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Can Doubt and Faith Co-Exist? Part 1–When You See the Invisible

Can Doubt and Faith Co-Exist? Part 1–When You See the Invisible

Last updated on: August 12, 2023 at 7:37 am by M. Scott Coffman

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Can Doubt and Faith Co-Exist? Part 1–When You See the Invisible 2023-08-12T07:37:27-05:00 M. Scott Coffman

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

As Christians, we should not be surprised when people doubt God. There were some who saw the risen Christ with their own eyes and doubted. I’m not just talking about Thomas; some watched Him go up into heaven and STILL doubted!

There is nothing wrong with doubting in and of itself. For example, healthy doubt and skepticism can keep us from becoming victims of liars and con artists. Nevertheless, what matters more than whether you doubt is what you do with your doubt.

Seeing is Believing

It makes perfect logical sense to doubt the existence of a God you can’t see. When we walk by sight, that is, if we will “believe it when we see it,” then it follows that we don’t believe in what we cannot see.

This goes all the way back to the concept of object permanence that our brains learn when we are infants. If we can’t see Mommy or Daddy, then they have left us forever, so we cry. But then Mommy or Daddy always shows up. Eventually we figure out that Mommy and Daddy are real and permanent (relatively speaking) even when we can’t see them.

It’s really the same way with God. The only difference is how we go about seeing. With object permanence, seeing is believing. However, since God is invisible, this concept will not work. To “see” God, you must exercise not your eyeballs but your spirit. This takes some learning.

First, you have to be aware that you even have a spirit. We are all hard-wired to know this, but we still must be aware of our instincts to act on them. In other words, faith is useless if you don’t know what it is. The Amplified Bible gives the best definition I have seen:

Now faith is the assurance (the confirmation, the title-deed) of the things [we] hope for, being the proof of things [we] do not see and the conviction of their reality—faith perceiving as real fact what is not revealed to the senses. (Hebrews 11:1)

Therefore, if walking by sight means you’ll believe it when you see it, then walking by faith means you’ll see it when you believe it.

This is foolishness to those folks who consider themselves “fact-based.” These people will tell you that nothing is real unless they can hold it in their hand and tell you what it looks like.

I’ve always liked how Billy Graham answered this contention:

Seeing the Wind

The wind is invisible, but you know it is real. You can feel a spring breeze blowing gently through your hair (or in my case, across my head). In autumn, you can see tree branches bending and hear the rush and rustle of the leaves. You can feel the sting of winter snow and sleet on your face as you lean into the driving wind. In the summer, especially this summer, you see the damage the wind can leave behind—fallen trees, flattened barns, roofs torn asunder.

Nevertheless, you can’t see the wind itself. So how do you know it’s there?

It leaves evidence of its existence. (Matthew T. Rader/Wikimedia Commons)

If we are going to live solely in the realm of fact, we cannot define the wind. We can measure its speed, we can observe its results, but we can’t catch it in a jar and look at it. As Jesus told Nicodemus:

The wind blows wherever it pleases. You hear its sound, but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with everyone born of the Spirit. (John 3:8 NIV)

Nevertheless, meteorologists will not tell you that they “believe” in the wind. They will tell you that they “know” it is there, because they can measure its effects scientifically.

This is perfectly logical. However, my question is if it makes sense to call something that we can’t see or measure scientifically factual, then why do people not use that same logic with God?

God is also invisible.

God also cannot be contained. With His unseen presence, we feel joy with the spring breeze. When we see the leaves blowing from the trees in November, knowing that they will be back in April, we recall the mortality of our bodies and the immortality of our souls. We feel His comfort and warmth in the bleak winter and His calming presence in the storms of our summers.

But the thing is, you need to know about God to fully experience these things. The first time you feel wind on your face or see the tree branches or the green wave of cornfields blowing, someone has to tell you it’s the wind.

When a child hears an eerie moaning in the night, and does not know that it’s only the wind, he experiences fear. Then his parents tell him about the wind, and he believes. He still does not see the wind, but he believes; therefore, it is real to him.

So it is with faith. Although we are all hard-wired to respond to God, emotionally and spiritually if not intellectually, someone still has to tell us about Him. There must be a mental connection before the feelings become real.

Even then, we still don’t see God, but we start to notice the evidence, and things start clicking.

View of sun behind clouds from a road

Even when we can’t see the sun behind the clouds, we know it is there. (Public Domain)

Obscured by Clouds

Imagine you’re at a funeral on a cloudy day. Then the sun comes out from behind a cloud.

Now if you are a scientific, buttoned-down, fact-based kind of a person, the first thing you would say is that the sun didn’t move–the cloud did. You could give a meteorological explanation of prevailing winds, condensation, etc., and you would be factually correct in your explanation. But you would be completely missing the point.

Now imagine at that same funeral on that same cloudy day, you are the grieving father standing over the grave of your first-born son.

You have never believed in God, though you have heard of him. Because your child hasn’t been baptized, you are unclear about his eternal destiny. You don’t know what is real and what is bogus from a theological standpoint because you have little intellectual knowledge of God.

All you know is that you turned your life upside-down to welcome this child into the world, and now he is gone, just as quickly as he came, and your world has been turned upside-down all over again.

Then, through the cloudy haze of your grief, you hear what the preacher is saying over your son’s grave. You have never heard this minister preach before, you don’t go to his church, and you have no idea what their Statements of Belief are. But he is speaking words of peace and comfort, and even though you don’t understand what they all mean, they ring true.

As he finishes speaking, and says “Amen,” at that moment, the sun comes out from behind the cloud and a single sunbeam shines down on you, the child’s mother who is sobbing in your arms, the preacher, and the open grave.

And you feel warmth where there was only chill, and peace where there was only chaos—a peace that passes all understanding. A peace that you have never felt before. And your mind connects the dots for the first time.

And you know that God is real.

You are angry with him beyond measure for taking your child from you, but you can no longer deny His existence.

Gravestone reading "GARISON DAVID BALLINGER COFFMAN OCT. 1, 1989" with an angel on a cloud to the left, and infant-sized fingers making the I Love You sign on the right

That was me on October 4, 1989. (M. Scott Coffman/personal collection)

The day of my son’s funeral was the day I buried my doubt. I still wanted nothing to do with God, but I knew He was there.

It took five more years for God to break through my stubbornness and get me to listen to Him, and another eight for me to finally surrender my life to Him. Fortunately, God is patient.

The point of this illustration is that on that cloudy day, at that funeral, I believed, and had peace.

Just like when I was three years old and my parents told me the noise I heard was just the wind howling through the trees and not some phantom coming to yank me out of bed, throw me around like a dog with a chew toy, then drag me off to who knows where.

I was not able to see the wind, but my parents told me, and I believed. Though I did not actually know, the belief was good enough to get me to sleep.

(Come back next week for Part 2, as we celebrate International Youth Day. Click on Free Newsletter above to make sure you don’t miss it.)

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