Help my unbelief!

Safely exiting the Spiral of Doubt

Earlier this week I was lost in thought while driving to work and realized just how essential the fact of the resurrection is to this stage of my faith. 

I’ve often heard the claim that “no one comes to the faith through arguments.” This is a common attack lobbed (from Christians and non-Christians alike) at Christian apologists and philosophers who have made it their lives’ work to defend the tenets of Christianity from a metaphysical standpoint. 

First of all, I simply don’t think it’s possible to make that claim in the first place without at least some data—which I haven’t yet found (though I have looked! If you’ve found any, feel free to share a link with me). 

But more than that, I think this transactional, utilitarian view of information is fatally flawed. 

If taken to its logical conclusion, the basic assumption of this argument is that all communication must be for the explicit purpose of evangelism—and more specifically, that all evangelistic communication needs to directly result in conversion. 

The standard created here is essentially impossible to reach. It assumes perfection on the part of the believer who’s sharing the message, and then places the burden of the hearer’s soul on the topics that believer chooses to cover during the conversation. 

But the work of the Holy Spirit in an individual’s life is far more pervasive than that. 

I don’t know much about what final judgment might look like, but I’m pretty certain of a few things: There’s not a written test. You won’t be asked to do Bible drills or recite all the points of Anselm’s Ontological Argument.

Quoting the “right” preachers, reading the “right” books, knowing all the words to the “right” worship songs and hymns—on their own, these righteous acts are “filthy rags” when it’s all said and done.

Knowledge, arguments, and information for information’s sake won’t confer salvation. Only Christ can do that. But that doesn’t mean that there’s no place for these things. I think that the drawback of our elevation of a “moment of salvation” or “moment of conversion” is that it reduces the attention given to all these other essential accouterments. 

So, that brings me back to my Tuesday morning commute epiphany. 

I don’t remember exactly what triggered it—I think something that was said in a conversation I was listening to during my drive. But, whatever it was, it caused me to go down a familiar path I like to call the Spiral of Doubt. 

The Spiral of Doubt always starts with something innocuous—a social media comment, a footnote in a book, a counterpoint in a debate—that gets the wheels in my brain turning. 

It may be a point I’m familiar with, or it may be something completely new. I might even know that the claim is incorrect, or logically incoherent, or a red herring in the larger context of the conversation at hand. But, nevertheless, in that moment, I let it stand. 

What if that is true? 

What if what I believe isn’t? 

What if we’ve got this all wrong? 

What if someone else has got it right? 

How do I know that I know? 

And that’s about when I remember: the resurrection. 

It seems a little random, but that’s always the bedrock that I hit when the doubts start to build. 

A few years ago, when our book club first started meeting, the first two books we chose were about Christ’s resurrection: N.T. Wright’s tome The Resurrection of the Son of God (which, I feel the need to admit, we didn’t quite finish), and William Lane Craig’s The Son Rises (which I’ve written on here and here). 

These were some of the first books I had read about my faith that were more informational than pastoral, and they opened a new world for me. I found that, as I really learned about the history of my faith, my spiritual life was enriched and strengthened. I became fully convinced of the reality of Jesus’ resurrection from the dead, something that I’d believed in theory for many years but hadn’t really considered in the same way I believed in the American Revolution or the reign of Cleopatra or any other historical event I’d otherwise taken for granted. 

For the first time, I saw the object of my faith as something integrated with the history of the world, a piece of the shared story of mankind—not just a story to recite in church buildings on Easter morning. It was a powerful experience, and it has grounded me in the years since. 

It’s not that my belief in the resurrection dispels all other questions and stymies doubt at its source. I don’t want to give the impression that I never question things, or develop my beliefs, or change my mind. But, it’s my belief in the resurrection that gives me a safe exit from the unproductive Spiral of Doubt—which, left to its own devices, only leads to anxiety and avoidance. 

Instead, it gives me confidence to pursue these questions, knowing that I am being guided and kept by the Holy Spirit.

I think of the father in Mark 9. Jesus and his disciples are approached by a man whose son is being oppressed by an evil spirit. We quickly learn that the disciples have attempted to heal the man’s son, but were unsuccessful, so they appeal to Jesus. 

Here’s what happens next: 

And Jesus asked [the boy’s] father, “How long has this been happening to him?” And he said, “From childhood. And it has often cast him into fire and into water, to destroy him. But if you can do anything, have compassion on us and help us.” And Jesus said to him, “‘If you can’! All things are possible for one who believes.” Immediately the father of the child cried out and said, “I believe; help my unbelief!” And when Jesus saw that a crowd came running together, he rebuked the unclean spirit, saying to it, “You mute and deaf spirit, I command you, come out of him and never enter him again.” And after crying out and convulsing him terribly, it came out, and the boy was like a corpse, so that most of them said, “He is dead.” But Jesus took him by the hand and lifted him up, and he arose.

Mark 9:21–27

The refrain that has been echoing through my mind is the father’s desperate cry to Jesus: “I believe; help my unbelief!” 

It’s paradoxical; how can someone both believe and not believe at the same time? But perhaps you, like me, know exactly what that feels like. 

When I look to the cross and the empty tomb, I can say both “I believe” and “help my unbelief.” Doubt is natural. Belief is complicated. Praise God for the Holy Spirit, the helper who nudges me to remember what I believe even in the depths of unbelief. 

I’m not saying that your faith in the resurrection or knowledge of the historical facts surrounding it will be or even need to be the life raft that rescues you out of your own personal Spiral of Doubt. Maybe you’ve got something else in mind: a testimony of healing, an experience in nature, or some other information that tethers you to your belief when it seems far away.

In my experience, though, this is just one of the ways that historical information, apologetic arguments, and theological study can enrich the life of the believer. Sure, it’s nice to have knowledge—and if anyone’s called to have knowledge about Christianity, it’s Christians! But I don’t want to underestimate the work that the Holy Spirit can do with that knowledge as we each individually seek to make sense of the world and our place in it, walking with Christ along the way. 

Maybe it will result in a direct conversion; maybe it’ll help a brother or sister in Christ cling to their faith in difficult times; maybe it’ll be the lifeline that pulls you through crushing doubt; or maybe the seeds you plant in faithfulness today will be cultivated for generations, resulting in an outcome far more glorious than you’ve ever imagined.

Now, LMK:

How do you confront your doubts? What do you cling to in moments of unbelief?

From the archives:

As we prepare for Easter, here’s a post on the hope of the resurrection from last year.