MARTIN CAREY | Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist and Life Assurance Ministries Board Member
Why is strong, confident faith in God so hard to find and keep? When I was a young kid, believing was easy. Growing up in an Adventist home, reading the Bible and Ellen White, going to Adventist churches; we were sheltered and separate. My family lived in cultural Adventism with others of like mind, and our confidence in that culture was seldom challenged. Then trouble came. When I was seven my parents split up, and my dad left Adventism and became an atheist. As our lives became fragmented and uncertain, my confidence in knowing truth was shaken. Religious authority had to be questioned. However, I was also taught that if we questioned Adventism’s truth claims and especially Mrs. White, we would go on down the road of total unbelief and reject God altogether. This became a self-fulfilling prophecy.
If my parents had stayed married and my dad had remained Adventist, would we kids also have remained loyal? Perhaps, but one problem remained. As a child, I tried to keep the Sabbath and the baptismal vows, but I didn’t know Jesus or His gospel. As a young adult headed for college, I thought I had spiritual things figured out. Loyalty to a set of doctrines and genuine faith in the living Christ are very different things. To know the real Jesus, I would need to be jolted out of my comfortable religious stupor. Thank God, trouble was being prepared for me.
First Crisis
My first faith crisis hit me hard in my freshman year at Andrews University. It was December of 1976, and my dad and I were sitting at the kitchen table talking freely, and no topic was off limits. Dad was telling me, very calmly, why he no longer believed in God. His arguments camped on the old Freudian argument against faith: God is nothing but a human creation, a projection of our childish wish for a divine father to protect us. (see Armand Nicholi, The Question of God, p.42). Dad gave me a knowing smile, “As much as I may want to find comfort in childish beliefs about God, I have learned to face hard reality.” That night I lay awake feeling very sad that Jesus might be just a myth, but I had no answer to those arguments.
As a college student I wanted to be counted among the smart people, and I was vulnerable to clever thinking. I was already having doubts about God and wanting smart-sounding answers. The smart answers so often led me away from the real gospel of what Jesus has already completed for our salvation. My ship of faith was heading for the rocks.
The smart answers so often led me away from the real gospel of what Jesus has already completed for our salvation. My ship of faith was heading for the rocks.
When Jesus is just a beautiful idea and our religious upbringing is not grounded in a living connection with Him, the real person, our “faith” is illusion. In Adventism we added many doctrines to the gospel of Jesus, reducing His death and resurrection to a mere piece of a bigger puzzle. To remain saved, we were taught to preserve our faith by strengthening our wills, trying to make ourselves ever more determined. We cannot, by exercising our strong wills, create or maintain real saving faith. True faith has an object of focus that keeps us alive—the Lord Jesus and what He has done. Faith in Him is a continuing gift of grace by His Spirit, who never leaves those who belong to Him. Jesus knows His sheep, they hear His voice, and they follow Him, and He gives them eternal life, and no one can snatch them away (John 10:27-28).
To set us free from a counterfeit gospel, God has to break apart our false beliefs, our idols that we cling to. False gospels are not to be endlessly finessed or modified until they feel right. They are fatal to our souls, and must be repented of thrown out. Certainly, having your belief system crash on the shores of truth is a painful experience. This is where we are promised comfort and assurance of His presence and help.
Serious Help for Serious Doubts
Maybe you are struggling with doubts about Adventism, about the Bible, about God, about everything. Every year, many Adventists leave Adventism because they can no longer believe in it. The doubts may have been building for decades, only waiting to explode into the open. Many of these doubting Adventists abandon faith in Jesus altogether. During such a crisis of faith, we are in dangerous waters and we need rescue from the One who is mighty to save. If you are struggling with serious doubts about God and the Bible, you need serious help. There is gentle mercy for the doubter: “And have mercy on some, who are doubting” (Jude 22).
Jesus is in the business of rescuing helpless, foolish people like you and me. He can turn your shipwrecked faith into genuine faith in Him.
Paul helps us understand shipwrecked faith. He tells Timothy of two men who made a shipwreck of their faith:
“This charge I entrust to you, Timothy, my child, in accordance with the prophecies previously made about you, that by them you may wage the good warfare, holding faith and a good conscience. By rejecting this, some have made shipwreck of their faith, among whom are Hymenaeus and Alexander, whom I have handed over to Satan that they may learn not to blaspheme.” —1Timothy 18-20
Being handed over to Satan sounds ominous and final, but it was not. They are “handed over” to be taught, to learn, not to blaspheme. God does not teach those who are hopelessly lost to worship and honor Him. These men were believers who had wandered into sin, even blaspheming God. But God still cared. The root Greek word there for “learn” is paideuo, to train children, to chasten, discipline, correct (Strongs). There was hope for these men, and there is hope for those of us whose faith has crashed into the rocks of unbelief.
Shipwreck in Paul’s experience did not mean judgment and death; it meant loss, suffering, and a course correction.
Paul experienced literal shipwreck many times, and each time he was saved from it. Shipwreck in Paul’s experience did not mean judgment and death; it meant loss, suffering, and a course correction. It is true, there is a final shipwreck from which there can be no rescue. There are some who have become so hardened that they cannot repent. Esau was such a man, who sought repentance and could not find it (Heb. 12:15-17). There are those whose long commitment to sin has hardened them beyond repentance. Repentance is a gift from Him when we have nothing left.
The difference between the saved and the lost is genuine repentance and faith in Jesus who has paid for our sins completely. He is fully committed to keeping us, even when we make a mess of our lives. Repenting is turning away from our destructive path, and calling out to Jesus. He must become our treasure and our hope. Reject all substitutes for the real Jesus. The one who comes to Him, He will never cast out.
Grateful for the Crises
After decades of struggling with doubts and unbelief, I finally learned to be grateful for those crises of faith. They were gifts, sent to break my idols, discipline me, and teach me genuine saving faith. I get zero credit for my extra hard work and strong will.
My faith has found a resting place.
Enough for me that Jesus saves, this ends my fear and doubt;
A sinful soul, I come to him, he’ll never cast me out.
I need no other argument, I need no other plea,
It is enough that Jesus died, and that he died for me.
—E. E. Hewitt
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