the doubts

In the beginning, God...
I love that the Bible starts off with God. The obvious implication is that before anything else ever came to be, there was God.
Of course we live in an increasingly doubtful world, and in making that statement, I mean the fact that there are many people who doubt God's existence, if they don't just simply dismiss it all together. While this is tragic, if you believe the Bible literally, it's understandable. I've struggled with doubts over the years and I'd be lying if I said I don't anymore--I most certainly do. This is because God's invisible.
It seems like the Bible assumes that God is there, and if you're going to read it, you have to at least possess some sort of belief that God is there and that 'in the beginning, God...', meaning that everything is 'from Him, to Him, and through Him...' (Romans 11:36).

That being said, the Bible does meet those of us who doubt and question an invisible God right where we are. In Colossians 1:15 Jesus is referred to as "the image of the invisible God, and in 1 Timothy 1:17, Paul says (having just talked about Jesus Christ's display of perfect patience), "To the King of ages, immortal, invisible, the only God, be honor and glory forever and ever. Amen." Upon reading these passages that refer to God as invisible, one could respond two ways: First, with despair at the idea that THIS God I'm supposed to believe in is invisible. "Who wants to believe in something they can't see?" they may question, and this could lead to a bottomless pit of depression. On the other hand, secondly, they could respond the way I've responded the last few years (which is so much better a response than the former, which I knew as response for a long time), with appreciation at the fact that the Bible meets me where I am, by calling God invisible. The Bible may call the people of this world stupid (especially me), but it also calls the people of this world incredibly loved. Both of these statements are things the Bible by nature would HAVE to say, because if it's assumed that God is the ultimate satisfaction and absolute experience of the fullness of joy for us His creatures, which the Bible DOES assume (Psalm 16:11, John 10:10), then if the created humans for whatever reason continually and persistently turn from trusting in His goodness and Godness, then it seems like a perfect picture of absurd, delusional, stupidity. This is why James says in James 1:6-7 that "the one who doubts is like a wave of the sea that is driven and tossed by the wind." Is the Bible calling me an idiot for doubting?

Not necessarily, because the Hebrews and 1 Timothy passages BOTH call Him the invisible God. If I say, "I'm struggling with the invisibility of God", I'm not saying anything sinful or wrong. We know from the Bible that I CAN struggle with God (Genesis 32:22-32), and that He IS invisible. Thus I can struggle with the invisibility of God. Therefore, the Bible meets me where I am in my doubts and questioning and says, "Yes, He IS (I AM) invisible. You're assessment is correct up to that point."

But it's when we move PAST that point that our assessment takes a turn for the worse. The problem arises when we consider what we mean when we say we're struggling with the invisibility of God:
Most of the time, we mean that we're struggling BELIEVING IN the invisible God. Most of us can sing honestly with the band The Fray's song 'You Found Me', which famously sings (to God), "Where were you when everything was falling apart? All my days were spent by a telephone that never rang...Why'd you have to wait? Where were you?...Just a little late...You found me." I always struggled with this song, because I can't tell if the guy singing is grateful, or if he's shaking his fist at God saying, "I KNOW you're there and you DID find me, but why didn't you do it THIS way?" It seems like the latter is more believable--the singer KNOWS God's there, but he wishes God would have acted differently in response to his cries. Most people find themselves in this place--they struggle with the idea that God doesn't do things THIS way, but they DO believe He's there. Even if they say they don't, they do (MOST do; I know some just absolutely don't, and I don't mean to arrogantly assume wrong things about you if you're one).

As Tim Keller brilliantly hypothesizes in his 'The Reason for God', if you have a framework of belief in 'right and wrong' or 'good and bad' (which everyone does--everyone agrees the Holocaust was a tragedy, and that the Penn State thing is horrible because it involves violation of innocent children), then clearly you HAVE to believe that those moral convictions came from SOMEWHERE and they couldn't have come from just simply evolution or 'nowhere'. You also can't say "Well everyone believes this..." Really? If everyone believes it, why does it happen still? Keller concludes, "If there is no God, then there is no way to say any one action is 'moral' and another 'immoral' but only 'I like this'. If that is the case, who gets the right to put their subjective, arbitrary moral feelings into law?" He's right. If truth is absolutely relative, then you and I couldn't call anything wrong, and if that's the case, then how much despair and hopelessness is there in a world with many problems, and everyone has differing opinions on how to fix these problems? 'Virtue' and 'vice' are relative, and you set yourself and others up to not have any opinion about anything. If you do, then you'll be inconsistent in your arguments, because you'll be arguing from a transcendent moral law that not everyone agrees with (because you've written it yourself), and you'll realize that every argument is pointless because no one believes exactly like you do. You'll say, "Why can't the world just all believe THIS?" or "Why don't they just see it THIS way?" which is exactly what both the Bible and Christians are saying, to which the common response is "That's oppressive." With all due respect, isn't ANY argument oppressive? Because it assumes a transcendence of virtue over the opposite side of the argument. In other words, isn't everyone close-minded about their beliefs?

Notice in the James 1:6-7 passage, after speaking of the man of doubts being like a wave of the sea tossed and thrown, he says, "For that person must not suppose that he will receive anything from the Lord; he is a double-minded man, unstable in all his ways." Notice James doesn't say, "That man will be sadly disappointed to find out God is really there..." Why is this significant? Because if the man COULD firstly have assumed he'll receive anything from the Lord, then he's already assuming that the Lord is THERE in the first place. He clearly believes in God already--he just is struggling with doubts. Doesn't it seem like nonsense to know God is there, and STILL doubt him? Of course it does.

And yet we who would say that that's nonsense are the same people who watch the news for five minutes and walk away saying, "I'm tired of seeing people break the law", as we get into our cars and drive 10 over the speed limit, breaking the law. You could push back, "That's not near as bad as murder." I'd respond by asking, "Who SAYS it's not as bad?" Well, it's just commonly accepted, you may responded. In one sense, I'd grant that, because clearly the penalty is different. In another sense I'd disagree, because they BOTH have a penalty because they're BOTH breaking the law. Furthermore, speeding puts yourself in a position where you could potentially hurt someone else--or worse--kill someone else. Then you're guilty of both. You might push back, "But I'm in control," which is what I'm sure intoxicated drivers think when they get into their car to drive home, and they hit some kid on a bike. Maybe you're NOT in control, and you just think you are. Maybe you're LYING to yourself.

Maybe we lie to ourselves all the time and just won't admit that we do.

Maybe we lie to ourselves when we project our culturally conditioned and personally biased sense of right and wrong on God. Maybe our doubts of his existence really don't stem from what we call 'facts', but rather from Him not fitting our personal criteria. We say that the FACT is that science has disproved God. No it hasn't. Science can't prove anything--science is just theories; even scientists say that. We say the FACT is that history has disproved God. Really? The history which bears God's name on it--BC (before Christ) and AD (anno domini--Latin for 'in the year of our Lord' which refers to Christ)? If anything, the Bible seems to have God making all sorts of promises that have either come to pass, or haven't passed YET.

Psalm 53:1 plainly says, "The fool says in his heart 'there is no God'." I've struggled with that verse for a long time and would say, "I thought God was a God of LOVE--if so, why would he coldly bash my heart which desperately WANTS to believe, but seems like it just CAN'T?"
The two clearest responses I received from God were these:
a) He is a God of love, but "love" doesn't just tell the beloved what they need to hear all the time. Love hurts sometimes, because love is honest. Often what we mean by 'love' is 'nice'. God is 'nice'. Whoa is me if I stand up in my inner-city neighborhood where there's crime, violence, drugs, and murder, and preach, "God is nice." Truly I've had more success in my short time here so far saying, "God says you suck, and He says it because He loves you." Nice doesn't cure sin. The naked and humiliated and offensive Savior of the world hanging on the cross cures sin. You can't preach the cross 'nicely'.
b) Secondly, if I'm reading the Bible and it says I'm a fool for saying there's no God, it must be true, because the Bible calls itself God's own Word on numerous occasions, and if I REALLY didn't believe in God, I wouldn't be sitting at a desk reading this book that claims to be God's Word--I'd be out doing what the rest of my neighborhood is doing.

But I realized that since I at least WANT God to be real, maybe that says something about God Himself. Maybe He's drawing me to Himself, and my doubts are really just misguided God-given longings for peace and justice. This would seem to make sense in light of Scripture--it talks all the time of God drawing people to Himself (Ephesians 2:13, 1 Peter 3:18) and it talks all the time of a) God's concern for peace and justice (Isaiah 1:21-23, Matthew 25:31-46), b) my having His characteristics built into me(Genesis 1:27, Romans 2:14-16), and c) those characteristics being tarnished by my sin of not trusting what God says (Romans 1:18-23, Revelation 3:15-20).

Then we read of Adam and Eve eating the fruit God said not to eat, but they do it anyways because the serpent appealed to their desire to 'be LIKE God', by telling them they WOULD be. Finally, the mirror was turned back on myself, and I realized that every waking second of every day I'm standing at trees, picking fruit that God says I shouldn't eat from.
We wonder why God's presence is so far from us? It's because we don't want His presence close to us, because if it was, we'd either run away and hide like Adam and Eve (because of embarrassment at our sin), fall face down like Isaiah at God's throne (because of the conviction of our sin), or die (because of our sinfulness's inability to handle the sight of God's holiness).

Let me tell you why I'm a Christian: It's because in the book of Ecclesiastes Solomon, the richest, wisest, and womanizerest man of all time (made that last word up--he enjoyed the presence of the ladies), pours his heart and his mind out in this book at the end of his rich, wise, womanizering life, and his conclusion is, "I have seen everything that is done under the sun, and behold, all is vanity and a striving after the wind."(Ecc. 1:14)
Can I be personal?--I needed to hear that. "WHEW, finally, not only am I not the only one who sees the pointlessness and meaninglessness of the things in this world, but God's Word ITSELF is actually calling it that way as well!" And when you come to this realization, the only possible response is, "There HAS to be a God who will make all things new one day,". Then you realize the Bible speaks over and over and over again about how God will. Then you fear Him, because if He's God, you can't just like Him or love Him. You have to fear Him, because He's God and He owes you nothing and could take everything in a second (see Job). And, keeping with the famous Proverbs 1:7, which says, "The fear of the Lord is the beginning of all wisdom," when you begin to fear Him, you begin to love Him; and when you love Him, you begin to truly love others, because you see them for who they really are: creatures of the Living God. You also see yourself for who you really are: a creature of the Living God. And when this becomes your reality, things start to make sense, and the beginnings of (what at least appears to be) wisdom start to take root.

At this point you realize that the God who doesn't owe you ANYTHING, gave you EVERYTHING at the Cross. In spite of the fact that you couldn't offer Him ANYTHING, He gave EVERYTHING to draw you back to Himself. Why? Because it glorifies Him if His creatures worship Him. As John Piper has said, "God is most glorified in us, when we are most satisfied in Him." The only way for us to worship Him and be satisfied in Him is if He changes our hearts to want to worship Him, so that we realize we CAN be satisfied in Him. And the only way this is possible is if the pure and spotless Lamb, Jesus Christ, who perfectly worships the Father with His whole heart and is eternally satisfied in Him, is laid down as a final sacrifice for sins for all time, so that the stupid idolatrous people He created would finally have hearts that only desire God.

Of course we'll always have doubts because God is invisible. But He's only invisible if we refuse to see how He's been revealed in Christ Jesus. Hebrews 1:3 calls Jesus, "The radiance of the glory of God, and the exact imprint of His nature." You want to see God? Look to Jesus. But don't say that He's so concealed that it's impossible. I'm glad God didn't look at our radical and total depravity and say, "There's no good in them...I have better things to do." Instead He said, "There's no good in them...but I want them, and I'll go to the end of myself to get them." Furthermore, if you look for God's glory in the face of Jesus Christ, you'll see that all of the things you truly care about and desire in this life are things that He cares about too.

Solomon ends Ecclesiastes with these words: "The end of the matter, all has been heard. Fear God and keep His commandments, for this is the whole duty of man. For God will bring every deed into judgment, with every secret thing, whether good or evil." (12:13-14).

Will it ever be enough for us to just trust that this is true? Or will we go on living as though we're God because we don't think we can see enough of God Himself because we think He's hiding? When will it be enough to believe it when He says, "This command is all you need to know. JUST. TRUST. ME."