Hi friends,
Recently I received this email from a member of the community. Of course, I’m not including this person’s name or any other identifiable information. The message said:
Right now I’m having some struggles with my faith. I have all this evidence, but I don’t feel God’s presence. Sometimes I do but most times I don’t, and I’m terrified of going to Hell. I read my Bible everyday and pray multiple times a day. Sometimes I listen to worship music and that makes me cry. Could you please tell me how to overcome this challenge and get closer to God! Also, have you ever been in my experience? Thank you very very much.
When I got it, I thought it was interesting to read this the same day I was researching and writing a lesson for the Paradoxes of the Christian Life called “God’s Revelation, Stubborn Doubts.” It’s a topic I’m writing on for Academy students precisely because so many people have this experience.
And so, my friend, yes, I have also had similar experiences.
I remember a friend in college that I’ll call Jenny. She told me that she struggled to walk through malls, airports, and other places with a lot of people because, as she looked at all of them, knowing that many of them would die apart from God, they would go to hell. She couldn’t bear treating this as normal and civilized; she wanted to get a megaphone and start preaching the gospel. But she knew that, too, was doomed. She’d be ignored as a crazy person and banned from these spaces. So it was easier to avoid these spaces altogether.
In another season of life, I felt profound doubts about my faith, to the point that I would wonder if it was hypocrisy to be in Christian ministry. In an empathetic connection to the perspectives of my atheist and agnostic friends, I could feel what the world would be like if there was no God. Reading the news, I could sense how everything seemed to have a cause, with no need to reference the Bible to see how the day’s events unfolded.
So I called a mentor, a philosophy professor who has written a few books on evidence for the Christian worldview. I asked him, “Do you ever have crippling doubts?” He said, “Well, yes, I do.”
I asked him, “How do you handle those doubts?” To paraphrase, he said something along the lines of, “I think it’s part of being human. It means that I’m taking objections to my faith seriously. I’m wrestling with the difficult and complex questions. And then, I recall all the reasons I do believe in God. I didn’t come to believe just because, this is a commitment I made after thinking about it for many years.”
Then he ended with this quote by C.S. Lewis from Mere Christianity:
Now Faith, in the sense in which I am here using the word, is the art of holding on to things your reason has once accepted, in spite of your changing moods. For moods will change, whatever view your reason takes. I know that by experience. Now that I am a Christian I do have moods in which the whole thing looks very improbable: but when I was an atheist I had moods in which Christianity looked terribly probable.
This rebellion of your moods against your real self is going to come anyway. That is why Faith is such a necessary virtue: unless you teach your moods ‘where they get off’, you can never be either a sound Christian or even a sound atheist, but just a creature dithering to and fro, with its beliefs really dependent on the weather and the state of its digestion. Consequently one must train the habit of Faith (140-141).
Friend, as I read your email, I thought to myself, look at all the evidence that you know and love God:
- You have an abundance of evidence that he is real
- Sometimes you experience his presence
- You fear hell
- You’re drawn to read the Bible every day and pray throughout the day
- You listen to worship music and sometimes it makes you cry
If anything, I want to reassure you: you don’t have to go searching for God. God is already with you. He loves you, he calls you his beloved daughter, he gladly dwells within you, and he is revealing his care for you every time you feel drawn to be close to him.
As one next step, I think the Together course, which explains how to practice the presence of God, could be an encouragement. It’s free to sign up at this link: https://uncommonpursuit.kit.com/8f79a1a875.
Perhaps think of feeling God’s presence less in terms of a strong emotional experience—which we can’t realistically sustain all the time—and more as a recognition, by faith, that what God has said is true.
That is, instead of, “Where is God? Why don’t I feel him?”, try, “God, I thank you that you know me and love me. I trust that you are with me and caring for me.”
At the same time, we can cry out to God, “Where are you?” That lament is not an abandonment of faith but is part of what it means to be human, depending on God. Consider reading and meditating on Psalm 13, Psalm 42-43, Psalm 103, and Psalm 131. Or just flip through the Psalms until you find one that speaks to your heart.
This isn’t a quick fix (“Pop a Psalm once a day for spiritual comfort”) but an invitation to feel connected to the honest prayers of God’s people. God’s people have been praying these prayers for more than two millennia. They’ve stood the test of time.
The more we trust that God loves us is how we reassure our hearts that we are not headed to hell. Christ did not die on the cross because he was eager to find the tiniest little faults with us and condemn us. He isn’t harsh, crazy, mean, or demanding. No, he is gentle, kind, welcoming, and caring. Remember, he humbly washed the feet of his disciples before they understood who he was or what he was going to do for them.
I’m so glad you reached out with this question. If you feel comfortable, share any further thoughts here, or you can keep the conversation going on email for the sake of your privacy. I hope you might also have one or two trusted Christian friends who will hear your heart, listen without judgment, and pray with you in this struggle.