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Can Doubt and Faith Co-Exist? Part 2–Like a Little Child

Can Doubt and Faith Co-Exist? Part 2–Like a Little Child

Last updated on: December 2, 2023 at 7:45 pm by M. Scott Coffman

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Can Doubt and Faith Co-Exist? Part 2–Like a Little Child 2023-12-02T19:45:42-06:00 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.

“I tell you the truth, anyone who will not receive the kingdom of God like a little child will never enter it.” (Mark 10:15 NIV)

Responding to God requires seeing things as they really are, even the part you can’t see (especially the part you can’t see), the way children do.

A child doesn’t worry about the same things an adult does. Children trust that their parents are all-knowing, all-seeing, and all-powerful. Even though that isn’t true, they believe. In that belief, they feel safe and comforted. This is what “faith like a child” means.

Now some might call this “blind faith,” since the children are believing something without questioning it and accepting as real something that isn’t. However, nobody censures children for believing in their parents. Indeed, if children see a parent fail at too early an age, it can be devastating to their emotional health. This is because they have not yet developed enough intellectually to understand their own limitations.

Therefore, it never occurs to them that their parents might be finite, that their knowledge might be incomplete, that life can take them by surprise, that they might fail, that they might just. . .not. . .know.

No, nobody would judge that child for believing in Mommy and Daddy. After all, they are children and do not know any better. As they grow, their understanding of the world around them grows. Eventually, they figure out that Mommy and Daddy are people just like them. And later, when they become the Mommy or Daddy, they really figure out how much their parents didn’t know.

So why throw shade on people for responding to God with the faith of a child, when that is exactly how Jesus said to do it?

Well for starters, people who don’t know the Bible don’t know that’s how it is supposed to happen, and you can’t condemn them for simply not knowing.

More significantly, these people don’t know that your spirit does not necessarily grow at the same rate that your body and mind do. In other words, faith like a child does not mean intellect like a child.

Different ways of growing up

Children are going to grow older and taller without any effort on their part. Physical maturity just happens (at least, to whatever extent anything just happens).

Mental maturity requires some input, however. Children kept locked in a closet all their lives will still grow physically, but they won’t learn much. To learn, you must be exposed to knowledge. As you get older and start thinking for yourself more, you become more skeptical of “knowledge.” You may doubt some things just because they “don’t sound right.”

Spiritual maturity, on the other hand, is a major workout. Absolutely nothing will happen to your spiritual maturity unless you make it happen. If you don’t, then even as your body grows, and your mind expands, you will remain a spiritual infant.

Mockingjay pendant with "Real or not real" printed across the wings, set on a log in the woods

“You love me. Real or not real?”
I tell him, “Real.”
(Suzanne Collins/Mockingjay) Image–Public Domain

Real or Not Real?

The key concept to grasp for a real relationship with God to be possible is to understand that your spiritual IQ is separate from your intellectual IQ.

No amount of life experience or number of college diplomas can get you any closer to God. If anything, all that worldly knowledge gets you farther away from God, because the more stuff you’ve crammed into your own head, the more independent you feel. You have moved WAY beyond your childhood belief that Mommy and Daddy are invincible. You are making your own way, building your own life, and you don’t need anybody, not even God, to tell you what to do or how to live.

Except that you do.

Not all the time, but there are days and seasons where you reach the end of yourself and run out of answers, because your knowledge is incomplete. When your spouse rejects you for another and you didn’t see it coming. When you or a loved one get that diagnosis that only happens to “other people.” When you lose your job. When you get that phone call that no parent wants to get. When the storms come, leaving all your possessions a pile of rubble.

The question is, what do you do then?

One of two things will happen. Either you will become even more hardened and spiral downward from even the low place in which you have found yourself, or you will recognize that you are at rock bottom and look up.

Doubt happens. Doubt is normal.

Doubt enters your mind the first time you encounter a fact that doesn’t coincide with your belief. Doubt happens the first time you see your father cry. It happens when you hear your parents fight. It happens the first time you encounter someone who isn’t really all that concerned about your self-esteem. It happens the first time you really watch the news.

Basically, there comes a day when the world doesn’t make as much sense as it did the day before. And you start to wonder, “What else isn’t real?”

Now at this point, you have two choices. You can make a list of what isn’t real, or you can make a list of what is. Most of us do a combination of the two, but our natural inclination seems to lean toward the negative.

The problem is that going that way could be dangerous, because then our emotions kick in and overwhelm our logic. Before long depression and apathy crash the party, and you just start not believing in anything. This is frequently where God gets thrown out with the dishwater.

On the other hand, what would happen if you focused on what is real? The positive things? The things that don’t move?

This is the essence of being a Truthseeker, and the entire impetus behind my writing in the first place.

ABBA

Photo of Swedish group ABBA in blue jumpsuits

Seriously? (Sarah Andersen/wallpaperuse.com)

Child reaching up toward an unseen Daddy with "ABBA" printed above.

That’s more like it. (Public Domain)

If you intentionally focus on the things in your life that don’t move, the chaos will settle (in your mind at least) and eventually fade into the background along with your doubt. However, this technique will only be as effective as your knowledge of what it is that doesn’t move.

If you are already at a place in your life where you have allowed doubt and skepticism to reign over your thinking, then you may have reached the point where you doubt Truth itself or even the existence of anything permanent.

This brings me back to the concept of spiritual maturity being separate from intellectual maturity.

It’s easy enough to admit when you don’t know something factual and even easier to Google it and find out the answer. However, growing spiritually is more difficult because it first requires admitting you are a spiritual infant. And pride has an issue with that notion.

Your level of doubt and skepticism is directly proportionate to your level of pride. The higher your pride level, the less likely you are to admit your vulnerabilities.

The reality is that your soul is still crying out like a baby.

You need your Daddy, but not the one who came home drunk and beat your mother while you watched, cowering in a corner. Not the one who yelled and swore at you and told you you’d never amount to anything. Not the one who was cold and distant and never did anything to make you feel loved or accepted.

You need the Daddy you should have had. You need the one who always has the answers, always knows the right thing to do or say, the one who never fails. The one you want to be just like when you grow up. The one who accepts you as you are so that you don’t have to spend the rest of your life trying in vain to prove that he was wrong about you.

You need that Daddy.

You want that Daddy.

No matter how much you’ve tried to make a life for yourself apart from that, you will always have a hole in your soul that no amount of worldly success or knowledge can fill.

Only your Daddy can do that. He designed you this way, to recognize that you can’t meet all of your own needs and to admit your dependence.

(Dependence upon what? For the answer, come back for Part 3 as we continue to celebrate International Youth Day. Make sure to click on Free Newsletter at the top of the page so you don’t miss it!)

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