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We, as humans have the propensity to suppress the truth in unrighteousness. This is sin. Therefore our unbelief is connected with sin. And all this becomes a very serious cause of doubt in people’s lives.
For example, my younger brother Nathan grew up in the same home, went to the same church and youth group, attended the same Christian college, yet came to some very different conclusions on God.
I remember one day during our college years, he and I were talking about the type of woman that he wanted to date. For years, he really didn’t have “Follower of Christ” high on his priority list when it came to the girls he dated, but he said he wanted that to change. He said he wanted to spend his time and potentially marry someone completely devoted to God.
But, before long, he began dating someone who was not a Believer.
It started as just co-workers, then just friends, then dating (but not seriously), then seriously dating (but not headed toward marriage), then living together (still not headed toward marriage). And, unsurprisingly, through this process of their relationship, he also wandered further and further from his walk with Christ.
From an outsider’s view, it was pretty easy to see the correlation to see the deeper that he got involved in that relationship, the further he walked away from God’s will. Because he knew what God’s standards are, and yet he wanted to get out from underneath those standards and any accountability. The only way to effectively do that is to walk away.
The ultimate end to that road is to become and Atheist. Because if God is the ultimate Moral Authority and you do not want to be held under anyone’s moral standards, then arrange your worldview to a position where you are accountable to no one but yourself.
And so I watched my little brother walk away because of Moral Doubts.
He has since married that girl. And we love them dearly, but it breaks my heart knowing that they have chosen to live separated from God.
Now, we hear this perspective from some of the world’s foremost Atheists themselves. Thomas Nagel of NYU said in his book The Last Word:
“I want atheism to be true and am made uneasy by the fact that some of the most intelligent and well-informed people I know are religious believers. It isn’t just that I don’t believe in God and, naturally, hope that I’m right in my belief. It’s that I hope there is no God! I don’t want there to be a God; I don’t want the universe to be like that.”
So, you see, there is not just rational decision making behind his Atheism, but also subjective and selfish desires.
We also can read quotes from Aldous Huxley, author of “Brave New World”:
“For myself as, no doubt, for most of my contemporaries, the philosophy of meaninglessness was essentially an instrument of liberation. The liberation we desired was simultaneously liberation from a certain political and economic system and liberation from a certain system of morality. We objected to the morality because it interfered with our sexual freedom; we objected to the political and economic system because it was unjust. The supporters of these systems claimed that in some way they embodied the meaning (a Christian meaning, they insisted) of the world. There was an admirably simple method of confuting these people and at the same time justifying ourselves in our political and erotic revolt: we could deny that the world had any meaning whatsoever.”
And there you have it. Atheism provides an intellectual shelter for sin. If there’s no God, there’s no objective moral law or Lawgiver. If there’s no moral law, the self becomes the final arbiter of “right and wrong.” I do what is right in my own eyes.
And so morality becomes a source for doubt for many of us. But what do we do about it?
1) If you are struggling with moral sin, simply confess these sins to God. Do not run from God, His Word or His people.
Psalm 32:1-5
1 Blessed is the one
whose transgressions are forgiven,
whose sins are covered.
2 Blessed is the one
whose sin the Lord does not count against them
and in whose spirit is no deceit.3 When I kept silent,
my bones wasted away
through my groaning all day long.
4 For day and night
your hand was heavy on me;
my strength was sapped
as in the heat of summer.5 Then I acknowledged my sin to you
and did not cover up my iniquity.
I said, “I will confess
my transgressions to the Lord.”
And you forgave
the guilt of my sin.
2) Seek out Christian friends who will walk alongside you, help you and keep you accountable to God’s Will. Plug into Christian community.
And, how do we help others who may be struggling with moral doubt?
For starters, you want to establish a friendship of trust and respect. Treat them as human beings who are made in God’s image and have inherent worth and value as such. So, be a good friend while you wait for reality to take its toll. Because when someone lives their lives apart from God’s Law, you are living life in a way in which human beings were not intended to live. And when they function apart from God’s intended human nature, they will not experience human flourishing. Instead, there will eventually be a breakdown in someway.
Reality is that there is a moral law, whether you want to believe in it or not. And when anyone lives apart from that moral law, there will be consequences.
But, if you’ve been a good friend all along to a person who finds themselves in the middle of a painful mess with their decision to walk away from God’s moral law at its root, then hopefully you’ll be the friend they turn to. And you can trust what God says in Romans 2:14-15
14 For when Gentiles who do not have the Law do instinctively the things of the Law, these, not having the Law, are a law to themselves, 15 in that they show the work of the Law written in their hearts, their conscience bearing witness and their thoughts alternately accusing or else defending them.
Deep down, we all are painfully aware of the corruption in our own lives. And if you haven’t severed your conscience fully, then you feel guilty. We feel guilty because we are guilty, because we are moral law breakers.
Once you have walked with your friend through their good times and then their painful times, you have the opportunity to offer them the hope of the Gospel.
If you don’t know exactly what to say, we see a perfect passage to share with them in this circumstance in Romans 8:1–2
1Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, 2 because through Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit who gives life has set you free from the law of sin and death.
So, to sum all of this up, we can look to the words of Christian apologist Ravi Zacharias:
“The longer I am in this work, the more I realize that intellectual struggles are merely the hazardous waste of life, blocking the heart from truth. The task of apologetics is to carefully remove that hazardous material and keep it from igniting into a destructive fire. Once that is done, the way to the heart is always through the way of the Cross, God’s love for each and every one of us.”
So, for any of us, there may be a host of issues that block our hearts from God’s truth.
Sometimes it’s Intellectual Doubt, sometimes it’s Emotional or Psychological Doubt, and sometimes it’s Moral Doubt. And when we experience doubt, we need to identify what the source is of our unbelief, and deal with that source appropriately. By doing this effectively, we can remove the barriers to the truth so that we will ultimately be able to see Jesus Christ.