The Matt Walsh Show - Ep. 18 - What A Christian Should Do About Doubt

Episode Date: April 27, 2018

I got an email from a Christian who has been struggling with religious doubts. He asked for my advice. I will do my best to offer some. Doubt is a taboo subject in Christian circles, but it need not be. We all struggle with it at various points in our lives. So let's have an honest conversation about it. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hey, everybody. Thanks for being here. Thanks for watching and listening. You'll have to excuse me for showing my Ravens Pride today because it is the draft. The draft is ongoing. And it's so stupid that people actually sit there and watch a draft. So you're just watching a guy over and over again walk up to a podium and say a name and then that for just hours. But I'm one of those stupid people that watches it. I can't defend it. but I do. And it also shows why, no matter what anyone says, but oh, the NFL's falling off and some football or basketball or baseball or hockey is going to take over. No, the NFL is still, football is still the number one sport in America. And if you want evidence of that, just look at the fact that millions of people, millions of people like myself, will sit there and watch a draft. Anyway, so I thought I'd like to do kind of a mailbag thing today, answering something from one of the many emails that I get throughout the week. And I had that in mind this week, and I was looking through my email to see if there's anything.

If anyone raised kind of an issue, it would be interesting for a video. And I found one email that I'd like to try to address, although I'm a little bit hesitant because it's a very serious issue. And I want to make sure that I'm approaching this the right way and saying the right things. So somebody emailed me with a distressing problem a couple days ago. Although this is not, you know, I've heard this from plenty of other people, this kind of thing, which is what made me think, well, this would be a good one to address. He said that he's been getting more absorbed in his faith recently, getting more invested into his faith. He's reading scripture more.

He's going to church. He's praying. He's doing all these things that he'd never really done before, although he'd always been Christian, but he'd never really been actively Christian until recently. which is great, you know. Yet, he said he's also been experiencing doubt to a degree that he'd never experienced it before, sometimes just questioning. I mean, how can this be real? How could that have happened? How could Jesus be real? I mean, what does that name of this mean? How, how is this possible? You know, those kinds of doubts. He doesn't want to question them. He doesn't invite the questions in, but they're just there in his head. And so he's troubled by it.

And he wanted to know if I had any advice. Well, before I say anything else, I just want to add my usual disclaimer that I'm not an expert on this issue or on any issue. So if anyone is really going through a spiritual crisis, you should certainly speak to your pastor, priest, or spiritual director, somebody like that. I can only share just a few thoughts. I don't know if they'll be useful or not, hopefully they are. So let me do that. Okay, so first of all, we should establish that doubts are normal. Okay, we all have them. It's a normal thing. It may be kind of a taboo subject in Christian circles to talk about because we're all supposed to pretend that we never have them, but everyone does. It doesn't mean, and I'm going to talk,

I'm going to explain this more as we go on a little bit more towards the end, but just because Because a doubt enters your head doesn't mean that you don't have faith. So you can have faith, yet be experiencing that as well. We're human, after all. So this is going to happen. Even the people who knew Jesus and who saw him performing miracles, which we have not. We read about the miracles in scripture, but we haven't actually seen them for ourselves. Even those people had doubts. John the Baptist, according to Jesus was the greatest man ever, the greatest mortal man ever born, according to Jesus, was John the Baptist. And even he appeared to have doubts, and not only doubts, but he had the doubts after witnessing God speak from the heavens after Jesus was baptized, announcing this is my

son. So John the Baptist heard a voice from the heavens declaring Jesus is my son. And yet, a little while after that, he's in prison because he stood up to the sexual immorality of Herod, Herod, Thum, in prison. He's languishing in prison. And he sends his followers out to find Jesus and ask Jesus, are you the one? Are you the Messiah? Or should we look for another? And Jesus's response to that is, I think, really interesting. Jesus says, okay, go tell John.

Go tell him what you've seen. The blind can see, the lane can walk, the dead have been raised. And he says, blessed are those who are not scandalized in me. And what Jesus means by that, he says, not scandalized in me, meaning blessed are the people who, yeah, I may not be acting the way you thought the Messiah was going to act. This may not be playing out the way you thought it would. But blessed are the people who just humble themselves before that truth and accept. what's actually happening, rather than being, you know, kind of offended or outraged or taken them back by the fact that I don't fit into this box that you had, you know, that you've,

this kind of fictional box of what you think a Messiah is supposed to be. So he sends his, he sends him back to tell John the Baptist that. So that's, John the Baptist appearing to have doubts. No, I've heard some Christians and some theologians have, have, have argued that you could interpret that passage a little bit differently. And John sent his followers to Jesus to ask that question. He sent them for their own sake so that they would know. John already knew he didn't question it, but he sent him for their sake. That's a very generous interpretation for John the Baptist's sake, but I don't see that in the scripture. There's no real evidence of that. All we see is John asking this question, so it would really appear that he himself had doubts.

So that's the first thing. It's natural for our egos. Our egos are going to rebel against this thing, this truth that is so beyond our capacity for comprehension. That's natural. Second, it's not actually surprising, although it seems surprising, it seems counterintuitive. It's not actually surprising that somebody would have doubts that actually intensify for a season as they delve deeper into their faith. And for two reasons. Number one, because Satan is going to see that you're drawing nearer to God. He's going to see that you're getting all Christian on him, and he's not going to like that. So he's going to pull out all the stops to sabotage you, but for another, I think the Bible is much easier and more palatable and much

easier to ingest when we see it only in these little sound bites, these little slogans, these little chunks, these little just inspirational tweets or whatever, when that's all that we've seen of the Bible, just the things that are kind of out there in the culture, in our vocabulary, in our language, and that's all we see of the Bible. It's much easier for us to wrap our heads around. But when we really study it, and we read it seriously, and we take it seriously, and we read it in context, and we read it from, you know, the entire context of it, page cover-to-cover type of thing, then I think we begin to appreciate not only the scripture's richness and beauty, but also its complexity and its challenges and its mysteries, and even its apparent

contradictions. Just as one example, if you've never really read, if you've never really read the Gospels, all you've done is you've just skimmed or you've seen the chunks, then you probably think you've got it pretty nailed down. You've got the story of the resurrection in your head. You think you've got it nailed down. You basically understand that the women go to the tomb and then there's an angel and then they go back and you know you think you've got all the you think you've basically yeah you understand that but then you go and you read all the gospel accounts and you start to see you now wait a second hold what's going on here because there appear to be several different stories that all contradict and now you're more confused you're more you're more confused

now than you were before you even read it then it takes an even closer look to see how okay all these things really do line up when we consider the different perspectives and the different ways that the gospel writers are trying to tell this story, the different things that they're focusing on, and then it all kind of starts to line up. So the point is when we start to read the Bible, we see that it's not as simple as we had thought based on our skimming of it. And this realization is fascinating and it's invigorating and all of that. But there's also a certain anxiety that comes with it.

And that's normal. And we shouldn't panic over that. I think two thoughts occur to anyone who actually reads the Gospels carefully. Number one, there is so much here that is mysterious and impossible to understand. Number two, nobody would make up a story like this. Even the hardest parts, the parts that seem to make the least amount of sense, they actually only further prove the authenticity of the gospel because nobody would make that up. If somebody was inventing the story, they wouldn't put that in there.

They wouldn't write it like that. That's not the way it would be. So, you know, in the past, I have felt myself challenged by what I would call kind of the, the spareness of scripture. It's lack of drama. It's lack of the kind of details that you would expect it to have. It's, you know, the way that, especially in the gospels, things aren't really fleshed out. the way you might think they will be. So you've got this whole gap in Christ's life between infancy and his public ministry

with just this one random brief scene in the middle where he gets separated from his parents and his parents come back and find him in the temple. But there's just that and then, but between, but besides that, it's just he's a baby and then his public ministry and you think, well, why, you know, what's going on? Why didn't you tell you? Why didn't you give us a few more what happened in between that time? Why aren't you telling us that? and then Christ enters into his public ministry, and all of these incredible things are happening, but the gospel, for the most part, just relays these things in a really matter-of-fact way.

It never dwells on anything for very long. So he multiplies lobes, he walks on water, he heals the blind, he raises the dead, he casts out demons, he's doing all of this. But there's so little drama in the way these incidents are told to us. These incidents themselves are extremely dramatic, of course, and beautiful. but the way the gospel tells it is it just, okay, that happened and then they just move on to the next thing. They don't spend pages and pages telling us how people reacted to the fact that Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead. They're just moving on really quickly.

And then Jesus is arrested, and here we are at the climax of the story, right? If somebody was, if this was being written by a novelist or a screenwriter or something, this is the climax. We have Jesus arrested by his enemies, God incarnate, arrested, standing trial. and here's his chance to deliver one last great monologue or speech right in front of his enemies while they're trying to trap him and he could kind of stand up there with everyone looking at him. But what happens? That's the way it would go if somebody was making up this story. They wouldn't be able to resist this opportunity for this climactic scene.

But that's not what happens. He just remains silent for the most part. Jesus throughout his entire passion, he really says very little. And what he does say and how he does react, it's very understated. He slapped across the face by some servant, and he says, you know, what have I done? I haven't done anything wrong. If I haven't done anything wrong, why are you hitting me? I mean, that's his response.

This opportunity for drama is seemingly wasted. And then he goes off and he dies. and then he comes back from the dead and okay here we go now's another chance for some great scenes again if this is being written by somebody somebody telling a story making up a story and they've got their god they invented coming back from the dead okay what's he going to do he's going to go to the pharisees and he's going to say see i told you so and there's going to be a scene with the pharisees that are just just collapse and shock and maybe he gives another sermon on the mount um kind of a sequel I mean, he'd do something, right? Something. But no, he mostly just eats fish with his apostles.

Very little happens. And even when he, and then, of course, he ascends into heaven, which is another scene, which you would expect a lot of drama. But that's not the way, that's not the way scripture tells it. You know, he, the scripture, this is why scripture tells, now this is Jesus Christ. ascending into heaven. And it says, when he had said this, as they were looking on, he was lifted up and a cloud took him from their sight. That's it. That's the entire story of him ascending into heaven. There's no more, there aren't any more sentences flushing out what that looked like and there were, you know, just nothing. It's just he ascended into heaven and then that's it. And then immediately we're told, so they're looking up and they're in shock that Jesus just ascended into heaven.

And then he's gone. And then there are two men. in white robes to angels that appear and say, what are you guys looking at? Okay, now let's get to work, guys. Come on. Stop dwelling on it. Let's get to work. On a very shallow level, you see that and you say, now that's not what would actually happen. What are you talking about? I mean, there'd be a lot more to it, right? But then you realize, no, this is the way that it's told if it's just true. The gospel writers are just telling us what happened. That's all. They're not fiction writers. They're just telling you they're reporting the facts. And the facts are the facts. Jesus, because he is true, he is real, he confounds his critics, he subverts expectations, he doesn't fit into any kind of box,

he's not doing what you would think he would do, he's not doing the things that anyone would ever predict, he's just, he's real. This is just what was and still is. And that's all. And that's all. And that's the way that it's relayed in the Bible. And I think when you really read the Bible, after a while, you begin to appreciate that fact. Third thing about doubt, we are mortal beings, and we have an extremely finite capacity for understanding. We will never be able to fully comprehend the mysteries of God. Don't listen to anyone who says they have it all figured out because they don't. And anyone who claims to is a Charlton and a false prophet.

and we should steer very clear of them. But also, don't listen to anyone who says, well, there shouldn't be any mysteries in your faith. That's a cop-out. What do you mean? It's a mystery. That's a cop-I-I-I-I-I need you to explain the Trinity. Three persons in one. Explain that. Three persons in one, but you're saying it's monotheistic, not polytheistic. Explain that. How's that possible? You need to explain it exactly. You can't just say mystery. Don't listen to that either, because no matter what we believe, all of us must submit ourselves to the mysteries of life. We all have to deal with the fact that so much of life is mysterious.

And that goes for atheists too. An atheist cannot say how we came into being. He can't say how human beings gained consciousness. He can't say where love and joy and despair and morality originate. He can't tell you how a trillion impossibilities all came. together so that you and I could come into existence. He can't explain how inanimate matter became animate. He can't explain chaos and how that became order and how unconscious became consciousness. He can't say what the universe is or why it exists or why we exist or how. He just has faith.

He has to have faith. He has his explanation that he cannot prove and he just has faith. It's not like nobody has ever observed or seen or demonstrated how inanimate material could become sentient. That's never been, no one has ever observed that. In fact, we know scientifically it's impossible. There might be a lot of science fiction about, oh, maybe one day we'll create a robot that's sentient and has a human, conscience. No, no, that's never going to happen. It's impossible. You cannot build something with metal and, you know, wiring that will become sentient. You can't do that because sentience is not a physical thing. You can't create it at a physical matter. Yet we know somehow

sentience did come into being. We all know that we're sentient. So atheists have their explanation that is based entirely in faith. They cannot demonstrate it. It is not scientific. And their explanation is physically, scientifically impossible. Yet they believe it. But there's a difference in our faith. Okay? The secular world has a faith based on pride. It cannot answer very many questions or explain very many things

or describe how any of this came into being, but it assumes based on arrogance and ego that it cannot be due to a force greater than themselves. So it looks at the world and it says, surely there cannot be a power greater than myself. So however this stuff came into being, it must not have anything to do with any power that transcends myself. But the religious person looks at the world and says, surely there must be a power greater than myself. I have so little control over anything in my life. I understand so little. Yet here I am and here is everyone and

here is the world. Here's civilization. Here's the ocean. Here are mountains. Here are animals and the human brain in a billion fantastic and incomprehensible things. I can see the design. I can see that I'm a part of it, but I know I didn't make it. Somebody must have. Religious faith grows from humility. And this is what, you know, the atheist idea that they desperately cling to, that somehow, even though it's impossible, dust somehow through some accidental process became over time human consciousness, they cling to that because they are desperate to still, at the end of the day, they themselves still want to be top dog in the universe. They cannot cede that place to anyone. Religious faith grows from humility. And that's why,

I think, we first have to have faith in God. before we can understand anything about him. So it goes faith first, then understanding. What we try to do a lot of the time, this is a mistake that people have been making since the time of Christ, is where you try to flip that around and you say, well, let me understand first and then I'll have faith. Make me understand and then fine, I'll have faith.

But first of all, that's not faith. if you just know you have full comprehension somehow of the omnipotent God and you're able somehow to wrap your head around all of that well then there's no faith involved faith is to submit yourself

to this thing that is greater than yourself and that you cannot fully understand but if we have faith and we kneel before God then over time he will give us more and more understanding. We'll never have perfect understanding. We'll never have a complete understanding, but we'll have more and more understanding over time. And he gives us that understanding just because, you know, because we have opened ourselves to it. We humble ourselves before the mystery of God.

We accept with submission and obedience the things we don't know and can never know or understand with faith. And that over time more understanding grows. But it's not an understanding. Now, the reason that God gives us understanding in that case and not before is because when we demand understanding before faith, then it's kind of like blackmail to God. We're saying, oh, you want me to believe? Well, then you better, you know, hey, you better pony up and show me some miracles or something. That's not the right attitude.

But he gives us understanding after faith because he knows that with that understanding, it's not like something that we're demanding so that we'll believe in him. But just so that the more that we understand, the more that we can, just be in awe of the beauty and wonder of God. So we always have to recognize the origin of doubt, which is pride. It's that part of our brain that says, this is challenging, this is difficult, this is beyond my power of understanding, so therefore it can't be true. Now, the atheist gives in completely to this part of his brain. The Christian fights against it by the grace of God.

So I think that's the answer to doubt. Don't try to reason your way out of it. you with yourself. Don't go researching the historical proofs of Jesus and so forth. There's nothing wrong with researching those things. It's a very good thing to research, but not as an answer to doubt. If we research to cure doubt, then we're still relying on our own understanding and we're demanding proof. And the doubts will only intensify because we're looking for answers where they cannot be, and we're looking for answers in the wrong way. Instead, we have to simply bring our doubts to God, humble ourselves, and say, Lord, I'm weak, I'm frail, I'm foolish,

you know, please strengthen my faith. We just come to God empty-handed with nothing and just say, God, I got nothing. And if we do that, you know, that kind of prayer will we just come to God in humility and submission, recognizing our own frailty, our own weakness. And we come to him asking for, we're not asking for, you know, we're not asking for a job promotion. We're not asking to win the lottery. We're not asking for any material benefit whatsoever. We're just saying, God, just give me, please give me faith. Give me faith so I can glorify you all the more. Give me faith so I can be more of a light to those around me. And God will always answer that prayer. He'll always answer that. And that's really enough. It doesn't need to be specific.

the prayer, I mean. I know I know some Christians think that our prayers need to be super specific all the time. God, I want this, I want this, I want this, I want this, okay? Like a child making a Christmas list or something. But Jesus tells us that the Father already knows what we want before we even ask for it. So sometimes the purest prayer is just to take our brokenness, our doubts, our pride, our whole being, and bring them to God in our hearts and then just be there in his presence, contemplating him and his divinity. and that's it. That's the prayer. I know in the past, I have in the past gotten to points in my life where there's just so much fog, so much anxiety, there's just this tangle of knots in my head and in my soul, and I'm so confused and so lost that there was a point where I felt like, you know, I can't even pray anymore because I don't even know what to say or where to begin. There's just, you know, I don't even know,

I don't know what I even need or how to ask for it. But eventually I figured out that God is God. And he doesn't need my explanations. He doesn't need my speeches. He doesn't need me to persuasively argue, you know, my case for what I want in my prayer. All he needs me to do is just come to the cross, kneel before it, and say, I'm here, Lord. I'm here. Change me.

Although we should always be very careful with that prayer, the change me prayer. It's a dangerous prayer because it's so effective. Because if you bring that to God and you mean it, he'll do it. He'll do it in ways that you didn't expect. So this is what we do with doubt. And if we get into the habit of always bringing everything to God and praying unceasingly, he will give us a deeper knowledge of his presence and a deeper sense of it. And we may not be able to explain it.

We may not be able to prove it. He may not give us this knowledge accompanied by brilliant intellectual arguments so that we can argue in favor. of it, although maybe he will, but for most of us, he won't. But he'll still give us that knowledge, a knowledge that transcends proof. And then something really crazy happens. Because you get to the point as your faith grows, because we remember that, you know, faith is a, is a, not a stagnant thing. Faith is a living, breathing, growing thing. And as your faith grows, you get to the point where even when you doubt, you still know, even when you doubt, you still believe, even when you have

have doubts, you still have faith. That doesn't change. The faith is there because you've given yourself to God. You're holding on to him. He's holding on to you. You still have that faith. And so those doubts are just, they're coming from the outside and they're bombarding your brain, but it doesn't change the fact that you're holding tight. And we become like, I think, Peter, and what I think is one of the most beautiful passages in the Gospels. And I, you know, I love Peter in the Gospels. I think Peter is, he's such a great and relatable figure because he's, you know, he's kind of, kind of brash, and he kind of talks without, without thinking sometimes, and he's, obviously, he's weak, you know, he has, he has, he betrayed Christ, so he's got cowardice as

well, but he's also got courage. I mean, think about, think about it when, when Jesus was arrested, before, and then Peter would turn around and deny Christ three times, but before that, He lashes out with a sword and he cuts somebody's ear off to try to defend Christ. Because he loves Christ so much. He still has his weakness as a human being, but he loves him. In that moment, it's just instinct. Like, no, you're not going to touch Jesus. And that's what makes Peter so relatable is that he's just human.

He's a human being. So there's a scene in the Gospels after Jesus tells the crowd that he's the bread of life. And whoever consumes this bread will be. saved. And the crowds hear this and they revolt. And many of his followers were told leave him that day because they just, they cannot accept. Even some of these had witnessed miracles, but they cannot accept this teaching because they just don't understand it. And it's so far outside of their conception of things. And so they just get up and they leave and they say, nope, no, no, no way. So everyone's leaving.

And then you can kind of imagine how this plays out that just the crowd things, everyone's leaving. They're walking away, mumbling to each other. I mean, they're saying, oh, this guy's crazy. That's nuts. And they all walk away. And then Jesus turns to the 12 who are still standing there. And he says, what about you? Are you going to leave two?

And then Peter answers him. Peter doesn't say, oh, no, Christ. I mean, we totally understand what you were just saying there. I mean, we get it. Okay. Those other people, they're just, you know, they're too stupid to understand. But we understand. We're totally with you. No, he doesn't give that kind of confident answer. Instead, he just says, Lord, where else would we go? You have the words of eternal life. We know that you're the holy one of God. Where else would we go? And that was his answer. It was a simple, helpless answer. Not an entirely confident answer, but it was an honest one. It's Peter just throwing up his hands and saying, where else am I going to go, Jesus? I'm in too deep.

You're the Messiah. I know that. I have no idea what you just said. I have no idea what that means. In fact, half of the stuff you say, I have no idea what any of that means. It sounds pretty scary, to be honest, a lot of it. But you're God.

I know that. And so I'm here. And I think that was a very crucial moment for the apostles right there. encountering this very difficult doctrine, but saying, no, we're staying here. It's not a perfect journey after that. There's still doubt. There's still denial. There's betrayal.

All of that still lays ahead. But there's also persistence in the apostles. There's weakness. There's cowardice to, but there's persistence where they keep coming back to Christ. They keep turning back to him. And I think that's what we have to do. we admit to God I don't understand this I can't wrap my head around this it doesn't make sense to me there's a part of my brain rebelling saying this can't be true and we just bring that to God we admit we might

as well admit it he knows anyway what we're thinking no point trying to hide it so you might as well just bring it to God and say yeah you know those are the thoughts going on in my head I don't like it but it's there and we entrust ourselves to him and we say God I'm confused, I'm bewildered, my ego is shouting these doubts at me. But where am I to go? I'm still here with you. Show me the way, and I will follow you through the dark. And I think that's faith, even when the doubts appear.

Anyway, I hope that was an acceptable answer. It was certainly a long one. So I'll leave it there. Have a great weekend, guys.