Theological Lecture: Doubt & the Believer
Download MP3Hey, everybody. Hey. Hey. All right. It's good to see you guys.
Jeffrey Heine:As Joel said, my name is Jeff. If we haven't met before, I'd love to talk with you either at the break here, in about 45 minutes or after the Q and A. So be thinking about questions as we're talking during this first 45 minutes, and we'll get to those in just a little bit. So the topic of doubt. I know that in a lot of different contexts, if you were going to some kind of church based event on the topic of doubt, That you would expect to go in, and a lot of the content would be on refuting particular doubts, or addressing certain questions, kind of a case for Christ, apologetics kind of stuff.
Jeffrey Heine:And that's really not what we're setting out to do tonight. What I'd like for us to try and do together during this time is to start to build a theological framework. To to build to build a framework that we can use to really think about, to understand, and address our doubts. And then in the end, what where I'd like for us all to to be is, first, to know that that we are not alone as doubters. Secondly, that god is with us in our doubting.
Jeffrey Heine:And third, that the church is with you in your doubting. Last year, in the fall, the archbishop of Canterbury, who's the archbishop in the church of England, kind of like the pope, They did a lot to make sure he's not the pope, but so they would really hate for me to make that comparison, but he's kind of like the pope. And so, this guy, kind of like the pope, his name is Justin Welby. Last summer, September ish, he was in a context much like this, where he was in a room full of people and he had a microphone, and there was someone from the BBC who was asking him some questions. Lots of different theological questions, questions about life.
Jeffrey Heine:And the interviewer asked him, do you ever doubt? And he very quickly said, and I'll quote him here, yes. Yes, I do. Lots of different ways. Sure, there are moments when you think, is there a God?
Jeffrey Heine:Where is God? Just the other day, I was praying over something as I was running. I ended up saying to God, look, this is all very well, but isn't it about time that you did something, if you are there? Which is probably not what the archbishop of Canterbury should say. He went on to talk about Psalms, Psalm 22, Psalm 44, Psalm 88, that deal with doubt, and how it shouldn't really be that big of a surprise.
Jeffrey Heine:But the next day, the International Business Times called it the doubt of the century. The Guardian newspaper in the UK ran the headline, Archbishop of Canterbury admits doubts about the very existence of God. The Daily Show made fun of him. People called him a hypocrite. Some called for him to be fired.
Jeffrey Heine:That is the environment in which we live, Both in the secular culture and in the church. It's not a very safe place to doubt. Or at least, it's not a safe place to talk about our doubts. In a recent study of people who are leaving the church, one of the main reasons that was given was the way that the person was treated when they brought up their doubts. The world is a dangerous place to doubt, both outside of the church and inside of the church.
Jeffrey Heine:You might have experienced that yourself. Now in your handout, the little pieces of paper that were at the front door, if you don't have one of those, somebody might can make a few rounds with them. But on the top left there, you'll see 6 questions. If you don't have 1, raise your hand. And if it's like a 100 of you, then okay.
Jeffrey Heine:We'll start getting some around. And you can share, too. Sharing is caring. We can do that. So these 6 questions, that's our outline for our conversation tonight.
Jeffrey Heine:Those are the 6 questions that I want us to go through during this time. And I think it would be helpful for us to begin with this first question here. A fundamental understanding of belief. So before we get to doubt, and we will get to doubt, here at the start, how do we believe? First question of the night.
Jeffrey Heine:How do we believe? We come to decision points all the time in our lives. Some things we disbelieve, and other things we believe. We judge things every day in this manner. We spot lies, falsehoods, phony things.
Jeffrey Heine:We we we see them, we we assess them, and we are cycling through these rhythms of assessment, continuously throughout our days, believing and disbelieving. So an example. You hear a news story, and your mind immediately starts going through this assessment. One of the first questions, who is the source? If you have some particular bias against some news organization, as soon as you hear that it's from that news outlet, or that news outlet, you just mark it off the list.
Jeffrey Heine:Or if it's that friend from high school on Facebook that always posts that you just know this isn't true. You don't even have to go to Snopes, you just know it's not true. You just want to hide them from your feet, but they're so intriguing because they're so crazy, you keep them in there. Just kind of keep tabs on it. You know, we do it.
Jeffrey Heine:But this is what we do. We filter through these things. We make these assessments. And we make them very quickly. And because of that, we don't always have time to think thoroughly.
Jeffrey Heine:We don't really think about these things deeply. We just make that quick assessment. We make fast thinking assessments. And this gets us by in most situations. In his book Thinking Fast and Slow, Doctor, Daniel Kahneman presents an argument that we have a fast thinking self and a slow thinking self.
Jeffrey Heine:And there are different things that can trigger us into different ones. So we can be in a fast thinking self, and then you give a math problem. Like a guy goes into a store, and he buys a baseball bat and a glove for a dollar 10. The baseball bat costs a dollar more than the glove. How much was the glove?
Jeffrey Heine:Not 10¢. It was 5¢. See? Math makes us trip up where we are in our fast thinking self to slow thinking self. The bat and the ball cost a dollar 10 together.
Jeffrey Heine:The bat cost a dollar more than the ball or the glove. I think I switched that up. That part doesn't matter. It really doesn't. So how much does the lesser item cost?
Jeffrey Heine:It costs 5¢, but so quickly we see dollar 10, must be 10¢, 10¢ dollar. And that's actually a test that they did for a number of years. It ran in the New York Times as a way that they were filtering out candidates for different jobs. Who can quickly respond to this kind of a question? Who can shift into a slower thinking self?
Jeffrey Heine:And so, in that slower thinking self, we can actually process things much more deeply, but that's not what we do most of the time. Your mind doesn't stop at what you don't know. It just makes the best of what you do have. Let me say that again. This will become more and more important as we go.
Jeffrey Heine:Your mind doesn't stop at what you don't know. It just makes the best of what you do know. It's a quote from Daniel Kahneman. So he gives another example. Julie is graduating from college.
Jeffrey Heine:And the only thing that I will tell you about Julie, one fact, she read fluently when she was 4. Now, what is her GPA? Just quick assessment, what do you think her GPA was? Now likely, if she was reading fluently at 4, your response would be, she probably has a 37 or above. You're marking her as if she's reading fluently at 4, then she she must be pretty intellectual, and then you cast her into her GPA is probably 3.73.83.9, maybe a 4.0.
Jeffrey Heine:You would think, well what's wrong with this process of thought? And Daniel Kahneman says, a lot is wrong with this process of thought. What's wrong is that you know nothing about Julie. You don't know if she got sick in high school, missed a bunch of classes, maybe she had a break up her junior year of college, maybe she fell into a bad crowd. All you know is that at 4, she could read fluently.
Jeffrey Heine:And what what Kahneman is saying is we just take the bit of information that we do have, and we make an assessment, and then we come to a belief. Your mind doesn't stop at what you don't know, it just makes the best of what you do know. And so, when we haven't been thinking slowly, when we haven't been thinking thoroughly, when we've just been taught things, but we haven't owned things, ideas, concepts, ideologies, then when we grow up, and we have different experiences, and we learn different things, and we haven't thought about it, we haven't owned that belief. When something comes along and unsettles us, when it causes us to rethink something that we had not really thought about thoroughly before, it can become truly disorienting. And that doubt comes in, unsettled us, and we feel untethered.
Jeffrey Heine:So look at the figure at the bottom of your sheet of paper, where it says, how we believe. These degrees of belief, in the middle you see undecided. And to the right, you have taught unbelief, and then thoughtful unbelief. To the left, you have taught belief and thoughtful belief. Now, this is just a way to think about believing and unbelieving.
Jeffrey Heine:But I've made this up so we can conceptualize what it means to be affected by doubt. What that unsettling is. So an example to kind of walk through with this, this little image here, this figure. Let's say that you grew up in a church context, where you were told that the Bible was true. And so you believed that.
Jeffrey Heine:You were taught that. It was a taught belief. You believed that the Bible was true, and you read it at different times growing up, and and it was meaningful in those times. You heard people teach out of the Bible, and it was meaningful, you listened to it. But you get to college, In college, you have, a dorm mate.
Jeffrey Heine:She sees that you are reading your bible, She is in a religion class, and they've been studying the bible. She sees that you're reading Paul's letter to the Ephesians, and she says to you, did you know that just in Paul's letter to the Ephesians, the existing manuscripts that we have today, there are over 30 significant word differences. And you say, I didn't know that. Now you don't immediately throw the bible in the trash can and go try to become the, you know, the president of the student atheist club. It's not like you're like abandoning the faith immediately, but you begin to be unsettled.
Jeffrey Heine:You hear information you didn't know before, and it causes you to think about something that you had been taught, but hadn't really owned. And it unsettles you. And so you begin to move from the taught belief to the undecided. You just start to wonder, is the bible really something that you can believe? Is that something that you can trust?
Jeffrey Heine:And you're just asking the question. And so maybe, in some small group of friends, church friends, Christian folk, you bring this up. I've had a hard time reading my bible lately. I just don't know if I can trust it. And their response to you is, have faith, read it more.
Jeffrey Heine:Is that going to be enough for you? Or will that kind of dismiss your doubt actually start to move you further to undecided? And maybe in that time, when you feel disconnected from these people that were your friends, these other Christians, and you start to find yourself moving more to just a taut unbelief. There are these different discrepancies, there are these questions, questions we can't have answers for. And I'm not going to go someplace where I can't get answers.
Jeffrey Heine:So this is a pattern, and maybe some of you have experienced this for yourself, or maybe you have friends, and you've seen them go through this. What we really need to clarify and to know is that we need to reliable and these are real concerns that should be unsettling us, or they're unreliable. Maybe this college friend made that up. How do you know that you can believe her? How do you know that you can believe her professor?
Jeffrey Heine:How do you know that you can believe the book that she's reading in her class? How do you know? There are more questions to be asked. And it might feel a bit uncomfortable to consider it like this, but many of our beliefs, many of us in this room, many of our beliefs fall into this taught belief category. Another phrase for it is, unthoughtful belief.
Jeffrey Heine:But I don't want to phrase it that harshly, because we're thoughtful people. I mean, you're here. You're here to listen to an hour long lecture on doubt. Like, you're thoughtful thinking people, and that's good. But many of the things that we do hold as a belief kind of fall in this taught belief area, and aren't particularly owned or thoughtful.
Jeffrey Heine:And one of the ways that I mean that is that we can always move into deeper and deeper faith. We can always move into deeper and deeper trust and understanding and belief. It's kind of like looking at, looking back and seeing that that you have have moved deeper into a place of faith and trust. It's kind of like looking at an old yearbook. Where you see those pictures and you think, gosh, was that really me?
Jeffrey Heine:Did I really think that that looked good? Like did you as you think through those things, and in some ways, that's like looking back at our faith and saying, my faith, it it was it was so small and so so immature, perhaps even shallow, but I'm moving in this direction of deeper and deeper faith. So, we need to learn how to understand, and how to address our doubts. We need to ask, what is it that's causing me or to reconsider my beliefs or my unbeliefs? What's pushing me to ask these questions?
Jeffrey Heine:All right. Now that we've talked a little bit about belief, let's define doubt. It's on your sheet there, on your handout. This is our second question of the night. What is doubt?
Jeffrey Heine:Doubt is intellectual or emotional dissatisfaction and uncertainty about a truth claim. Doubt is a factor, a variable, that moves us toward the position of belief, or towards the position of disbelief. As we get unsettled, as we are dissatisfied with where we are, as that doubt comes in and it causes us to be uprooted, And then we move either towards belief or towards unbelief. Now, 2 things I'd like to say about doubt. Number 1, and I've already alluded to this, the number one thing that we don't need to do with our doubts is dismiss our doubts.
Jeffrey Heine:To just say it doesn't matter, to say that the question is not worth asking, To say, we don't ask those kinds of questions here. Now, that might not be an internal answer, that might be an answer that you get from from people around you. Maybe you've maybe you've experienced that before yourself. Maybe you've given that answer. We don't ask those kinds of questions around here.
Jeffrey Heine:We believe here. We have faith around here. And so, we suppress doubt. And I think, ultimately, dismissing or suppressing doubt is far more dangerous than asking hard questions, and listening to people that maybe you disagree with. Far more dangerous just to say we don't ask those kinds of questions.
Jeffrey Heine:The second thing is this, so the 2 things that we don't do. Number 1, we don't dismiss our doubts, and the second thing is this. The second thing that we don't do with doubts, we don't embrace our doubts. What I mean by that is that there's kind of a growing movement, even within the church, where there's this push to embrace doubt and uncertainty. But the problem with this approach is that there's something to believe in the faith.
Jeffrey Heine:There's something for us to trust within the faith. And so to say, just embrace the doubt and uncertainty, embrace the unknowing. Yes, there's mystery, profound mystery, and we yield to the profound mysteries that we encounter in life, but embracing doubt and uncertainty, it doesn't take us deeper to the things that God has revealed. And we cannot despise the things God has revealed. Even if it confronts us and challenges us intellectually and emotionally.
Jeffrey Heine:In the definition of doubt that I gave there, I described doubt as intellectual and emotional dissatisfaction. And obviously, our doubts can be both. Both our intellect and our emotions can be employed in a time of doubt. But I'd like for us to consider those 2 things individually, real fast. Still tracking?
Jeffrey Heine:We good? If you need another drink, they're right over there. Okay. So, an intellectual doubt. That's that's when we are facing some kind of theological, historical, philosophical, some scientific problem.
Jeffrey Heine:And we are contending with some issue of reason and logic. Concerns like the miracles of Jesus, you know, the divinity of Jesus, the virgin birth, resurrection, ascension. We have a logical dispute, and we are doubting that truth claim. And to remedy this, this concern, we often look to more intellectual engagement. We want a better argument, a better passage of scripture to set straight some kind of issue.
Jeffrey Heine:And often, this does work. We have a conversation with a trusted friend, or we read some book, and it really unlocks something in our minds, and and it helps us address our doubts. But some of you have probably also felt the far end of that, where you just kind of get lost in a sea of debate. Just like clicking YouTube video after another, of 2 people just arguing with each other. And you don't know what to do, and you just feel this unsettled sense.
Jeffrey Heine:And so, just going after one more intellectual argument doesn't really satisfy. And it can also change us. We we we are more likely to to be agitators and arguers. Our doubts take a real place of prominence in our lives. We're more likely to argue about an issue than to think and celebrate the things that we do believe.
Jeffrey Heine:This intellectual doubt, although it's quite complex, can be more clearly engaged and addressed than emotional doubt. Emotional doubt is when we're facing a problem with our feelings. This is this can come in lots of different forms. This can can be, I don't feel God's presence, Or here's a big one, I have feelings that the bible says is wrong, and I want to continue in it. That could be materialism, that could be forms of prejudice, envy, jealousy.
Jeffrey Heine:I feel this way, I know that it's wrong, but I feel this way about certain people, about certain things. I feel a desire to act in a way that the Bible says is wrong. And in these instances, my feelings don't square with my beliefs. My feelings don't square with these truth claims, and therefore I'm unsettled, I'm dissatisfied. And I have a doubt.
Jeffrey Heine:A good example that we can actually see in the scriptures of intellectual doubt and emotional doubt, kind of interacting in the same place, is in Matthew 14. If you have a bible, if you can open it up to Matthew 14. I wanted to give a chance for all the people that brought a bible to the bar tonight to really open it up. We're going to be in Matthew 14. Don't worry, I'm looking out for you.
Jeffrey Heine:You can also use your digital one if you so choose. But we're going to be in Matthew 14, just just to look for, a few things here. What's happening is that the disciples have gone out into a boat. They are out on the water. Jesus has been behind, and now he's making his way to meet them, except he's doing it in a very unique way, which is walking on water.
Jeffrey Heine:So they look out, and in chapter 14, verse 26, it's where we will read. And do listen carefully for this is God's word. But when the disciples saw him walking on the sea, they were terrified. They were afraid and said, it is a ghost. And they cried out in fear.
Jeffrey Heine:But immediately, Jesus spoke to them saying, take heart. It is I. Do not be afraid. And Peter answered him, Lord, if it's you, command me to come to you on the water. And Jesus said, come.
Jeffrey Heine:And so, Peter got out of the boat and walked on the water and came to Jesus. But when he saw the wind, he was afraid. And beginning to sink, he cried out, Lord, save me. And Jesus immediately reached out his hand and took hold of him saying, oh, you of little faith, why did you doubt? And when they got back to the boat, the wind ceased.
Jeffrey Heine:So many things there. This isn't a sermon, so I'm not going to get into all of them. 1, the wind ceases when they get in the boat. Why not before? It got Peter all scared.
Jeffrey Heine:Like, there wasn't what's why did that have to happen? Well, I think this is why it had to happen, because they looked out and they were afraid. They had this emotional reaction. They saw something scary. They didn't know how to understand it.
Jeffrey Heine:They didn't know what it was. Their best guess was a ghost. Okay? So this tells you they really didn't know what was happening. They look out, they see what they think is a ghost, and then they hear that it's Jesus, and they're terrified, they're afraid, and he says, don't be afraid.
Jeffrey Heine:He says, don't be living in that fear. And Peter, wanting to really take a step out there, literally, he he says, if it's if it's really you, command me, because if Jesus commands, I'm going to go. And he commands, and so he goes, and he steps out and he starts walking on the water. It actually starts happening. But then what happens in verse 30?
Jeffrey Heine:Peter sees the wind. Alright. He's seeing God incarnate walking on water. That's the primary thing he's seeing. But then, he sees air.
Jeffrey Heine:And that's enough to make him scared again. See, first, Jesus was scary, and then he finds out it's Jesus, but now he sees the wind, and that's when his intellect kicks in, and his intellect says this, wind means waves. Waves, that means I drown. That's logic. Sound logic, good logic if you ever find yourself walking on water, and you start seeing wind.
Jeffrey Heine:That that's not wrong. But what was the context? The context was Jesus saying, come. The context was a context of trust. Come to me.
Jeffrey Heine:Trust me that you're going to be okay. And then, when he gets out there, he responds with this emotional fear. He's afraid, he doubts, he doubts that he's going to make it. But, and so he starts to sink. His doubt actually has a physical bearing on what's going on.
Jeffrey Heine:And he begins to sink. And the first thing that he does is he calls out for help. And the response is immediate. See, this is this is a picture of our intellectual doubt, our emotional doubt, really being processed through in how we're supposed to engage it. Yes, he experiences the doubt, and Jesus calls him, why did you doubt?
Jeffrey Heine:He's saying, come to belief. Trust me. He doesn't leave him in that doubt and say, hey, if that ever happens again, you know, just call out. No, he's saying, trust me. Trust me.
Jeffrey Heine:Don't be afraid. These intellectual and emotional doubts cause us to be unsettled from our previously held positions of belief or unbelief. And that leads us through through to our our third question. 3rd question. Can a Christian have doubts?
Jeffrey Heine:That's that's really the tag line for the evening. Can a Christian have doubts? And I would like to think that we've all made this journey together, and we can make a pretty clear response to that question now, and that is, absolutely. Absolutely. Because we see the wind all the time.
Jeffrey Heine:We see the wind, and we get scared. We can doubt theological teaching, we can have doubts about our salvation, we can have doubts about the character of God, we can have doubts about the reliability of the scriptures. Everyone has doubts, Christians and non Christians alike. Every person experiences doubt of some form or another. Is what I believed, or these things that I believe, is that right?
Jeffrey Heine:Is this true? Should I believe this? And I think that Christians especially doubt, and the reason that I think Christians especially doubt, believers' doubt, is because people of faith are continuously called into deeper, more thoughtful trust in God. And that often happens by being unsettled from our comfortable places of belief. And he wants to take us deeper.
Jeffrey Heine:We are called by God to more. So question 4. See, we're moving more quickly now. Question 4. Why do we doubt?
Jeffrey Heine:Why do these things happen? Three things here for for why we doubt. The first one is because we don't know everything. I remember sitting in the library in seminary and looking at these stacks, and stacks, and stacks of books. And I sat in this little corner, I was looking at the books, and I counted up because my mind was wandering from my studies, and I started counting up.
Jeffrey Heine:It was like, if I read a book a day, for every day, the rest of my life, I would read this section right here in the library. On this floor of the library, on this, like, corner of the library, like the the smallest little section, if I didn't talk to anyone else, if I didn't do anything else, if I just read, I would get this much information. And that was in a small section of the divinity, philosophy, theology section. I wasn't even going to hit the sciences. I wasn't going to get anywhere like that.
Jeffrey Heine:I don't know everything. I'm not sure the last time that someone told you, maybe someone you're dating, or a parent, or a spouse, but you don't know everything either. You don't know everything. You're new here. You're all new here.
Jeffrey Heine:And you don't know everything. This building is older than all of us, like, there's we were new to the scene, or like a kid that wanders into a movie that's halfway over, Donnie, and we don't know what's going on here. And so, when we when we get into that that context and we're wondering what's happening, it's it is expected that we ask questions, because we don't know everything. And if you feel like you're in a place in your life where you don't have to ask questions, then know that doubt is coming. Doubt is coming to unsettle you.
Jeffrey Heine:First, we don't know everything. And, we are finite creatures. The second thing is that there are attacks from the enemy. There are attacks from evil that unsettle us to lead us to despair. If you're questioning, if you're doubting leads you to deeper consideration and ultimately to faith, that's good doubt, but there's also bad doubt that leads us to despair.
Jeffrey Heine:It's not really asking questions of, did this really happen? Is this really true? It's not that kind of questioning. These are the questions of, does any of this matter? Does my life matter?
Jeffrey Heine:Do my relationships matter? Does anything matter that I do? Does anything matter that I believe, or think, or feel? Those kinds of things. And that is despair.
Jeffrey Heine:But here's the good news of the third thing, the third place that doubts come from, and that is from God, a gift from God. That he is calling us into deeper and deeper belief, and that he is sovereign over all circumstances of doubt. Meaning, he is over and in and in control, and and powerful, and almighty in every season of doubt. And we don't have to be afraid. Because God is sovereign over all doubt, he no doubts surprise him.
Jeffrey Heine:No doubts are beyond him. And he is present, and he has an objective. So he is with you in your doubt, and he has an objective. And the objective that God has for all of our doubts is to lead us to a place of deeper and deeper trust. Deeper and deeper trust.
Jeffrey Heine:Everyone doubts. But God is sovereign over our doubts. Regardless of what we, what might be instigating these doubts, we know that when we are stirred up, when we are unsettled, the first thing we do when we are unsettled from our previously held position of belief, is we begin to search. Information, we we search out information, we we want to talk to people, we want to ask questions, and here here's an important distinction. If the church, churches, Christian people, if the church is not a safe place to doubt, then it won't be a safe place to search.
Jeffrey Heine:And maybe you've experienced that before. If you can't say, I have doubts. If you can't say, I have questions. If you don't have a place to ask those things, if you don't think that the church is a place for for doubting, then then it's probably not going to be your first place to search for answers, to look for truth. That's very problematic.
Jeffrey Heine:All right. So searching. How do we search? That's question number 5. What do we do with our doubts?
Jeffrey Heine:Question 5, what do we do with our doubts? Now, here's the first thing I want you to know. There aren't easy answers. There are stupid answers, and there are stupid people. Not stupid questions.
Jeffrey Heine:But, when we really just try to simplify things down, and just make an easy answer for someone, usually, and and let me just we can be honest with this. One of the main reasons that easy answers are proliferated around the church is because we don't have an answer ourselves, and so when we go to try and help someone, we panic and just say the easiest thing that comes to mind. When really, true answers to questions are complex. They're difficult, they take searching, it takes relationship to search with someone, and not just throw a book their way, or an article, but to sit with them. That's hard work.
Jeffrey Heine:It's relational work. But that's where searching happens. So how do we search? All right. I'm going to give, 3 answers to this one, too.
Jeffrey Heine:We'll keep some try unity going. All right. The first thing, think through your doubts. Think through your doubts. Doubt your doubts, question your questions.
Jeffrey Heine:Read and think. Read people you agree with, read people you disagree with. Sit down with people, have conversations, like, think through these things. Actually find resources, ask for resources, dig in, foremost read the scriptures. Read the scriptures and ask questions.
Jeffrey Heine:Underline the things that you disagree with. Underline the things that you don't know what they mean. Contend with it. Reason with it. Engage the doubt.
Jeffrey Heine:Read comprehensively. Read thoroughly. Let yourself be alone with the word of God. And listen. And hear this, reading the bible doesn't just make doubt go away automatically.
Jeffrey Heine:Sometimes, so if you've had a doubt, and you express it somewhere, there's a good chance someone just said, go read your bible, and now you're thinking, well, is this the same line of padded answers? And I would say, it's not this immediate thing, but but there is something that God does in transforming us through his authoritative word. Where he meets with us, and we meet with him. Change begins to take place. So, that was the first one, think through your doubt.
Jeffrey Heine:The second one is this, talk through your doubts. Talk through them. What I mean by that, be in relationship with people, be in a context where you can talk openly and honestly about the questions, concerns, and doubts that you have. Be in a community where you can do that. In John chapter 20, Jesus has been raised from the dead, The some of the disciples have seen him.
Jeffrey Heine:They're all together, and they tell Thomas, good old, unbelieving Thomas. And he doesn't believe what they're saying is true. So they come, they come to him, and they say, he's alive. We have seen him. And he thinks they are delusional.
Jeffrey Heine:Dead men don't get out of the grave and walk around. It doesn't happen. And he says, I'll believe it when I see it with my eyes and I touch him with my hand. Now, you probably think now of the next scene. Jesus is with him and says, see Thomas, touch and feel the wound.
Jeffrey Heine:And he says, my lord and my god. Here's something that's often left out. That was 8 days later. And during those 8 days, the disciples remained with Thomas, and Thomas remained with the disciples. For 8 days, there were probably some conversations, maybe heated conversations, maybe arguments and reasoning and talking through and looking, considering all of the old testament passages that pointed to this, all the things that Jesus had said in his 3 years of ministries where he talked talked about what he was going to do and and the sign of Jonah, that he was going to be raised up 3 days later.
Jeffrey Heine:And they're talking and talking and talking, but for 8 days they stay with their friend. They don't give up on him. He doesn't give up on them. He doesn't feel like this isn't a place I really want to hang out anymore. These aren't the kinds of people I really want to be around.
Jeffrey Heine:They break bread, they eat, they talk, they sleep. He remained with them. We have to be in community with our doubts. Talk through your doubts, number 2. The third one, last one is this.
Jeffrey Heine:Pray through your doubts. What I mean by that is that, in Mark 9, where the father has his his child is, is sick and needs healing. And the disciples are trying to heal the the sick child, but nothing's happening. And then Jesus shows up, and he sees the commotion that's happening. And Jesus says that there is healing for those who believe, and the Father responds like this, Lord, I believe, help my unbelief.
Jeffrey Heine:Which means something. Belief and unbelief can actually start to coexist in the same place. Yes, I believe, but I also have unbelief. I have these doubts, and I need you to do something about that. He's not saying, you know what?
Jeffrey Heine:Write down some of your ideas. I'd love to look over them over the weekend, and then get back to you. And Jesus doesn't say, here's a pamphlet, peruse it at your leisure, I'll circle back around next Saturday when you're mowing the grass, and I'd love to talk about it. He doesn't do that. No.
Jeffrey Heine:Look, I'm just trying to mow the grass, man. Alright. So anyway, What he says is, Lord, I believe help my unbelief. That that that's the prayer of a believer who doubts. And God's objective is to take us closer, and closer, and deeper, and deeper in trust of him.
Jeffrey Heine:And I would, just as a quick thing here on the side, if you just want to sketch this out, if you've got a pen, a suggestion. If you're wondering, well, how do I do that? What should that prayer look like? Just an encouragement of just a a simple way to think through it. 1, open with who God is as he's been revealed in the scriptures, as father, as almighty, as trustworthy.
Jeffrey Heine:Address him in that way. State what he's done before. We just studied the exodus at Redeemer, which is that dome over there. If you're just wondering where our church is, it's right out that window. As we study the Exodus, go to, Lord, you are the God who rescued Israel out of the bondage of slavery in Egypt.
Jeffrey Heine:And then go go to what what is it that you are wrestling with? What are you desiring to say, Lord, rescue me from from my doubts and my disbelief? That's a way. Go with these things that are more explicit, or perhaps known and revealed, and then move to that personal place. It doesn't have to be a prayer that needs to be etched in stone.
Jeffrey Heine:It doesn't have to be beautiful prose. It just needs to be honest. And we begin there. Think through your doubts, talk through your doubts, pray through your doubts. So question 6, last question.
Jeffrey Heine:Where do we want to be? What does God want for us? What what what what do we Where can we go from here? And I want to be really, clear on this point, and that is the objective is not mere certainty. It's not just accruing all the facts, having the better argument.
Jeffrey Heine:It's about trusting in God. That's what that move towards thoughtful owned belief is about. Not just more and more information, certainty. Although, yes, there is assurance that we can have, but it's not about certainty of information. It's not about you being able to give a great presentation and an argument in in every field of apologetics.
Jeffrey Heine:It is about trusting in God, and that he invites us into that trust. He calls us into that trust, and he enables that kind of trust through his Spirit. In all of our doubting, God is sovereign. And his objective is to lead us into a deeper belief and trust. It's about trusting him.
Jeffrey Heine:In that BBC special with the arch Bishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, after he said, that's probably not something that the archbishop of Canterbury should be saying. The BBC reporter responded with this. She said, but that's quite really reassuring for people who say to them to themselves, I don't feel God's presence right now, or I certainly don't feel his presence all the time. And archbishop Welby responded with this. Well, it's not about feelings.
Jeffrey Heine:It's about the fact that God is faithful. The extraordinary thing about being a Christian is that God is faithful even when we're not. He loves us. And when we get into exactly the wrong place, he doesn't say to us, sort yourself out and I'll find you. He comes alongside us and says, let's go from here.
Jeffrey Heine:You are not alone as a doubter. God is with us in our doubting. And we, the church, are with you in your doubting. We're not called to be archaeologists, and anthropologists, and linguistics, and scholars, and linguists, and to be all of these things at once. We're not supposed to just have all of this information.
Jeffrey Heine:To just know everything. To not have any shadow of a doubt. We're not called to bear all of the answers. We are called to bear the name of Jesus, and to be the children of God. We're gonna take a break.
Jeffrey Heine:You can stretch your legs. You can get something else to drink.
Joel Brooks:So if you have a question, just raise your hand, and, and then I will come and hand a mic.
Connor Coskery:So good. Okay. You talked about how doubts can sort of uproot us and move us either towards belief or unbelief and how it can come from God or come from evil. It's something of that. I mean, something like that.
Connor Coskery:And I guess my question is, is it how much control do we have over what direction that moves us? In what direction we're moved?
Jeffrey Heine:Yeah. I mean, I I definitely think that so if if a doubt comes and I've kind of been the way that I talked about it was as though it's like this variable that comes to us, and we have our position, and it provokes us or prompts us to to start asking certain questions. I think, I think in some ways it's like there's a this might be a weird way to put it, but like a stewardship over that doubt. Like we have a responsibility. Maybe that's a good word for it.
Jeffrey Heine:We have a responsibility as someone who believes. And that's why this this talk was kind of entitled, the, doubt and the believers. So, for the person who who believes and they're experiencing this doubt, that we have a responsibility to to see it through. To ask those questions, and to find a context or a community where we can engage, we can understand what the doubt is, what are the questions, what's even provoking it, was there an experience, is there an emotional experience, an intellectual experience, something of the 2 that's provoked this, that we can talk about it. And because of that, I think that we do have, I don't know how much I would, what was the word that you used?
Jeffrey Heine:Control, or did you use that? How much control we have over it? I don't know if I would think about it necessarily as control, but we definitely have a responsibility to see it through, and to engage it, and to seek the Lord's help in leading us and guiding us to, to all truth. Yeah. So I think that I don't know if I would go with control necessarily, but more
Caleb Chancey:Are there times where our doubt can be sinful? Or are there times when we should be okay with being in the taught belief Mhmm. Kind of spectrum?
Jeffrey Heine:So a time when I think that a doubt would be sinful would be when the doubt actually leads us to distrust. So that's more of the response to the doubt. I almost kind of think of the doubt almost in, like, more of a benign sense. Like, here are these questions, and is is there are there sinful questions to ask? Like, no.
Jeffrey Heine:But but there are sinful responses. So, when I respond to that question and I say, no, I'm not going to I'm not going to believe this, or I'm I'm not going to obey in this way. Or you say that that you want this from me, well, I'm going to do this. And and that kind of rebellious activity is that would be sin. And so, that would be a sin in response to a doubt.
Jeffrey Heine:But thinking that that the question itself, or the uncertainty, or the the confusion that we're experiencing, I would not I wouldn't refer to that as sin. But an embracing of that doubt, which would be a form of disobedience, and not stewarding, or being responsible with the doubt that we have, then, then it could lead to to places of disobedience and distrust and a rebellious spirit and that kind of thing that would be problematic.
Speaker 5:So I wanted to start by saying that it took me 30 minutes to realize, oh, because like a dollar is 90¢ more than 10¢.
Jeffrey Heine:Yeah. You shouldn't start a talk off with math.
Speaker 5:Yeah. It took me a long time.
Jeffrey Heine:Because then they'll just be doing math the whole time.
Speaker 5:Yeah. So I I grew up in the church, and I'm just, like, I do not react well and have not historically reacted well to interacting with people that are doubting. Like, I'm just I've I've dropped the ball a lot of times, because I want to give answers. Like, when someone is doubting, I just want to so here's the right answer. I want to oh, here's a gospel coalition article that you should read or so I think that what could be helpful is, like, some instruction on so as the church, as believers, when we encounter someone that is struggling with doubt, how should we as the body interact with them?
Speaker 5:How should we comfort them? How should how should we interact with them in such a way that doesn't lead to pushing them further towards thoughtful unbelief? I guess, as you would say. Yeah.
Jeffrey Heine:So, I think that I think that first recognizing that maybe we've done a poor job of of that in the past is a really important step, Like, you know, that's the admit that there's a there's an issue here. And then to say, well, what do we do from here? I think that one of the most important things that we can realize in trying to to care for someone who is is in a season of doubt is to realize that the objective is not to lead them to answers, but to a person. And and I would even take that kind of in a broad, like, 2 different ways. Like the the persons of community, like the body of Christ.
Jeffrey Heine:Like the community of believers to lead them into a safe place like that. And then foremost, to the person of Jesus Christ himself. And so, when we just like, gosh, I just got to get some answers to them. Why aren't they just Why are they being so stubborn with these answers? I gave a great answer.
Jeffrey Heine:Have you ever had someone that's emailed you a question before, maybe like about faith? And you gave like a super thoughtful, it took you a long time, you didn't eat for a while, you just like kept working on it, you reread it, you edited it, all of that stuff, And then their response back was, cool, thanks. You're like, what is happening? I mean, that that happens. But but when you're inviting them to the, first, the person of Christ, and then secondly, to him as his body, then presence becomes the most significant thing.
Jeffrey Heine:Ajit Fernando, I heard him say in the gospel coalition in, like, 2,009, he said, the only apologetic that matters today is love. And you can give an argument, you can talk about your systematic this and that. Like, you can you can do those things. And some of those are really important to do. Notice I said some.
Jeffrey Heine:Some of those things are really important to do. But the most important thing that we can do is love. And so, when it comes to being being a place where people can doubt, I was going through some of the ideas that I had, I've been working through preparing for this talk with a friend of mine, and he said, is Redeemer a place like that? Is Redeemer Community Church a place like that? And I said, we ought to be, and I want us to be.
Jeffrey Heine:I can't just say that we are, because this is hard, hard work. This is this is long term work. We do have places for this. We have our Sunday gathering, where there's the preaching of the word, and the word is, authoritative, and we want to study it. So, we want to engage that.
Jeffrey Heine:And that's a place where doubts can be engaged. In our home groups, as a place for relationship where 15 to 20 people, some of you rascals, 25 people, show up to a home. 23 of those around the city, people gather together in homes every single week to talk, and to pray, and to get to know one another. And that is a place where you can share your doubts. Is that a place where you share your doubts?
Jeffrey Heine:Now, that's a question to each and every one of us. As home group leaders, as home group members, if you've experienced a doubt since you've been in your home group, did you feel like that was a place to be vulnerable and talk about that? Maybe not. Maybe not. And and we want to cultivate, we want to grow those kinds of places.
Jeffrey Heine:That takes time, takes consistency, takes showing up when you don't want to be there. It takes turning on your front porch light when you don't want people showing up at your house, home group leaders. There was one time when I said to Jess, if we just keep the lights off, do you think that they would just like knock and be like, oh, did I miss an email? And then like We've talked about it. We've only done it a handful of times, but we've but, you know, to to to invest in a place like that, So, in those groups, and in the relationships formed in those groups, so maybe just with a handful of people from that group, or just one person in that group, you're able to get coffee, or come here, and and you're able to to say, here's here's what's really going on right now.
Jeffrey Heine:We have to have a context for that. We have to have a place where we can say, I'm not okay. Because if if Redeemer Community Church is in a place like that, then where are you going to go when you experience that? Suppress it? Pretend like it's not happening?
Jeffrey Heine:Pretend like you are okay? And then every time you walk through the church door, you have to remember to put on a smile. I mean, is that really the life in the church that we are supposed to have? It's just not. And so, to get to keep working our way to the question, what what what do we do?
Jeffrey Heine:I think providing those kinds of contexts, being consistent in them. And then, when we notice, and sometimes we do notice, when one of someone in our community is going through one of those times, and maybe we feel so ill prepared to just engage it all, we just want to say, alright, buddy. Like, when they start opening up, maybe during a little bit of prayer time at the end of home group, and you're like, oh, he just kinda peeled back the curtain and things are not okay, but I'm not equipped to deal with all that. I would say, take that take that step, ask them to get together, 1 on 1, and just say, tell me how you really are. I had someone do that in this room.
Jeffrey Heine:Someone did that to me in the last month. We have to be a place where that can happen. Or you tell me how you really are doing. I want to know. I'm not going to try and fix you.
Jeffrey Heine:I'm not going to correct you. I'm not going to corral you into the here are the kind of troubled people like segment of the church. No. We're we're we're going to do this together. It's to the left.
Jeffrey Heine:If you're ever wondering, it's always stage left, by the way. I don't know. Stage right. It's stage right. I got my I got my hands wrong.
Connor Coskery:Hi.
Speaker 6:You said, question number 2, you know, what is doubt? And you said, we should not dismiss our doubts, but neither should we embrace them. And to me, that seems like a really delicate tension. And then later on, you said, you know, like, what what to do with our doubt to pray pray through or think through your doubts. And you said you said doubt your doubts and question your questions.
Jeffrey Heine:Mhmm.
Speaker 6:And that can you just kinda go into that? Because that, to me, feels like embracing your doubt because you're to me, that feels like a spiral. Like, okay. Now I'm just going into more and more doubts cause I'm doubting those doubts, and then I'm doubting the doubts that I'm doubting and Yeah. So
Jeffrey Heine:Okay. Yeah. That that's a great question. So what I would say is, I think there's a difference between embracing and engaging your doubts. Embracing the doubt is saying, this is what I'm experiencing, these are the questions I have, I'm not going to get the answers that I want, and so I'm just going to hold on tight to it.
Jeffrey Heine:This is me, uncertain me, you know. Engaging it is saying, this is supposed to take me somewhere. This this this is causative. This is this There's supposed to be a result to this. This is not an end of itself.
Jeffrey Heine:The doubt isn't the end. In many ways, it can be the beginning. And it's supposed to it's supposed to motivate us, stir us up, unsettle us, and then the work begins of engaging the doubt. Now, doubting the doubt is part of that process of thinking through it. What is causing me to ask this question right now?
Jeffrey Heine:Is this a season of life? Is there an experience that's going on? Did I see something? Did I go somewhere? Did I what what's happening that's causing these doubts?
Jeffrey Heine:And, that's what I would mean by questioning your questions. Take the time to see what's motivating this. What's what is how is this beginning? And maybe you would find, like, you just had a really hard life experience that just happened. And, you didn't even realize that that bomb had just gone off in your life, because you just tried to suppress and and avoid, and move on, and say, like, you know, things things are okay, and you just keep keep trucking.
Jeffrey Heine:But, you know that in that hidden place, you're just bleeding out, you're just hurting. And then, these doubts start to show up, which are symptoms of this other problem that's going on. And so, tracing back and saying, what what what's beneath this? What's what's really motivating these questions? And that's helpful in learning how to, to search and what kinds of answers you're looking for, because it might actually not have anything to do with that burning question that you have.
Jeffrey Heine:You might just be mad. You might just be hurt. And, that's that's the confusion that's happening here. I mean, how often are you in an argument with someone, and the thing that's, like, boiling up right then, it has nothing to do with that. It has nothing to do with that.
Jeffrey Heine:But it has to do with something else that's much deeper and underneath, and that's what we need to get to. And I would say the same is true often with our doubts.
Speaker 7:Hey. So one of the things I'm thinking through is that, I think sometimes people say, oh, I have these doubts. But then when you start to engage them in what the doubts are, you realize they're really just, like, camped out in a place of unbelief. They're not
Speaker 8:questioning something. They've
Speaker 7:reach out to that person to help move them towards questioning that unbelief or ministering to their heart in that place of unbelief? Like, what do you do in the difference between doubt where someone is saying, like, here, I haven't figured it out. I have questions. I want to think about it. Versus someone who's like, I have a problem with that.
Speaker 7:Yeah. Does that make sense?
Jeffrey Heine:Mhmm. I think if someone has come to a point of like a decision point, they they they've made a call, and that's where they've landed. And when you engage them on it, they just like to bring up their kind of padded answer for what the problem is. And I would say that for the person who is decidedly, thoughtfully in unbelief, And, essentially, you know, they they would not say, like, doubt and the believer. They're they're not a Christian.
Jeffrey Heine:Like, that's not that's not me. I would be cautious in thinking that if you just get them enough of the right answers, things are going to change. Because, you know, that family member that you just, you know, keep sending stuff to, you know, I feel like I've seen that in a lot of families, like, where there the the grandmother is a Christian, like, there's some grandson that's not. And so, like, every Christmas, she sends him some, like, you know, devotional book, just thinking that's going to catch fire one day. But, but I would say, like, just be careful not to think that you can just satisfy all of those things with with answering the theological question, or the historical question, or whatever the the problem might be.
Jeffrey Heine:Because there's a fundamental problem of new birth. There's a fundamental problem of being of being given new life, and and engaging doubts and questions from a position of default trust. That I'm a child of God, and I can I can ask these questions, and I can be really vulnerable and honest, because because who I am has been defined by who God is in his grace? And because of his grace, I can now ask these questions and not be afraid. So, if you just, and I'm not saying you, but if if you just help them check off boxes of, well, that's a more satisfactory answer, that's a more satisfactory answer.
Jeffrey Heine:And you can't really engage all of those things until you're engaging them from a position of belief, Which is I mean, that's part of the the paradox of all of this. I mean, part of the there's a conundrum there. And that is that that initial belief moving from one end to the other, that first and foremost conversion belief is not the accruing of enough information that I guess I'll just tap out and become a Christian. It's that God has done a work in someone's heart to change them. And so, that's why why I would be I would be cautious in what you're trying to address.
Jeffrey Heine:But at the same time, if they have a a cultural or theological question about some issue, getting together to talk about it is a way to talk about the bigger issue, the bigger context that is not just about, creation, it's about a creator. And, so, those can be great conversations to have and to engage on topical discussion to get to the big picture, ideas. Is that helpful?
Speaker 7:Yeah. Do you think that Christians can have areas of unbelief?
Jeffrey Heine:Yes. Yeah. I think I think Christians can have areas of unbelief, and that's why we pray like the father in Mark 9 who says, I believe, help my unbelief. And then we start to realize as we move. So take something like, the resurrection.
Jeffrey Heine:It is a part of the Apostle's Creed, it's a part of the fundamental kind of core things that Christians believe, that Jesus was raised from the dead. It is illogical, it is unreasonable, and it is a critical tenet of the Christian faith. Now, you maybe at some point when you became a Christian, you were like, yeah, I'm processing a lot of information here. That sounds just as, kind of crazy as virgin birth, but let's just go all in with this stuff. And so, you're just moving along, and you're believing all these things.
Jeffrey Heine:But then, you have some some real suffering in your life. Someone very close to you gets sick and they die, And you are profoundly impacted by that. And you're profoundly, in some ways, disturbed by that. And you're unsettled by that. And you come back to this whole idea that someone who is dead was made alive again, and that life is a promise to all who are who are in him, who are placed in him, who are, who are connected to him through faith, then you see the resurrection in a whole new way.
Jeffrey Heine:Now, Maybe not in a scientific way, but in an emotional way, in a very real way, that you long and believe in the resurrection in a whole new way. And you look back at how you thought about the resurrection 3 years ago, and you say, oh, that was that was just kinda like a taught belief. Now I've been moved to this. And then, when when you're studying through the scriptures during Lent 1 year, you you have this profound experience of of of how, what the resurrection means for all eternity. And so, you you now look back and you say, I'm taken to an even deeper level.
Jeffrey Heine:And so, in some ways, it's a as it deepens, we see shallow belief. Not in a negative, pejorative, dismissive way, but we do see that he's taking us deeper and deeper. And and, so, while I wouldn't call that unbelief, there's definitely deeper belief. Help me where I don't even know these things yet. And and I think that we can that I think that resonates with, with that mark 9 passage.
Speaker 9:You talk about, like, top belief and own belief, and I really liked the distinction you made between those. But I think what I have a question about is how do you move from taught belief to own belief when you don't really have, like, the feelings or emotions that make you wanna go there? Like you said, it's not a I know, like you said, it's not about emotion, but it's like, how do you make that transition when you feel the opposite, I guess?
Jeffrey Heine:Yeah. So I would say, well, what's what is motivating? If it's not an emotion, which is fine if it's not an emotion. But what's motivating I'll see, I'm going to go into, what's the desire to move? And desire is an emotion.
Jeffrey Heine:But what what is what's motivating? And if it's just, well, that seems more significant. That seems better to go from this kind of belief to that kind of belief. I would say those primarily the the third, what do we do of prayer. Because while we might not be, conceiving of of the the movement from taught belief to thoughtful belief as being an emotional thing, when we get into the context of prayer, it is quite an emotional activity.
Jeffrey Heine:We we are bearing a part of ourselves. We're examining a part of ourselves and and doing that before our creator And saying, I if you're able to assess that your belief is a taught belief and one that does not have deep roots, the fact that you can see that, I think, is a gift. I think it's the work of God to say, I want more for you. And that's something to be received. Gift gifts are to be received, and to and to say, I don't know what I'm searching for.
Jeffrey Heine:I don't know what's happening. This isn't, this highly emotional thing. I'm not weepy over this. I don't just find myself, you know, crying in my bed. But this is something that I do sense, a longing.
Jeffrey Heine:It is a desire. And I believe that the motivation behind that is God. I think he does that. I think that he stirs up that unsettled sense that says, you know that there's supposed to be more, and you know that I have that for you. And I think that we we just lean into that.
Jeffrey Heine:We don't just try and find all these different answers. We don't you don't need to go on Amazon and just prime a bunch of books to your house. You know? You don't need to do that. But I think just receiving and saying, I I don't know what you want, but I think that you want more from me.
Jeffrey Heine:Not more of me, necessarily, but more for me. To know and to trust, to believe, to grow in assurance, to grow in faith. And that you want that for me. And I want to want that for me. I think something begins to grow in that.
Jeffrey Heine:When we say, I recognize that you want that for me, and I want to want that for me. That's a starting place. And I think a I think a God given starting place that we have to explore, we have to search out, we have to chase down and figure out what's happening in that, because I think that's a divine thing. Is that helpful? Okay.
Speaker 8:My question is, when is it not a healthy or wise space to discuss and engage in your doubts with other people, especially in dating relationships or guy girl relationships, as that brings you to a place of spiritual or just emotional intimacy?
Jeffrey Heine:That's a really good point. I mean, this I would I would draw that back to the larger group context of home groups. And the reason that when I asked you if you've had any doubts and you've shared them with your group, and and why that's a really difficult thing is because talking about these kinds of things is very it requires a vulnerable context, like a brewery. But, but it does require it requires something. There's an intimacy that is required.
Jeffrey Heine:So, in that, I would just be really cautious that you're talking with someone that you really trust. That you just you just trust, you trust their their judgment, you trust their motives, you trust their care for you. And, there might be friends, or even someone that you're dating, or whatever. Like, you might not just have a bunch of safe places for that. And that's why I would put the emphasis on a loving and honest church context.
Jeffrey Heine:Like where a real community where that can happen. Because sometimes that's that support can be very difficult to find. We we aren't all just promised those kinds of relationships in our life. And so, to find them and to really engage them, to make use of them. So, I would be very cautious.
Jeffrey Heine:But at the same time, if the caution is leading you just to like suppress, suppress, suppress, and so you just don't have anyone to talk to, I would just like just you you have to find those kinds of places where you can be vulnerable and be honest with the things that you believe, and the things that you don't believe, or the things that you're questioning, and and to have a place like that. But you're very, that's it's very wise to be cautious into the context that we would engage like that because it is a very vulnerable thing.
Joel Brooks:Jeff, I got a question first. Okay. I got a mic. Oh. I feel like I do this.
Joel Brooks:No. Every every talk pack. A lot of what we've been talking about is in the midst of doubt, we want to still keep asking of God. We still want to be moving towards God in the midst of doubt. And by God, we mean the God of the Bible.
Joel Brooks:I mean, that that is who we're talking about. When we talk about Jesus, we're talking about the Jesus of the Bible. We're not talking about whatever Jesus pops in your head, or not whatever God pops in your head. So what happens if your doubt is the bible? If if that is what you were doubting all along, then then who is this god that you you do appeal to?
Joel Brooks:Who is this Jesus that you then want to have a relationship with when your doubts are actually the authority of scripture itself? Yeah.
Jeffrey Heine:Well, I think that we it's it's good to trace back what your conceptions of God actually are. So, if you're saying, like, I'm kind of cool with these vague ideas, God is love, but I don't really like what the bible has to say. Then I would I would say to you, the idea that God is love is from the Bible. That's where we get that. There's there's no other cultural ideology or or religion that that goes into that kind of language about God.
Jeffrey Heine:That that is his nature, and his, his presence, and his objective. And that that is critical to his identity and character. And so, we can't just say, well, I want I want these things, but not these things. We have to engage it thoughtfully and holistically. And then, address what are the actual problems that the individual has with the Bible.
Jeffrey Heine:And you can have lots of different problems with it. And, I would also say you can have lots of problems with the Bible and still read it. I mean, that's that that's an important part of just because we don't agree with everything that it might say, we can engage the bible and read it, see what it says. And and and like I said before, underline the parts that confuse you, circle the things you don't like, and actually contend with it. Because I actually think that God will meet you in that, and he defends himself.
Jeffrey Heine:Like, I don't I don't have to do that. That's not my job, thankfully, is not just Bible defender. I would be terrible at it for 1. I don't know what the uniforms are, but that could be cool. But I would have that might be a perk.
Jeffrey Heine:But but that ultimately, like, that that that's not our objective. Our objective is to humbly and honestly engage. Now, it is an issue. I mean, I remember I was go I had those kinds of questions myself, and I was just like, I just how do I know that the Bible is even true? And what was given back to me was, well, the Bible says that it is.
Jeffrey Heine:End of discussion. You should feel satisfied now. I was like, you are one of the dumbest people I've ever met. And he was. He really was.
Jeffrey Heine:I'm not kidding. He was. It's I could tell you his name, but I'm not going to. I'll just write it down up here, and anybody that wants to come see it afterwards, you can just come take a look. Yeah.
Jeffrey Heine:So, I didn't really find that to be all that satisfying. When I when I when I so I would get books on the bible, and I didn't find them satisfying. What were they doing? Quoting the bible. That doesn't get me anywhere.
Jeffrey Heine:This is that kind of circular thing where I'm like, I'm not this isn't getting me anywhere, so what do I do with this? So what I actually started doing was with other people, reading what it says, and then just wondering if it was true. Just imagining, what if it is true? I mean, this is wilder than any fairy tale that could possibly be told. And for some reason, in so many churches, churches that I've been a part of, and I'm not going to say that I'm any better than this, But we we don't preach the Bible like it's wild fantasy fairy tale that it is.
Jeffrey Heine:And we just want to make it into these tiny little things that you can just believe. Believability. We want to condense it down into bite sized believability, ideas that that that really rob us of the grandeur and and the wildness of the bible, the wildness of the gospel. And we can end up and this is in, Frederick Buettner's book, and and I'll go through these in just a moment. But, Frederick Buettner's book, Telling the Truth, the Gospel is Tragedy, Comedy, and Fairytale.
Jeffrey Heine:The last chapter talks about his fairy tale, and he compares the gospel Can I tell this? We got time? Yeah. Alright. He compares the gospel to The Wizard of Oz.
Jeffrey Heine:And he says that for for so many people, The Wizard of Oz was written in in 1900. The the whole idea that that Dorothy, and the tin man, and the cowardly lion, and the scarecrow, they make their way to the end, and they meet the wizard, and they have these needs. And what they find out is that he's a fraud. He's just an old wrinkly man behind a curtain. They'd been told that he was going to be able to do all these things, but really, he's just not all that great, and he's not all that powerful.
Jeffrey Heine:But, he's able to point out to them that their journey, their path, they've found courage, they've found a heart, they've found brains. And really, all along, Dorothy had the way to get back home. Now, when we minimize the gospel into just believe this and get this result, We start setting people up. They they don't have any fantasy in their mind. They they don't have any wildness of the gospel, That it is greater and is beyond.
Jeffrey Heine:That the deepest need of your soul has been met by God through the death and resurrection of Jesus. And that if you just look to him, you find life. We're not going to get to the end of the yellow brick road and just find a wrinkly old man that's not all that great and not all that powerful. The wildness of the gospel is that we find life. And that is what, there was one more question.
Jeffrey Heine:But, that that is what our hope is in being unsettled. That's what our hope is when we experience doubt. And that is the the he whom we are looking to, then trusting in. We're not just looking to gain more and more information. We're looking to know a person, and that person is truth.
Jeffrey Heine:And, that changes everything. If we maybe we could do the one last question. Alright. We're gonna this last one will close after this.
Speaker 10:Last question. No pressure. Well, I gotta say, I was the guy who got the devotional once a year, and, I always kinda put it on my bookshelf. And then 4 years ago, I gave my life to Christ, and now I'm going back through all those. So
Jeffrey Heine:send those You got a library already.
Speaker 10:Send them away. Yeah. So mine's a little bit of a practical question, maybe theoretical, but you're in the grocery store. You're checking out. There's a really frustrated person in front of you.
Speaker 10:Their debit card's not working. That's probably me. Yeah. And you feel the spirit saying just take care of it for them. Right?
Speaker 10:You don't say anything. You take care of it. You buy their groceries and you walk outside in the same direction together. Well, on the way out, you know they're having a bad day, and you're think I'm thinking, I need to share the Lord with these with this person. I don't know them, but there's that tug in both ways.
Speaker 10:It's they they already know the Lord or, you know, you need I need to be brave and and and share the Lord with them in a world full of busyness. So my question is, is that the enemy kind of putting doubt in your life to keep from sharing, the good news of Jesus Christ. Mhmm. And on the practical side of that is is when you're in that game time mode and you've and you really feel that way about sharing, the gospel, what do you do in right then and there? Is that is that too much?
Jeffrey Heine:It's, it's a lot, but we'll we'll, we'll do what we can. We'll do what we can. So, the first thing I would say is this, The impulse to love is never the enemy. And, the impulse to ignore the opportunity to love is. So an impulse to to speak to someone, first to be kind and just helping them out, the impulse to love is from God, and then the opportunity, the context of the opportunity to speak truth as a loving thing, as a loving opportunity, I think that that's that's worthy of of engaging.
Jeffrey Heine:It's there. It's right in front of you. You have you've had an interaction, and you've demonstrated a loving thing to that person in that activity. And and that's sure. I think that it I think that you should you should take that opportunity.
Jeffrey Heine:As far as and were you saying, like, what to what to say or what what how to engage? Yeah. Okay. I think I might have picked up on something that time. That would be the difference between doubt and conviction.
Jeffrey Heine:So, the, you missed the opportunity. You really You you should have been faithful. You should have said something. That's a that would I would not say that's an, a doubt that's trying to intrude, but a real sense of conviction. Now from that, it would be a lie.
Jeffrey Heine:It would be, an it would be evil or or to to think, well, now God is so mad at me that I didn't do what I was supposed to do, and that maybe he doesn't love me right now. And Maybe I needed to do 4 good things to make up for that one bad thing. You know? Which we do sometimes. We we at least process like that sometimes.
Jeffrey Heine:And so, I would say, that, yeah, make that distinction between the doubt, that would be you don't need to say anything, that don't don't bother them, and and that kind of thing. That that could be that kind of a doubt of a bad doubt. The conviction could be a good conviction. You should you should be faithful and obedient in every context, and and be found faithful. And when you when you don't, you you learn from it, you you repent of it, and you say, I I want to be faithful in the future.
Jeffrey Heine:That's what I would say. I think, hopefully, that doubt and conviction part might be helpful. And we can we can talk after if if you have a follow-up.
Joel Brooks:Thanks.
