Do You Struggle with Doubt—or Know Someone Who Does?

Guest Post by Pastor Tim Jones

Tim Jones has been described as “an incredible man of faith who lives out what he says and teaches every single day of his life.” He is the author of The Anatomy of Doubt (2023). 

For a lot of people, the struggle with doubt is real. Some want to believe in Jesus and the God of the Bible, but they just can’t get there. Others have been so turned off by religious types that they want to get as far away from Christianity as they can possibly get.

On a good day, doubt can feel like a positive step forward because it starts to feel like a genuine form of seeking. But at other times, doubt can lead to great pain. Sometimes the pain of doubt can look like disillusionment with people, while at other times, doubt feels like a train wreck with truth. Sometimes we can find ourselves saying, “Well if this is truth, I don’t want it to be true.”

Sometimes people’s doubts come in conjunction either with the faith they have or the faith they used to have. But sometimes, doubt feels like it is not directed at anything in particular; it is more like a state of being. But what if, at the end of the road of doubt, a surprising existence full of life and meaning awaits us? Isn’t this something at least worth exploring in spite of the pain?

C.S. Lewis: From Atheism to Faith

C.S. Lewis, author of The Chronicles of Narnia, had a fascinating life story. Before he became a person of faith, he went through a season when he began to doubt his atheism. The thought of an atheist doubting atheism intrigued me.

I grew up in a Christian context. Typically, I saw doubt as disbelief directed at things like the Bible or the Christian faith. It was a novel idea to think that doubt could be directed at a person’s own atheism. Lewis went on a journey from atheism to theism and finally to faith in Jesus. This quote from his autobiography may encourage you that an investigative journey can end on the shores of faith:

You must picture me alone in that room at Magdalen, night after night, feeling, whenever my mind lifted even for a second from my work, the steady, unrelenting approach of Him whom I so earnestly desired not to meet. That which I greatly feared had at last come upon me. In the Trinity Term of 1929 I gave in, and admitted that God was God, and knelt and prayed: perhaps, that night, the most dejected and reluctant convert in all England.

C. S. Lewis, Surprised by Joy

I Want to Believe but I Have Doubts

It occurs to me that if someone is going to think about the anatomy of doubt, especially as it relates to faith in God, a good place to start would be to doubt your doubts. So, what would that mean? Often people will say they have decided not to become a person of faith or to walk away from faith because the evidence for it is not convincing or reasonable.

I watched a trailer for the play The Most Reluctant Convert, which tells the story of C.S. Lewis’ journey. In the trailer, a review from the Chicago Sun-Times is quoted (1:12), which says you can “remain an avid doubter even as you enjoy its [the play’s] bristling, provocative, highly entertaining arguments.”

The review fascinated me. I appreciated it because the person’s doubts did not prevent them from listening to the other side’s reasoned argument. The review reminded me of a statement by the philosopher Blaise Pascal. Pascal had a unique take on why people decide not to consider faith as a possibility. He explained that God is hidden enough so that if we want to find him, we will, and if we don’t want to find him, we won’t.

The Challenge of Being Truly Open-Minded

What application can we make from Pascal’s insight? Immediately, it occurs to me that the challenge in considering a new way of thinking is not to have your mind made up before you begin.

When I served jury duty, we were warned that it would be tempting to decide what we thought happened before we had listened to all the evidence. After listening to the evidence presented in court, jury members are charged with discussing the evidence with each other. This allows them to process what they’ve seen and heard before they decide on the verdict. When we were being interviewed for jury duty, the attorneys were looking to see if we had any biases that would interfere with our ability to make a fair judgment.

What if we aren’t as open-minded as we suppose ourselves to be? What if we would not meet the standard to be able to serve on an impartial jury that examines Jesus’ claims for our lives? What am I talking about? A couple of questions immediately come to mind:

• What if I am predisposed to oppose anything that goes against my self-interests?

• What if I am not open to considering truth claims that could interfere with how I want to live my life?

• What if personal experiences with pain have influenced my objectivity much more than I thought they did?

• What if the worldview of my friends impacts my objectivity since a hidden rule of our friendship is agreement?

Sometimes we unknowingly seek to justify our point of view by pretending to ourselves that we are open-minded when we have already made up our minds. We feign seeking while our minds are actually locked down in unbelief just to prove to ourselves, “See? The whole faith thing is stupid. Now I can move on from this nonsense.”

Are You Ready to Doubt Your Doubts?

If this applies at least in part to you, why not doubt your doubts? Why not put your beliefs under the same scrutiny you direct toward the Bible and the Christian faith?

If the gospel of Jesus Christ impacts eternity, wouldn’t it be wise to check it out with an open mindset that hasn’t already decided against it? Why not give your life completely to Jesus, doubts and all? Why not see doubt as a stepping stone rather than as a stumbling block?

Why not make the decision to doubt your doubts and start your journey?

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