Doubt

Have you ever doubted your faith?

I have.

I did it this morning, in fact. It happened while I was listening to one of my favorite podcast; the subject was morality. They were telling a story about primates and how they settle arguments in the end it was concluded, with enough evidence to compel me, that primates have a sense of morality. It had always been my belief, though I won't go into the details now, that the one quantifiable quality that separated us from our animal friends was the ability to understand right and wrong as is seemingly stated in Genesis. I was wrong.

Right then an there, like a swift punch in the gut, doubt exploded in my mind.

How can primates know the difference between is right or wrong? And yet there it was, proof that they do. How can this be?

The sting of doubt is one that is familiar to us all. At some point in our lives we will doubt God and religion. We will read something, hear something, or experience something, that will bring doubt racing into our vulnerable minds. If you try to prevent it you will fail, it is a fact of life that doubt will come. Like a weed it will grow rapidly and fill your thoughts and try to choke out your faith.

So how do you fight it?

Simple. You don't.

Well sort of. After hearing that story about the moral capacity of primates, I was filled with doubt, but I used that doubt to fuel my search for answers. I began to dive into science articles and news reports and found a few very exciting fact. Humans are the only animals with the capacity for moral judgment. The primates have only instinctual understandings of morality. (I will be talking about this experiment in a later blog) As soon as I learned this that cloud of doubt disappeared. Replaced by a stronger faith and greater understanding of God and the universe he created.

Doubt doesn't have to be evil, sometimes it can be the very thing that leads you into a deeper relationship with God. If you ever doubt your faith in God, or anything for that matter, just use that doubt to fetter out the truth and then be even stronger in your beliefs.