Doubt

We can be confident that God will enlighten us as we earnestly come before Him and want to know more about Him. 2nd Corinthians 4 states:
6 For it is the God who commanded light to shine out of darkness, who has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.
7 But we have this treasure in earthen vessels, that the excellence of the power may be of God and not of us.

Is is so critical that we allow God to enlighten us regarding His Word and His ways. When we experience doubts, when we have questions, we know that we can come to Him and allow Him to direct us, to give us wisdom, as James chapter 1 suggests. We should not run away from the Lord when we have those questions or doubts, but we should press in to know Him better.  He has revealed Himself through His Word, and He wants us to open our hearts to Him.

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In a recent article, the subject of today's commentary quoted a Scripture verse about being inquistive 
regarding the Scriptures. Matthew chapter 7 says:
7 "Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you.
8 For everyone who asks receives, and he who seeks finds, and to him who knocks it will be opened.

Charlotte is 27 years old, recently married, a student at Harvard Divinity School and the host of a new podcast.  She was raised in a Christian home, but when in college, she began to drift from the faith. According to a Christian Post article, she said she went to Christian meetings on campus, but, "I really was kind of living a little bit of a double life. I was trying to get away with hanging out with people I shouldn’t have been hanging out with, doing things I shouldn’t have been doing and thinking that ‘I can still believe this but I just don’t have to follow these rules.’” The article notes that, "At the time, she said she felt as if the Bible was 'kind of antiquated' because it was 'written a long time ago.'"

During her junior year of college, she studied abroad in England and began to more take steps away from the Christianity of her childhood. She relates, "I started reading atheists’ writings and literature. I was close with professors who were agnostic or atheist. I just started kind of trying it out,” adding, “I didn’t fully turn away from my faith but I wanted to see if I really needed it. Looking back on that year, I looked back over this journal I kept and I noticed in the journal all of the times that things of significance happened and I felt the need to write them down.” But, during that period, she recognized that she was "running away from God very actively...;" however, as she says, "He was running after me.”

On her plane trip back to the States, she had an encounter with the God from whom she was running; she relates, “I felt that God was accepting me back. It was almost this literal feeling of falling into somebody’s arms that has forgiven you, saying: ‘I still want you. I still want you back even though you ran away from me. I still want you.’ That was really when I completely gave my life to Christ.”

During that time in England, she realized that she had been “given the liberty and the freedom and the space to have doubts, to have questions, to wonder … if this is something that I believe and to what extent. The biggest realization I had was that Christianity was real and I couldn’t be halfway in. I couldn’t have one foot out the door all the time.”

The Post article says that in her podcast, called, appropriately enough, Doubting It, she "encouraged listeners that having spiritual doubts and questions is acceptable and something the Bible speaks on in the New Testament." She relates that, “It can be common … to have these questions, especially if you are raised in a religious household, in a household where everybody around you might be very devoutly religious." After all, Charlotte was raised in the home of one of the most high-profile Christians in America and perhaps the world: Vice-President Mike Pence. But, Charlotte Pence Bond says, "Trusting God doesn’t mean that we never have doubts...But we have to be honest about our doubts.”  She believes that this can be especially instructive for Millennials, saying, "...what I have noticed, at least a little bit of my theory about why millennials tend to be ‘less religious’ than other generations, I think is maybe partially to do with this doubt idea. We aren’t talking about the questions that we have.”

Charlotte has truly made her faith her own, and was willing to speak about how her Christian faith informs her pro-life views at a March for Life event earlier this year in Washington, DC.  Another Christian Post article states:

Charlotte Pence Bond said she isn’t pro-life simply because she is the daughter of U.S. Vice President Mike Pence or because she was raised in a Christian household.

Speaking at the March for Life youth rally on Thursday in Washington, D.C., Bond, who married Henry Bond in December, said her reasons for her position also include science, statistics and the harm it causes women and communities.

“My reasons are founded in my faith, they’re grounded in the fact that I was taught the value of human life. But they’re also backed up by other things. They’re backed up by science. … Science continues to prove that life begins earlier and earlier than previously thought,” the 26-year-old said.

I think we have to resist the tendency to make up our minds about a matter and somehow find Scripture to back up our position.  We have to approach God and Scripture with an open mind.  When we doubt, that can be an opportunity to learn more about the Lord. 

I also think we can learn from Charlotte that we are to own your own faith - our upbringing can be a strong influence, and the practice of church involvement is certainly impactful, but the fact is, we are not Christians because we attend church; we are part of the body of Christ because He lives in us.  We should not be deceived to think that just because we do religious things, that makes us a Christian.  It is not a matter of religious practice or religious heritage, our status as a Christian is solely because we have been saved and have a personal relationship with Christ.