On Faith and Doubt: Mystery

Last month I reflected on the unavoidable questions that have arisen in my mind concerning faith and doubt. Here is some of what I have discovered since:

 - Questions are important
- If you have questions, then you should be actively seeking answers and soaking in observations
- Questions may lead to a firmer faith
- God delights in your intellectual and holistic pursuit of truth
- The questions will never stop

I believe it’s possible to be on a continual, intellectual pursuit of truth all along your walk with Jesus, but I’ve also concluded that eventually you must realize that you will never have all the knowledge needed to prove the validity of Jesus, the Holy Spirit, and all that the Christian faith promises about God. One thing I have certainly discovered about faith; if there were no question about the truth of Christianity, then there would be no opportunity to faithfully trust in Christ. If all of the answers were set before us as fact, then there would be no choice and faith would not be needed. I also don’t believe that if we knew all things as certainly as we would like that it would make living according to God’s way any easier, or that it would prevent man from choosing other paths less wise.

Albert Schweitzer once said:

“But the truth is, it is not Jesus as historically known, but Jesus as spiritually arisen within men, who is significant for our time... And to those who obey Him, whether they be wise or simple, He will reveal Himself in the toils, the conflicts, the sufferings which they shall pass through in His fellowship, and, as an ineffable mystery, they shall learn in their own experience Who He is.”

I then choose to believe that the Holy Spirit’s stirring in me of such questions and thoughts has set me about on a new leg in my journey of faith, during which I am weighing everything I learn according to a different standard and seeing with a renewed lens. Just like is the habit of the Spirit, just when there is the chance of becoming complacent in our walk with Christ, He comes to stir things up and disturb the image before us. Like a reflection in a pool, the Spirit has stirred the waters, and to find the greatest treasure requires a deeper, more careful look into the pool and the faith to reach in and take it.

And to reach in to take hold of such faith takes courage. If I believe in the Bible and in Christ, if I even give Him an inch, then He will take a mile. In other words, if it’s true, then this stuff is serious, and I better take God’s word seriously for my life. I had wondered why some of the books on the topic of faith and doubt I had read nudged me closer to God’s word rather requiring me to distance from it, or why one friend of mine recommended the Bible over all other materials to study. Now I understand why. There is such weight to what is said about who God is, who we are, and who Jesus Christ is as man and deity that it transforms the way I think and gives purpose to how I live.

Still, it is not the certainty of Scripture that influences me the most towards greater faith, but the great mystery of it that captures me.

“…Truly I tell you, if you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it will move. Nothing will be impossible for you.” –Matthew 17:20