Note the title! Yes, true believers can doubt. Sadly, it is so. It ought not to be, but it’s one of those stubborn facts of life – one which will not go away simply by wishing it so. Accommodating the words of Christ (Matt. 26:11; Mark 14:7; John 12:8), it seems we have to accept that ‘we will always have the unassured among us’. Why is this? Why do believers doubt? As I have explained, one reason is that many are on the wrong spiritual diet. Just as a lack of vitamin D and calcium can produce rickets in children, so misdirected or bad teaching can lead to all sorts of spiritual maladies for believers, including doubt and excessive introspection. Some of it stems from the misinformed preaching they heard before they were converted, and then go on hearing after their conversion. Downright error, of course, will be even more devastating! It happened in the New Testament. And that is why Paul and John (and others) wrote to certain believers – Paul confronting the Judaisers, and Paul and John the proto-Gnostics.1 Take Paul, writing to the Colossians:
So then, just as you received Christ Jesus as Lord, continue to live in him, rooted and built up in him, strengthened in the faith as you were taught, and overflowing with thankfulness. See to it that no one takes you captive through hollow and deceptive philosophy, which depends on human tradition and the basic principles of this world rather than on Christ (Col. 2:6-8). |