By T.C. Lo (June 1, 2012)
A teenager raised in a strong Christian family would most likely grow into a strong Christian during his years at home. But I have seen young people stop going to church once they leave home, entering a spiritually unprotected open campuses.
Perhaps this student is confronted with thorny questions, such as “Since evil and suffering exists, a loving God cannot” or “Since miracles contradicts science, they cannot be true” and among others.
This kind of struggle, however, is not unique to young adults – sometimes mature pastors and church leaders had to deal with doubt too.
When Billy Graham’s well respected friend and close co-worker in the ministry Charles Templeton fell away from his faith in 1946 after he was enrolled at the liberal Princeton Theological Seminary, Graham was greatly disturbed, saying “My faith was under siege….My respect and affection for Chuck were so great that whatever troubled him trouble me too.”
In the midst of his spiritual battle, God had sent a very godly woman, Miss Henrietta Mears who was the director of religious education at First Presbyterian Church of Hollywood, to encourage the young Billy. Her enthusiasm for the Lord Jesus Christ was contagious. The following is Billy Graham’s own words as printed in his Biography entitled “JUST AS I AM,” pp.135-138.
I ached as if I were on the rack, with Miss Mears stretching me one way and Chuck Templeton stretching me the other….
If I could not trust the Bible, I could not go on. I would have to leave the pulpit evangelism. I was only 30 years of age. It was not too late to become a dairy farmer….
But that night I believed with all my heart that the God who had saved my soul would never let go of me. I got up and took a walk. The moon was out. The shadows were long in the San Bernardino Mountains surrounding the retreat center. Dropping to my knees there in the woods, I opened the Bible at random on a tree stump in front of me. I could not read it in the shadowy moon light, so I had no idea what text lay before me…
O God! There are many things in this book I do not understand. There are many problems with it for which I have no solution. There are many seeming contradictions. There are some areas in it that do not seem to correlate with modern science. I can’t answer some of the philosophical and psychological questions Chuck and others are raising….
I was trying to be on the level with God, but something remained unspoken…
At last the Holy Spirit freed me to say it. “Father, I am going to accept this as Thy Word—by faith! I am going to allow faith to go beyond my intellectual questions and doubts, and I will believe this to be Your inspired Word.” When I got up from knees at Forest Home that August night, my eyes stung with tears. I sensed the presence and power of God as I had not sensed it in months. Not all my questions were answered, but a major bridge had been crossed. In my heart and mind, I knew a spiritual battle in my soul had been fought and won.
If you, graduates, are in the midst of a spiritual battle, may I suggest the following “ABCD” approach (adapted from a section of Ravi Zacharias’ book, The Grand Weaver, page 123):
• Ask without fear—The atheistic challenges are not new. Thoughtful Christians have given considerable research. You don’t have to bear the burden all by yourself. Ask your home church leaders and they are willing to help you.
• Being before doing—You must know who you are first before pursuing explanations to their difficult questions or before doing God’s will. I am a child of God related to my heavenly Father. Nothing can change that relationship. I am not my own. I belong to Him. Resting in that knowledge, I know what it is to be His. I should pursue doing God’s will, then and by his grace he will enable my will.
• Convictions without compromise— A conviction is not merely an opinion. It is something rooted so deeply in the conscience that to change a conviction would be to change the very essence of who you are. The most important conviction is that the Bible is the Word of God. While we cannot explain everything in the Bible, that is no reason for us to disregard the positive evidence for God and Jesus’ claims.
“To deny what we know on the basis of what we don’t know is not only bad theology but bad science as well.” (quoted from R.C. Sproul’s book “Reason to Believe”, page 129)
• Discipline without dreariness — The Lord tells us that he disciplined those he loves. By implication, then, the undisciplined life is an unloved life. Don’t interpret doubt as a loss of faith. My personal experiences are that doubting has been a way to strengthen my faith. An unexamined faith is not worth living for (adapted from Socrates’ famous line).
