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THE PENDULUM OF DOUBT #3
"IS THAT REALLY YOU, ALEX?"
There's a four-handkerchief scene in the Christian play, Shadowlands,
which has twice been made into films. You might have seen the BBC television
production, or the one starring Debra Winger and Anthony Hopkins. And
I guess, with some of the quotes we've shared already this week from C.
S. Lewis, we may as well stay with that motif.
But right at the close of the story, Joy Gresham has just died, succumbing
at last to bone cancer. After so many prayers and candles lit and all
the rest, she's gone. And where is God when the pain is so great? C. S.
Lewis, who has delivered many powerful but impersonal sermons about his
THEORY of how God uses pain as a megaphone to rouse a deaf world, now
feels the hollowness of his own words mocking him.
But there's also Douglas Gresham, just a 14-year-old boy. His parents
were already divorced, and now his mother is dead. And there's an unforgettable
Oscar scene where C. S. Lewis, "Jack," and this young boy sit
up in the attic where the cupboard filled with coats leads to the imaginary
Kingdom of Narnia. And now Douglas, his face filled with grief, wonders
aloud if maybe the whole business of God is just all imaginary too. Where
in the world is God now?
And it's a moment filled with such doubt. "Jack," the kid says
at last, "do you believe in heaven?" The question just hangs
there in the air. Because for Lewis as well, if there's no heaven, then
he has lost his Joy forever. If there's no heaven, then everything he
has written for huge worldwide audiences is a lie. And in his own anguish,
he considers the question. "Do you believe in heaven, Jack?"
Finally he answers: "Yes, Douglas, I do."
And Douglas just shakes his head slowly. "I don't believe in heaven,"
he says at last, his voice a mixture of heartache and doubt and maybe
a bit of anger. Because where in the HELL had God been when he prayed
so hard? His mom is probably gone forever now. "I don't believe in
heaven," he says, his eyes wet.
And C. S. Lewis just considers this statement, and the pain and the doubt
it represents. Finally he gives a little nod. "That's all right,"
he whispers. . . . and then they both dissolve into tears as the first
tiny seeds of faith have to bloom again from scratch.
Now, friend, I would never say that such a celluloid moment speaks for
God. But the plain truth is that you and I are sometimes rocked by doubts
. . . and rocked HARD by them. And we may think the word "hell"
even while wondering if heaven and hell are just a tandem pair of cruel
jokes. Where IS God when it hurts? People even in the Bible have cried
over lost loved ones many centuries before this one tiny flicker of doubt
on July 13, 1960.
It wouldn't be very scholarly to spend this entire week on the topic of
doubt, and never once mention the famous doubting disciple, Thomas. I
guess the expression "doubting Thomas" has actually made it
right into the lexicon of our speech, hasn't it? It's in your dictionary.
And we're planning to think more about Thomas tomorrow. But I can't help
but notice — and you find this story in John chapter 20 — that Christ
is very tender toward this man who earlier, in his bitterness, had cried
out: "Aaah, I don't believe it! He's dead! He's gone! Leave me alone!"
Jesus doesn't yell at this doubting man; He doesn't condemn him. In fact,
He almost gives that same quiet line: "It's all right. I understand.
I know how filled with grief you were. But Thomas, now look. Here I am.
Feel and see for yourself."
It was the same with Elijah — we mentioned him yesterday — and with Peter,
whose doubts caused him to take a real bath. John the Baptist went so
far as to wonder aloud about his own Cousin: "Is He the chosen Messiah
or isn't He?" Read the gentle response from Jesus for yourself, right
there in Matthew 11. And friend, in those moments when doubt creeps into
our minds, and we wonder if Jesus is really there, I believe we can count
on that same patience, that same graciousness. "I'm still here,"
He promises . . . even though we might not hear that wonderful voice.
"I'm still here. True, in the current shadows, maybe you can't sense
My presence. The break of dawn is still a little ways off. But I'm here,
and I understand your doubts and fears."
It's been a clear Bible principle this week that our understanding is
finite. I mean, right here at this moment, what do you know for sure?
Well, you know that it's Wednesday. You know you're listening to the radio.
And you're reasonably sure that it's me, Lonnie Melashenko, and not some
gifted mimic or impersonator. Or that Armando has taken this new digital
computer program, ProTools, and spliced together a Wave File here and
a few words and created a phantom radio sermon. But just the possibility
of that kind of sleight-of-hand makes you wonder what you really do KNOW.
It was back on in history, March 10, 1876, that a guy named Watson heard
a disembodied voice coming through the speaker: "Mr. Watson, come
here, I want you." But how could he know that was Alexander Graham
Bell there on Line One? How could he know that exactly 123 years later
we'd have cellular phones and satellite transponders and the ability to
call from America to Beijing, China, for 25 cents a minute if you dial
10-10-something-something-something first? We all have the things that
we know, and the things that we don't know, either because we're not smart
enough or because we can't see 123 years into the future or even 123 minutes.
I mentioned yesterday a terrific essay, or book chapter, entitled "What
to Do With Doubt," from the classic book, Steps to Christ. And the
writer, Ellen White, acknowledges the limits of our knowledge.
"We can understand as much of [God's] purposes as it is for our
good to know," she writes; "and beyond this we must still trust
the hand that is omnipotent, the heart that is full of love."
And it is ALL RIGHT, she observes, for us to not know everything. Even
Jesus told Peter once that there were things he simply did not have to
know. Not then, and maybe not ever. "You just keep following Me,"
He quietly reminded. Here's a bit more from same essay on faith and doubt:
"In the natural world," she continues, "we are constantly
surrounded with mysteries that we cannot fathom. The very humblest forms
of life present a problem that the wisest of philosophers is powerless
to explain." That's true, isn't it? Just watch the Discovery Channel!
She goes on: "Everywhere are wonders beyond our ken. Should we then
be surprised that in the spiritual world also there are mysteries that
we cannot fathom? The difficulty lies solely in the weakness and narrowness
of the human mind. God has given us in the Scriptures sufficient evidence
of their divine character, and we are not to doubt His word because we
cannot understand all the mysteries of His providence."
This says two things, really. First of all, it's all right if we don't
know some things. Secondly, it's possible to know ENOUGH to be assured
of salvation! That's good news, isn't it? There's enough in the Bible
that we CAN be saved. We can know John 3:16 and its promise about Calvary
and eternal life, and really, that's ENOUGH.
We shared once here on this program the old Billy Graham story from his
autobiography, Just As I Am. And even the great Dr. Graham has to stand
before God "just as I am," with fears and worries. But early
in his ministry, he was assailed with huge theological doubts. His minister
buddies, his peers, were all going liberal — doubting the Bible, discarding
the virgin birth, chucking the cross. Were the words in these 66 books
true or not true? He couldn't explain the mysteries, the dichotomies,
the apparent contradictions. And here, summer of 1949, he was about to
take on the huge L.A. evangelistist series. How could he conscientiously do that if
he was filled with doubts? One moonlit night up in the San Bernardino
Mountains, he almost left the faith, wrestling in the darkness with this
unseen God who had sent down this mysterious Book.
And finally Billy Graham just decided: "I'm going to hang onto the
things I know, and by faith trust You, Father, regarding the things I
don't know!" He got up from his knees and never again allowed the
doubts created by his limited mind to shake his faith in God.
One of the preachers I most admire is our own John McLarty, who recently
left the Voice of Prophecy program to return to pastoral ministry. He's
a keen thinker, a reader, a man who enjoys wrestling with hard theology
and the mysteries that often confound preachers. And once he and David
were animatedly discussing some very difficult, unsolvable topic. And
after spinning their wheels, David asked him: "John, what do you
do with this? There doesn't seem to be an answer! I certainly don't have
one, and neither do you."
And John's answer speaks volumes. "God has called me to preach the
things I DO know," he answered simply. And in pulpits across the
country and here on the radio, his wonderful, Christ-centered scripts
expressed the realities of the truths he DID know: Calvary, the power
of God, the Second Coming, the life-changing properties of the Bible.
True, he still loved to dig into the hard things, the unanswerables. He
wrote lively treatises that humbly fleshed out POSSIBILITIES for some
of those things. But friend, the murky horizons beyond which we don't
know should never shake our faith in the things we DO know!
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