What Causes Doubts About Faith?

This past summer I heard Dr. Robert Stewart of New Orleans Seminary speak briefly about addressing doubts in twenty-somethings.  Dr. Stewart is the most popular seminar leader at a Collegiate Conference I attend every year.  He always speaks to standing room only crowds. He is at least twice as smart as I am.  So, I am always fascinated to hear what he has to say.  He spoke about a young man with whom he had dealt who was wrestling with some of those really hard questions....ones most of us struggle with, if we are honest.

As I thought about what Bob had to say, I realized it is not the deep, deep questions that trouble me.  Oh, I don't have good answers for all of them.  But for me, the doubt issues arise mostly out of seeing how people who say they love Jesus act some times and the ugly things they say.  It reminded me that many of the college and university students with which we deal have gone away from faith....or at least away from church not because of the deep questions, but just more everyday kinds of issues.

Here are some reasons I see college students express and react to doubts about faith and church.

1.  A moral foul-up.  They did something contrary to all they have been and believed prior to this.  This is particularly common with freshmen in a new setting away at college.  They are trying to make friends and find a place to just fit.

2.  Other students who are good, sharp, smart people who believe differently than they do.  Wait a minute, all the good sharp people they knew at home were Christians.

3.  A big change in life.  I am convinced that it is just change that causes many students to go away from their faith.  It is more drift than it is cataclysmic shift.

4.  A bad happening.  It is not unusual at all these days for parents to divorce once students have come to college.  They hung together for the sake of the kids and now feel it is ok for them to divorce or separate without damage to their children....but it does do damage.  It shakes all the student has held dear.

5.  A key religious figure let them down.  I have had lots of conversations that started with, "I can't believe my Youth Minister......".

6.  A personal belief is not true.  Sometimes, as faith matures, students realize something they have believed doesn't hold water. They have to be helped to realize that something we believe being wrong doesn't wipe out healthy, genuine faith.  Not everything people believes comes from the Bible.  After all, we all know the Bible says, "Cleanliness is next to godliness.".

As we deal with students who express doubts about the faith they previously held dear, they may raise the big questions about faith.  However, often its really not the tough questions that rocked their faith. It is what has happened in their personal world.

Part of our important job in college ministry is to help students face and deal with doubts. Part of how we must do that is to understand and help them understand what the real base issue is.

Also, we must help students to understand that if we are honest, we all doubt sometimes.  Doubt and questions are not contrary to faith.  And, we must help them understand that doubt when faced and dealt with can strengthen our faith and be a filter to unhealthy or untrue beliefs.

" Immediately the boy's father exclaimed, I do believe; help me overcome my unbelief." Mark 9:24 (NIV)

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