when they deconstruct. But, but some people take away the parts that, that weren't biblical or that, that aren't core issues, you know, and they, they wrestle with those things. And so I, I just, I hadn't even thought about that in relation to doubt, but I think that might be part of the fruit of not letting people ask questions is that then they feel like it's all. Um, suspicious because they've never been allowed to question. And then if you pick one string, the whole thing unravels. But I want to understand what we mean by doubt because are we talking about doubting everything in the Bible? We're talking about doubting some things or are we talking about wrestling? Like I, I want to understand what me, so here, okay, this is probably why this is like sitting in me a little bit harder than usual is because I have a friend on Facebook. And she has been recently posting articles that are like questioning things, including questioning scripture, like, you know, Jonah, you know, or lion's den or, you know, just different stories. And, and I don't, I, I get nervous. I mean, I guess I'm probably like what you're talking about. Like I get nervous, like, what do you mean? So are we talking about doubting everything? Are we talking about doubting some things? Are we, what do you mean when you say doubt? So I think the, um, the, the seed of doubt, it's where you take it, where you take that doubt. Okay. Because if, I mean, just a rational thinking person, if I was not a believer, I'd be like, that dude got swallowed by a fish. Come on. Right. You know, but I've seen God do some pretty incredible things and I know that he's all powerful. So it's not that I. Question that. Um, but I think it depends on where you take your doubt. A lot of those people are just saying from the standpoint of, ah, that didn't really happen. I mean, you can't be in a den of lions and not get eaten up. That's just crazy. Probably if you put that to the test today and you're not a believer, I would worry for your safety, you know? But I think there are some things that, um, it's like we've talked before, beliefs, preferences, um, convictions, uh, beliefs. So the non-negotiables convictions are things that you feel conviction about and preferences are things that you like. Um, all of those, uh, things, there are doubt, there are questions that you can have inside all this. No. And if we are taking our questions to the right place, Jesus, a trusted pastor, a trusted friend, uh, a counselor, someone who is a believer. I think there is all sorts. There is all sorts of room for healthy doubt and questioning and like, uh, cause I think that's where you actually grow. Well, and I think it is natural for us to doubt the, um, validity of stories that are, um, hard to see in a modern era. Like you said, with the Daniel and the lion's den, that we wouldn't want to reenact that because, um, that is. Yeah. It, or, um, the Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego in the fiery furnace or Jonah in the whale or a bush that talks to you. Um, those kinds of things are like, I, I've never seen that. I don't know that that would work in my life if I went up to a bush, you know, that was on fire and wanted it to talk to me. Um, and so I don't understand. So I'm going to be like, I don't think that's even humanly possible for that to happen. It's not humanly possible. And then you go, yes. Where do you take it from there? You go, okay, so now I need to say, okay, this is not humanly possible. Like this is not possible to walk into a fire and not be burned up. So what is different about this situation, this story, where do I need to then take it? I need to take it to, uh, understanding the context of the story. And then I need to take it to understanding the character of God and the power of God. And so when you, when you follow the thread, you might start with the doubt of Jonah in the, in the whale. I don't know, the body of the fish and saying, I don't think you can do that. Um, and then follow the thread all the way to is God powerful. And so if you, that's how you either construct or deconstruct is the, what answer you feel like you're getting to that is God powerful or good or all the care attributes we know. And that's where faith comes in so you, you can follow it, but to a certain point, you get to a place where you. You go, I can't find an answer to this. I'm just going to either have to choose faith or I'm going to choose not to have faith. I just want to put it in the modern context because this happens all the time. You experience something and you come back and you tell a friend, Hey, I was over here and this happened. They're like, I can't believe that because they did not see it. And so we are, have a limited vantage point, especially when we read the Bible because we didn't see it. We weren't there. Um, but there is enough support. According evidence for the validity of scripture and there are enough people who have questioned who have found those answers, um, ahead of us. So we're not the first people to question. Well, I think one perfect example of this is the resurrection of Christ that none of us were there to see it. And so, um, and it could have just been the, you know, testimony of the, you know, Mary, a woman who's testimonial. You know, in biblical times would have meant nothing. Um, but then Jesus showed himself to 500 people, 500 accounts of 500 witnesses, 500 people saying, Oh no, it's, it's totally real. It's not just one person that said it, it's 500 people. And so it becomes a trustworthy testimony because of the number of witnesses, the number of people. Um, so I don't even know where I was going with that, but it's, um, part of the, you know, getting over the doubt piece of it is having multiple witnesses who can go, Oh yeah, I totally saw that. It's absolutely unbelievable, but it happened. I saw it with my own two eyeballs and people went to death testifying for that, which people won't even stay in prison for, you know, a day without, yeah, if it was a lie. That's right. I've heard that as proof. So when do you think doubt is helpful in like a doorway to maturity? What do you think makes the difference? between doubt that takes you away from relationship with God and doubt that takes you towards God. My initial thought on that connects doubt to maybe anger with God. So when my mom died, and she died suddenly, she died tragically, when that happened, I remember going, what kind of a God would do that? And I doubted God's goodness. And I remember there was one time I was sitting on my bed and I'm like, well, my mom is somewhere. Where is she? Either this is true or this is not true. And it was a crossroads for me to try to determine, do I believe this? Do I believe any of this? Because my mom's gone. And through prayer and sensing God's presence and different pieces that came around and people that came around, my growth and my belief in Jesus strengthened. So, but there was a crossroads. Yeah. I've heard that people put that as a crisis of faith. Yeah. You have a crisis of faith. Somewhere where you're like, I don't know. Yeah. I can't stay on this path. I've got to go either this way or this way. Right. And I think that gets back to, again, where we take our doubts. That if you took your doubts to the world, the world's going to say to you, yeah, he's not good. A good God would never do that to you. And if you take them to God, God says, I know you don't understand. I just want you to trust me that there is a bigger plan that I'm working out and know that I'm with you and I grieve with you and I hurt. This is not the world I want for you. This is not the circumstance I want for you, but I want you to know that your mom is safe in my hands. I want you to know that you're safe in my hands because I love her. And so it's all in where we take those questions and God can use those questions to grow our faith in him, to grow our relationship with him as we wrestle together with him. If we believe that he is there wrestling with us, that's part of it is that we take it to him so that he can be there and wrestle with us in that circumstance. So we can get to those eight. They can get to, even if we don't get to those eight, we don't get to answers because he doesn't promise to answer everything. He doesn't promise to help us understand everything. He just asks us to trust him and to trust that he is good and that he is all powerful and that he loves us. I keep going back to a word I keep hearing you say is understand. And I think we think in our human Western mindset that we can understand everything. I can't remember who said this. It's not me. So just know that it's attributed to someone else. But they said, a God who can be fully understood is a God that's too small to be worshipped. And so I think we, there are some questions we will never get the answers to. That's just, there's part of the mystery of God. And why is one of those. Yeah. Oh yeah. Why? The why's. And even if you said, I had a friend who walked through a really dark season and she said, I just can't understand why, why, why, why? And I said, if, if you knew why, would that help? She was like, right. No, it wouldn't. Cause that wouldn't be a good enough reason for me. Right. Still not going to bring your mama back. Right. To understand why. Right. Yeah. And so I think we just need to be very clear that there are some things you'll never get an answer to. And that's, that's that crisis of faith, that crossroads when you have to come and say, okay, Lord, I'm either going to trust you with everything I got, or I'm going to run as far as I can away from you. But I think doubt definitely can be a growth serum and help you mature in your faith. But let's talk about when doubt can be dangerous. Well, I think Tricia hit the nail on the head earlier when it, when it leads to deconstruction. Yeah. You know, when you are, um, you know, when you're having a friend, you know, we've seen, we've seen people, um, that have totally deconstructed their faith. And if you take it to the wrong place, if you have that crisis of faith and you don't take it to God and say, help me understand you better, help me understand your character better, then it can be really dangerous because you're asking the wrong people questions. Right. And I think one of the things that I have seen as a common thread sometimes in, in deconstruction is, and this is like, not, not the case for everybody, but there's a significant amount of hurt, uh, from somebody that they respected as a spiritual leader or somebody that they trusted and that trust was broken. I see that a lot in people, especially that I know that are deconstructed. They, they point fingers and say, this person hurt me and this person, and I hear me. I'm not, there are real abuses and there are real things that happen and I'm not discounting that one bit, but I just will say, it's interesting to me that a lot of people who deconstruct will point to people in their lives who either mistreated them or abused them. And can I just say that that's not the heart of God? No. Yeah. Um, do you read scripture? You don't have to read far to find God bending down in the dirt and picking up a woman and God looking somebody in the eye who had just betrayed them. You know, all those things that God connects with people and people who are hurting or people who have done something wrong. All those things I think are important to mention, especially when it comes to deconstruction. Cause I just think it's, there's nothing wrong with taking something apart if you plan on putting it back together. Yeah. And what I mean by that is there's nothing wrong with examining why is it that I believe A, B, and C. There's nothing wrong with that. In fact, I would challenge you to do that because that is going to help you, uh, tell other people about Jesus because you're going to see the true nature of your own heart. And, uh, there are, there are things definitely, and I've mentioned a lot here on the podcast. I grew up thinking, I'm not sure anybody ever taught me that, but that's just a perception I had and I need to get rid of some of those things, you know, and that that's, that's, that's good. That is a good, healthy, and that's part of sanctification. I think getting rid of the things that don't, that aren't like weeding, like get rid of some of the weeding. Yeah. I want to add to what you said, because in my interactions with people who have deconstructed on a big scale, another powerful thing that prompts them is fear. What is your faith built on? One, one very, a person I know that matters a lot to me. Her faith was built on fear. I want to escape hell. I'm scared of this God. So therefore I'm going to follow the role, the rules so that I don't have to have the wrath of God. So she didn't get the love of God. Her faith was built on fear, not on the love of God and the redemption that comes through Jesus, the goodness of God. And so when she started to poke around in her deconstruction phase, she was like, well, if I don't have to be scared, then I don't have to have faith. So she missed the most important part, which is the love of God demonstrated through Jesus Christ and how God, as you said, stoops over backwards repeatedly with a messed up people to make sure that we can have communion with him, communion with him in a relationship with him. So the faith that lasts can't be built on fear. Yeah. I think one other way that doubt can become very dangerous is when we don't deal with it. Undealt with doubt turns into worry and anxiety, cynicism and bitterness. If we don't wrestle at all with it, then it just becomes truth to us. Leaving something in the fridge that gets all moldy and it just gets worse and you keep pushing it behind the pickles, but it's still there. And worry and anxiety that just sits in the back of your refrigerator, sits in the back of your mind. It transforms you into something that is not something you want to be. There's this word that you use a lot, and I want you to kind of unpack it for us. You talk a lot about wrestling. And I want to unpack that because I think that might be a new term for some people. Of course, I'm from McDowell County. I've heard of wrestling. That's with an A. Different kind of thing. That's right. But you're talking about wrestling with God over some things and wrestling with issues and all those things. And I've learned a ton from you in this area. And so talk for a minute about what you mean by wrestling with things. Yeah. I mean, I think a lot of it is, and a lot of that is related to the doubt piece of it, is that you're taking a concept, whatever it is. It's the doubt. It's something that you don't quite understand. It's the reality of a story, whatever it is. And you're unpacking it. You are asking more and more questions about it. And you kind of go with, okay, so what? So what? You ask the question, so what? Over and over and over and over and over and over and over again. So you have what whatever it is that you're wrestling with and you go okay so what what does that matter yeah so what how does that impact me so so what and then you get to that and then you go even deeper and go okay so what get to that and you go deeper okay so what um until you finally really get to a place where you have more full understanding of it um i really like to i'm an external processor so for me it's a lot of external external processing of whatever it is i'm wrestling with yeah um so i like to do it with another person yeah you know i really like to go let's talk about this thing that's really complicated it's really complex it's really outside of my understanding and let's just inch closer and closer to where i actually can understand it yeah because i'm asking lots and lots of of questions of how does that impact this or how does that matter or so what and i think that is part of what i want people to hear is that it's asking good questions to the right person yes yeah you know and a lot of people say well god can't answer me i would i would say yes he can and he does often through his word it's often not what we think the answer will be you know and it's all the the times in my life where i've wrestled with something and i've taken it to god i can tell you that most of the time that became a non-issue the thing i was wrestling with was the non-issue it uncovered something else in my heart that god was trying to get at like yeah and that was that was wild to me because i was like oh no i want it to be about this thing and he's like no it's not about that it's about this it's related to that but that's not the thing right and so i think yeah that kind of wrestling with things and really like i'm gonna hang on to this and i'm not gonna let go until you know i hear from god on this but but just like anything else when you wrestle with something and take it to somebody who's outside the faith or somebody who is in the world or somebody who is uh against um belief and faith it's that's very dangerous yes tricky yeah i remember when i went through grief share talking about it's it's a bible study on grief and they said when you take your doubts to god it's a sign of faith now why is that it's because you believe that he's the one in charge wow if you had a problem at a store you wouldn't hopefully talk to the person that you know was was helping you you would go to the manager because the manager can take care of it the manager can right the wrong the manager can he's in control and when we take our doubts to god it is a sign that we know he's in control and he's the one that can help us that's good that is so good so if you have doubts you are not alone and you also aren't weird and your faith isn't falling you're not alone and you're not alone and you're not alone and you're not alone and you're not alone we'd love to hear from you we'd love the opportunity to pray for you you can email us at girl talk at the light fm.org you can also check in on the facebook pages or um i think we talked about carrier pigeon last time i was trying to think of something else that they could send smoke signals smoke signals there you go we are going to save you a seat the next time we gather around these microphones for the next girl talk podcast we'll see you then We'll see you next time.