A seven-part series for anyone who believes and still lies awake wondering.
A note before we start
This series is not written to win an argument. It is written for the person in the pew.
Maybe that is you. You showed up Sunday. You sang the songs. You would tell anyone who asked that you believe. And underneath all of it, in a place you do not talk about, there is a question you are half afraid to say out loud.
Can I actually trust this book?
Not “can somebody, somewhere, defend it.” Can you trust it. With your marriage. With your grief. With the child who has walked away. With the diagnosis. With the part of you that is tired of pretending you have never had a doubt in your life.
I have been teaching Scripture for more than thirty years, and I can tell you the pews are full of people carrying that exact question in silence. So we are going to take it out into the light and look at it together. Seven posts. One honest question at a time.
Let’s begin where you actually are.
There is a lie that gets whispered in a lot of churches, and it is all the more dangerous because nobody ever says it from the pulpit. The lie is this. Real Christians don’t doubt.
So when the doubt comes, and it will come, you assume something has gone wrong with you. You feel like a fraud. You keep your questions in a locked drawer and you smile on Sunday and you wonder if the person next to you can tell.
I want to open that drawer, and I want to tell you the truth. Doubt is not the opposite of faith. The opposite of faith is indifference. Doubt means you still care whether the thing is true. Doubt is faith that has been handed a hard question and refuses to look away.
What the Bible does with a doubter
Here is what should surprise you. The Bible is not embarrassed by doubt. It puts doubters right in the center of the story and never once flinches.
Think of the father in Mark 9. His son is tormented, and he comes to Jesus wrung out, at the end of himself, and he says one of the most honest sentences in all of Scripture. “Lord, I believe. Help my unbelief!” (Mark 9:24, NKJV). Read that again. He believes and he does not believe, in the same breath, and he says so to the face of God.
The word behind his cry is apistia (ἀπιστία, G570), unbelief, faithlessness. He names his own unbelief out loud, to Jesus, and Jesus does not scold him. Jesus heals his boy. The honest doubter walks home with a healed son.
Then there is Thomas, who has taken more than his share of grief for wanting to see the nail marks. But look at what Jesus does. He does not lecture Thomas. He shows up in the room, holds out His hands, and says, “Reach your finger here” (John 20:27). Jesus meets the doubt with evidence, not contempt.
And the Psalms. A full third of them are laments. “How long, O Lord? Will You forget me forever?” (Psalm 13:1). That is in your Bible. God put the questions in the songbook.
The two kinds of doubt
We should be careful here, because the New Testament actually uses more than one word, and they are not the same.
| Greek word | Script | Strong’s | Meaning |
|---|---|---|---|
| distazō | διστάζω | G1365 | to waver, to be pulled two directions |
| diakrinō | διακρίνω | G1252 | to be divided against oneself, to dispute within |
| apistia | ἀπιστία | G570 | unbelief, an absence of trust |
When Peter steps out on the water and starts to sink, Jesus asks, “Why did you doubt?” (Matthew 14:31). That word is distazō. It is the picture of a man standing at a fork, wavering, looking two ways at once. Notice that Peter doubts while Jesus is holding him by the hand. The hand does not let go.
There is a doubt that is honest wrestling, the father in Mark 9, Thomas in the upper room, David in the Psalms. And there is a hardened refusal that has decided the answer before it ever asks the question. This series is for the first kind. If you are still asking, you are not lost. You are in very good company.
Where we are going
Over the next six posts we are going to walk through the questions one at a time. Where this book even came from. Whether it has been changed in the copying. What to do with the contradictions people love to bring up. The passages that trouble you and that you feel guilty for being troubled by. Whether any of it actually happened. And at the end, the question underneath all the others. Can I trust it with my life.
We are not going to rush. We are not going to pretend the hard parts are easy. And we are not going to leave you where we found you.
For now, hear this one thing and let it settle. The question you have been afraid to ask is a question God has already made room for. He wrote a whole book with doubters in it and never scrubbed a single one out.
You’re allowed to ask this. So let’s ask it together.
Next: Where did this book even come from?
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