Help My Unbelief: Why doubt is not the enemy of faith

by Barnabas Piper

My goal is to help you see that belief isn’t blind faith and that questions, if asked well, are building blocks for stronger faith rather than stepping-stones away from it.

What the Bible reveals of God is precisely what God wanted revealed of himself, no more and no less. But it isn’t everything about him. Scripture raises as many questions as it answers. It asks the impossible and describes the miraculous.

God is infinite, beyond our understanding, and he chose to reveal himself to us in a way that sparks questions rather than settles all of them.

Questions indicate belief only if you actually want an answer. Someone who asks without wanting to learn is not truly asking, but is challenging. Challenging is not believing, but undermining.

Book knowledge of God, if left at that, leads to hollow belief in God. Relational knowledge of God leads to transformational, living belief. So by all means, study God’s word. But don’t do so to collect knowledge. Do so to know him.

You know what the book of Job doesn’t do? It doesn’t explain anything. But even without explanations or rationales it does answer our questions. God is God. We are not. Be silent.

Scripture doesn’t offer the answers to most mysteries that we want. It offers the ones God wants us to have. And if he wants us to have them, then they are the ones we need. This is not an easy truth because it does not feel satisfying. But satisfaction is there to be had.

To be true believers we must come to the place of uncomfortable comfort. In this life we will never be settled.

A speck of belief must be present to pray at all.

What makes our doubt “believing doubt” is what we do with it. Unbelieving doubt is that which destroys fragile beliefs. Believing doubt is that which strengthens our beliefs. Instead of letting unbelief in, it ventures out in faith and seeks to waylay it. Just as unbelieving doubt is against belief, this sort of doubt is the driving force behind belief.

It’s easy to think of coming to faith as a joyous, happy experience. Coming to know Jesus is that, but the process of getting there doesn’t always feel like it. Overcoming doubts and intellectual obstacles can feel more like surgery than anything; that’s what Lewis experienced. He described himself as “the most dejected and reluctant convert in all England.”[36]

For Lewis, beauty and joy, the reasoned arguments of thoughtful people, the revelatory power of stories, and the faithfulness of friends showed him that God was real and invited him into the presence of Christ.

Lewis was moved to the place of unbelieving doubt and then believing doubt. God took him from darkness to light, blindness to sight bit by resistant bit. Lewis’s conversion was not one of immediate rapturous delight; it was a struggle of questions and fears that God slowly eroded to bring Lewis to a place of deep joy that fulfilled the promise he felt in those childhood delights of story, song, heroism, and “northernness.”