A Sure Faith

A man who claimed to be a witness on behalf of Jehovah disturbed my brother this morning in the middle of coffee and cheese. He didn’t disturb me. I kept right on eating and drinking and conversing with my son and an old friend gathered around the dining room table. My brother definitely got the worst of the deal in that he had to get up and answer the doorbell, but it didn’t take him long to send the would-be witness on his way.

Why? Because he already has something far better than anything this fellow was offering, and he knows it with certainty.

This element of certitude troubles many who might otherwise entertain the notion of converting to the faith. Our generation is fashionably enamored of doubt as virtuous. This afternoon, I’ve been enjoying a book-length interview with rock musician Nick Cave. He would call himself a believer — defiantly refuses to accept the description of agnostic — but, where the existence of God is concerned, views regular moments of aching doubt as not only laudable but almost a requirement.

I like what Cave has to say in many respects. He’s a man who understands sorrow and great loss, but refuses to give in to despair. In the aftermath of his son’s death by misfortune at age 15, he goes to church every week and is determined to be a blessing to others. That’s rare. But we part ways on the subject of doubt.

Don’t get me wrong, there’s lots of room for doubt in the Christian experience, not only in the search for God but afterward. Our Lord was famously generous to those who struggled with it in time of great distress. I often feel it, even after four decades staggering in his footsteps: Am I doing all I could? Have I displayed Christ to others as well as I ought to? Is there a better way to understand any particular scripture than the position I currently hold? Lots of room for doubts about myself, and my present-day execution of the responsibilities the Lord has given me. No room at all for doubts about him and his word.

Can we stringently prove every outrageous truth claim Jesus made? Of course not. But the fact that he made them leaves us no middle ground to inhabit concerning him. They are either the words of God made flesh or the words of a raving lunatic. The only way to get around that is to interpret everything he said figuratively, or to pay no serious attention to it at all. I often think our Lord’s critics have never read the gospels. It’s the only way they could remain so blasé and unaffected about that which is so starkly evident in the pages of scripture.

Perhaps you can go for years like Nick Cave in a “high church” so long as you never open the scriptures and explore them in depth for yourself, I don’t know. As someone who exposes himself to the word of God every morning of my life, I find doubt and uncertainty are rare companions. When they do appear, they don’t remain for long.

Have you got a sure faith? If not, the problem may not lie in the substance of what you believe, but rather in the level of vigor and personal investment with which you are pursuing it.