IT’S OK TO HAVE DOUBTS
Second Baptist’s Young talks candidly about a common experience
The Rev. Ben Young is a study in contrasts. He is highly educated but speaks the language of the everyman, his writing punctuated with both academic references and personal experiences. The 54-yearold is a respected professional, a pastor at Second Baptist Church in Houston, yet is perfectly happy surfing and working to get the sand out of his car. He is a man of great faith but is able to fearlessly discuss doubts in his own life. We sat down to discuss his recently published seventh book, “Room for Doubt.” Inspired by his dissertation, it offers a highly accessible dose of honesty, examining doubt as a common experience in historical and biblical contexts, and in the lives of believers today. Our conversation was a rolling, hourlong dialogue, including theology, personal stories, lame dad jokes and, in the end, a refreshing take on the near-certainty of uncertainty and how it can lead to great faith. Excerpts follow.
Q: Why come out with this book, and why now?
A: This book has been rumbling around inside of me since 2006. I’d gone through a long season of doubt in my life, and — like they say in AA, only a drunk can help another drunk — I say only a doubter can help another doubter.
My doctoral dissertation was “A Qualitative Study of Doubt in the Evangelical Tradition.” That just
led into this book.
By sharing my own story and the stories of others I know, I’m hoping to show that there is room for doubt, that doubt is historical, it’s biblical and that doubt is a part of faith. They are two sides of the same coin.
Q: You talk about what children are taught in Sunday school, and then at some point they find out the story is more complicated. So, does this doubting sometimes stem from questioning what we’ve been told about God rather than doubting God?
A: Those things are so connected, what we’ve been told about God and who God actually is. It’s hard to parse those out. When Modernism and Enlightenment thought began taking over Western culture, they said, “Hey, we can achieve objective certainty through reason and the scientific method.” A lot of those in the Christian community said, “If you can have certainty, we can offer that, too, and will ground it in the Bible.”
It was like being at a high school football game. One side is shouting: “We’ve got certainty. Yes, we do! We’ve got certainty, how ’bout you?” And the other side shouts: “We’ve got more! We’ve got more!”
I believe in the Bible. I believe the Bible is true. It is God’s word. At the same time, my confidence, the foundation of my faith is in Jesus Christ and in His bodily resurrection. When the disciples went out after Christ ascended, they didn’t say, “You better believe in all 39 books of the Old Testament. You better believe in the inerrancy of the entire Bible.” No, they went around telling people about the good news of Jesus Christ. Their understanding of scripture came later.
Q: C.S. Lewis, Mother Teresa, Martin Luther — this is perhaps your most understated sentence — “these are not lightweights.” And yet, they expressed doubts. Is it maturity that allows us to rest in God even though we don’t understand everything and even doubt certain things?
A: For some people, God gives them a gift of childlike faith, and they maintain that for their entire life. My mom was like that. I have brilliant friends who have never struggled with doubt. So, I don’t think that doubting necessarily means you’re mature, or not.
I think it’s about understanding that it’s OK to doubt, that God doesn’t want us to have “objective certainty.” He wants us to trust Him. We don’t know what happens tomorrow, so God’s looking for trust.
Growing up, the game seemed to be: “Do you know that you know that you know?” If you were hit by a Mack truck on the way out of here and killed, would you go to heaven or hell? And if you didn’t know, you had to say the sinner’s prayer and, this time, you have to really mean it!
It’s as if the goal was for you to have emotional and psychological certainty. But a lot of people have that certainty. Richard Dawkins has emotional and psychological certainty that there is no God. Terrorists around the world have psychological certainty. So, I don’t think that’s the goal.
The goal is trust. It’s to keep moving forward amidst a lot of uncertainty. The “hall of fame of faith” — Hebrews chapter 11 — is about men and women who faced a great deal of uncertainty and still trusted God anyway.
They just trusted that God was there, that He loved them and that, somehow, some way, in this life or the next, things were going to work out. They had this raw trust in God.
Look at the Book of Job. Seventy percent of the Book of Job is about doubt.
Q: Right. In fact, when I read that, I thought you were pretty kind with the word “doubt.” That it is actually “accusation.”
A: Yes! Jennifer Hecht, who is an atheist, says that the Book of Job is actually one long “howl against God.”
But here’s what I’m coming to understand: God wants us to be honest with Him. He wants all of our emotions. He can handle them. If it’s anger and doubt because I lost my house and my car in the (Hurricane) Harvey flooding, and now money is scarce, and it’s like, “God, why would you do this to me?” Just say it.
God is OK with that. God wants our heart and our mind. He doesn’t want us to be robots. For a long time, I didn’t think I could do that, or else God might throw a lightning bolt down.
Funny thing about that is, if God is God, He already knows we have those thoughts. He already knows we’re thinking them. We might as well verbalize it. Q: So, what’s the takeaway on all this? A: The more I sought to communicate through teaching, preaching and writing, the more I was convinced to not let words mess up a good book or a good sermon. I want to let God teach, to trust God to move.
That was hard for me because I wanted certainty for so long. I wanted to be crystal clear. And, well, I still want to be clear, but I think sometimes it is good to just live in the question, to let people roll around in the question.
This is the paradox. In dealing with my own doubt, in talking with others who have gone through doubt, it’s not just one size fits all. We are called to reflect the character of God, but at the same time we are broken, imperfect people.
I am not sure if this answers the questions people may have. But the whole thing is this: I’m OK saying, “I don’t know.”