In this episode, Jamie talks about practical answers to experiencing doubt -- what to do, as well as what not to do.
Jamie: Hey everybody. This is Jamie Dew.
Joe: And this is Joe Fontenot.
Jamie: And welcome back again to the Towel In The Basin podcast.
Joe: Yeah. So we're kind of doing a part two on what we did last time, which was about doubt. So last time we looked at this question of, is it wrong to have doubts. Doubts are such a common thing. And so if you want to know the answer to that, you got to go listen to the previous podcast. But we'll tell you there so. But also too, kind of like, where do doubts come from? So that's what we looked at in the previous one. And then we kind of left it on this question, like, so what? So what do we do about doubt? It's obviously not, or it doesn't feel like something we want to do. What do we do about doubt? What do we do about it? How do we handle it?
Jamie: Yeah. So I'll speak to this both as a Christian apologist and also as a pastor, because really those two things have been my life and career since I became a Christian at 18 years old. So do these two types of things. Let me answer negatively first. In other words, let me talk about what not to do and then maybe flip it around and then give some helpful, hopefully helpful things that we could do positively from that point forward. So let me talk for a minute about the No-no list. Don't do this. If you're struggling with doubts or just wrestling with your faith, let me counsel you here not to do several standard, typical things that people do that just are not going to help you. And they're frankly, they're not going to help anybody else. Okay?
So number one, first thing I'd say to you is don't hide it. A lot of times what we really feel, because of what we talked about in the last podcast, we think that people are going to think badly of us if they found out that we have these questions. They're going to look down at us. They're going to shame us or something like that. And because of that, we'll hide it. I mean, I know lots of people, really the vast majority of the people that throughout my life, ministry and career that I've talked to about things like doubt, man there have been people that have had those types of questions for very, very long periods of time. And they just never felt like there was anybody that they could say it to.
Now what I'm not suggesting to is just go ahead and Sunday morning and blab it out. Hey everybody, I'm not sure if I believe this. I'm not saying you that. But what I don't want people to do, what's not helpful is for people to just pretend that all is well and that they don't have questions, right? If you have those types of questions and there are things that you need to be doing, and I'll talk about that in a minute.. But number one, don't do this. Don't hide. That's not going to help you. And it's not going to help anybody else.
Number two, and this is not exactly the same thing, but it's connected to it, and that is number two, don't suppress it. What ends up happening in a lot of people's minds, I've done this, is that they'll have a question, they'll have a worry or an anxiety about a belief and they try to smash it down deep in their soul. And when I talk about the first one, it's hiding it from other people, when we try to suppress it, we're trying to hide it from ourselves. We're trying to push it down so low that we don't think about it anymore. And we try to suppress the kinds of questions that are coming out. And that's not helpful for you either. It is like a decay or an infection in a tooth. At some point it's going to become abscessed and it's going to be a bad thing. So don't hide it. Don't suppress it. Those are two things you can do that won't help you.
Third thing I'd say to you, don't fake it. And so when you're hiding it and or suppressing it, you're going to church and you're putting on this veneer, you're putting on this face mask all the time and you're pretending like all as well. And I'm not saying you got to go in and be all despondent and down everything, but just don't fake it. Look, if you got questions, if you got worries, then there are people and there certainly are resources available to you to start exploring these types of questions. And we can talk about that again, maybe the second half of this today. But don't hide it. Don't suppress it. Don't fake it, whatever you do.
Fourth thing I'd say to you not to do is don't be hasty in decision making. I've watched some of my friends do this. They hit a patch in the road, a man in that... Look, and let me just say this. All of us are going to go through moments where it is just hard for us to hang on. John, the baptist for crying out loud, in Matthew, chapter 11, this is the guy that Jesus says there's not a greater, finer human being ever born of a woman than John the Baptist. And you know what that guy does? In Matthew chapter 11, he's got some serious, serious apologetic questions for Jesus Christ.
He sends his disciples because you know, John's arrested and about to have head chopped off and things aren't going the way he thought it would go, if he followed Jesus, let's just say that. And he sends questions to Jesus like, excuse me, sir, are you really the one? Or should I be looking for somebody else? I mean, that's the question John asked. So I've watched people, all of us will go through a hard season or two or three or four or five in the duration of our faith. And I've watched some people go through it and man, just make some kind of life rash decision.
Now it's a sort of a twofold decision. I'm not going to identify as a Christian anymore, and a lifestyle abandonment and a lifestyle adoption that they take on. People make hasty decisions in low moments. And I just say this as a general word of counsel, not just as how to deal with doubt and struggling your faith, but any major life decisions. Listen to me, if you're tired, if you're raw, if you're broken, if things are terrible, that's just probably not the season to make big life decisions in. It's not. Calm down. Get some rest, step back from it. Let cooler heads prevail. Don't be hasty in that moment.
The fifth thing I would say to you, don't do this. This is the mistake I've watched a lot of my young friends, young student do, who get super interested in apologetics. They intellectualize the faith. Here's what I mean by that. I'm going to talk about what I don't mean by this and what I do mean by this. I'm not saying that there aren't intellectual components to our faith. If I thought that I wouldn't be a philosopher and I wouldn't have done the degrees and written the books and stuff like that. Of course there are intellectual components of our faith, but understand that Christianity is not first and foremost, an intellectual game. Just not. It is intellectually robust. I mean, so robust, in fact, that it has stood the tests of time. I mean, for 2000 years, the greatest intellectual forces of the Western and Eastern worlds have thrown themselves against Christianity, and here we stand, nonetheless. Christianity is very proudly, intellectually robust, but it's not first and foremost, an intellectual game.
It's first and foremost about a relationship with a living God. It is first and foremost, a spiritual thing, a personal thing. So whatever you do, while you may have to study, and I'll talk about that in a minute, don't, don't overly intellectualize this. Understand that the variables causing disbelief or causing doubt, there could very well be some intellectual components to them, but that's not all that's going on. And if you only focus on the intellectual side of it, you will miss it. I am almost promising you that. So don't do those things is the first thing I'd say.
Joe: So that last point, don't intellectualize it, is that like saying don't ignore the emotional element of it because that's alive and well?
Jamie: Yeah. Well the emotional element of it and the spiritual element of it. So in other words, if you begin to approach Christianity as a purely intellectual thing, then you will probably measure the rightness or wrongness of believing based off of facts and evidence and reasons that you could come up with. So for example, now, if you can't prove that God exists with some whizzbang philosophical argument, then maybe Christianity's not worth following. Well, hold up, now, what about the encounters with God that I have had and you have had, and that the saints throughout the thousands of years have had with God? I mean, look, I don't know how else to explain it, my life that is, other than Jesus Christ. It's not at the end of the day for me, these big arguments that have worked for me. It's the fact that I really do believe across the last 25 years, I have had moments where I seem to have encountered the living God.
No, it was not a burning bush. No, it was not an audible voice, but I just don't have any way else to explain my life other than I encountered Christ. And I think that means something. And that's not an argument. That's not a, a doctrine even, per se. It's a relationship with God. And what I want to say is guys, that's something. Also understand the psychological side and the physiological side of things. If you're tired, if you're weary, if you're broken, then those could be variables and factors that are causing you to have a hard time in this season. Therefore, or you might need rest and you might need healing and you might need some help, you know?
So there are intellectual components to Christianity. Absolutely. Very robust, in fact. But it's not just that. There's more to all of this than just the intellectual side of things. And what I've seen people do is they've sort of zeroed in only on the intellectual stuff said, this is all it is. This is the only stuff that counts. And if they can't satisfy every jot and tittle, if they can't make sense out of everything, they abandon the whole thing. And I'm saying there's more to Christ and there's more to Christianity than that.
Joe: Yeah. Okay. So we don't hide it. We don't suppress it. We don't fake it. We shouldn't be hasty in our decision making. And we shouldn't intellectualize it. This is the way we don't handle doubt. So turning that around, what should we do?
Jamie: All right. A good question. Couple things here, I'd say. And just in terms of general counsel, the first thing I'd say is if you're dealing with doubt, if you're dealing with struggle and I'm not trying to insinuate that you're a bad person, that you're a sinner or anything else like that, I'm not, because again, we can moralize this, as I talked about in the last podcast, that doesn't help. But I do want to circle back on something I said in the last podcast, and that is number one, if you're struggling with doubt in your faith and things like that, this is the moment to number one, purge sin from your life. I don't know how else to... And this is why, again, I'm saying it's not just an intellectual thing. Sin always, always, always destroys stuff, including beliefs. And generally speaking, if a person's got unchecked sin patterns in their life, then that's going to play a major role in eroding faith and causing doubt and struggle.
I've watched it happen in my life. I've watched it happen in friends of mine's lives. I've watched it happen in students' lives. Number one, if you're struggling with these things, this is a moment for you to dig deep, examine yourself and purge sin from your life. Number one. Sin always has a destructive effect on the whole of life, but also including the intellectual life and our spiritual life. So number one, purge sin, if that's happening.
Number two, this is a moment to maintain spiritual disciplines. This is where that hasty thing comes in. You're struggling thing. Aren't going well. And you start making hasty, rash decisions, like neglecting or abandoning spiritual disciplines. This is a moment where I'm going to say to you, folks, you have to maintain the spiritual disciplines. You need to pray now like you've never prayed before you need to read the scriptures now, like you've never read the scriptures before. You need to reflect on your life and meditate before God and let him speak and do all of those things, like you've never done it before.
And this is the beautiful part about as when we encounter in the scriptures is that the saints that have gone before us and written it down in God's word for us, as they would struggle with their faith, there was a general angst and heaviness that they felt in those moments that caused them to cry out to God and a hunger was produced. It could very well be that this is part of God's providence of allowing you to go thirsty and to go hungry for a while so that he can develop and shape within you the right kinds of dispositions. And so don't be hasty. Double down now on these spiritual disciplines. Praying, fasting, Bible reading, everything that you can do, this is the moment do it. So number one purge, sin. Number two, maintain the disciplines. And probably people didn't expect the philosopher to say that to us today. But that's what I'd say to us, number one.
Number three, find a person or some persons that you can talk to about this. All of us, this is the sort of anecdote to, we don't want to hide, we don't want to suppress, we don't want to fake it. That's we typically try to do. You've got to find people that you can actually talk to about this stuff. If the person you try to talk to is going to bonk you on the head and guilt you over it, that's probably not the person you want to talk to. Person that's probably going to sit down and try to argue with you about it. That's probably not the person you want to talk to. Look, most of the time, you just need somebody maybe doesn't even know all the answers. You just need somebody that you can actually share your burdens and your heart and your questions.
So, for example, I'll give you a real life example. I didn't know I was going to share this with you today, but it comes to my mind as I say that. My wife will be probably emotional to hear me talk about this. As we were coming into this job here at NOBTS, my father-in-law passed away about a month and a half before I was announced as the candidate here. He heard, one of the last conversations I ever had with him is that they had narrowed it to just me and that I was the candidate they were going to go on. And I remember he got stuck talking about how I was going to be the president, super emotional. And we were close. He and I were very, very, very, very different people. I'm a philosopher, he's an engineer. Boy, we had our history where we kind of butt heads on some things. I mean, we had our moments, but we were very, very, very close at the same time. I loved him. He loved me. I have no doubt about that at all.
And I can remember, so he had multiple myeloma. He had a blood cancer. And In 2010, he had gotten diagnosed with blood cancer in late 2010. I had this blood condition. It turned out to be something called ITP, but it was, you kind of come to that conclusion by process of elimination. What they had to basically do was rule out that I didn't have leukemia, is essentially what the deal was. And there was a moment where they weren't quite sure if I had leukemia or not. The only way to do that was to do a bone marrow biopsy and all that stuff. And so I go through all that season. Joe, I don't know how to tell you, the way I responded to that 10 day period of waiting for that to come back, at the moment I was ashamed of myself, by how much it rocked me to the core. Not just the thought of dying, but I mean, the thought that I could have leukemia absolutely rocked me to the core.
And you know, during that season, there weren't any arguments that could help me. There was no doctrine necessarily that encouraged me. I mean, there were people, my wife. There was something about my wife's presence with me that just calmed my soul. And the only other person that had that effect on me was my father-in-law, because here was a man that didn't understand, necessarily, I knew more than him about theology and apologetics and all of those things, but here was a man who at least understood how I felt. And so what I'd say to you is, is that, listen, sometimes you just have to have an ear, someone that you can just share with how you feel and what's going on. You've got to be able to get that out. You can't suppress it and you can't hide it, because it will fester and it'll become worse.
And look, that person doesn't necessarily, I want to urge you as you do this, pick wisely who that person is. There's some people that aren't going to help you. If they're going to argue with you, if they're going to guilt you, they're not going to help you. And there are some people that if you tried to take that to them, it would hurt them. So for example, maybe somebody, not everybody can handle the fact that you have these questions. And you don't want to hurt them. In many cases, a person that's struggling with this, their spouse is probably not the best person to help talk to about this, because it might cause them to have questions they didn't have before. But bottom line is, find that can be an ear to you that you can talk with and be open with.
Joe: As you're saying that, I'm thinking about the inverse of that too, right, is like, wouldn't it be great if we made a practice of being that person who wasn't always trying to argue somebody who was doubting or whatever, or give them all the arguments and all the books that they should go buy on Amazon or whatever. But instead, just learn how to be listeners, which is, it's easier to find answers than it is to be a listener, I think.
Jamie: Right, right. I tell people this all the time is that, look, I've been doing apologetics for my whole life, it seems like now. And yes, there are lots of apologetic interactions that I have with people that I would not be having if it weren't for the fact that I'm kind of a professional apologist at this stuff. But I'm telling you, man, after having done this now for such a long time, most of the people that I talk with, yes, there's some kind of intellectual question that we need to bat around and we need to go around and round. But at the end of the day, the longer I talk to them and the more I listen to them and just listen to them, what I begin to discover is these are people just hurting and they need somebody to listen to them and understand and show some empathy. And man, they need a pastor at that point.
So my counsel to you all is, listen, if you're struggling with these things, one of the things you need to do is you need to find somebody that you can share your heart with and share your soul with and that helps. Two other things real quick, I'll just mention these and we'll be done, fourthly, sorry, my phone rang there. Fourthly, fourth thing I'd say to us is you need to rest. You need to take the time to rest your soul. And again, that's kind of part of the anecdote to not being hasty. You need to give yourself, allow some time to heal and to recover and to rest.
And then last thing I'd say to us, fifthly and finally, now I'd say to us, study. This is where apologetic resources can really help you. I mean, look, there's some understandable questions that we need to ask and answer. The good news is, again, the Christian faith is intellectually robust and I can assure you that there is a storehouse of saints that have gone before you that have wrestled with the questions you're dealing with and have provided answers to them. And this is where there are intellectual components. And now it's time to pick up the books. Most of the time, though, what people need to do as they deal with doubt and such, is not necessarily that, but there is a place for it.
Joe: Yeah. That good, too, that it's kind of at the end, because I mean, this is why all these books and things exist because we have questions, but just this concept that it's not always the first line. Just it's available just because it's easy to get to is not necessarily make it the first thing you should be doing.
Jamie: That's right. That's right. So again, that's that don't intellectualize it. If you treat it like it's only an intellectual issue, that's probably not going to be fruitful. But at the same time, don't undervalue the intellectual side of this. There may be some legit intellectual things that a person needs to think through about their faith. But at that point you're just now learning. We're just kind of posturing ourselves as learners before God. Anyway, rest assured, brothers and sisters, you're not alone. Lots of people have gone before us and wrestled with this as have I. And it's all going to be okay. God's not afraid of our questions.
Joe: That's great. This has been super encouraging. Thanks for this, Jamie.
Jamie: You Bet. Hey everybody, this is Jamie and Joe, again.
Joe: If you like this podcast, would you leave us a rating and review wherever you listen to podcasts? That helps other people find it.
Jamie: And if you have any questions, we'd love to hear about them just go to jamiedew.com/questions and send them in that way. And we'll take a look at the most frequently asked questions, and give them a shot.