ABS--Doubter's Prison

     The ABS continues this Friday in the Book of James, Chapter 1.

     These are strange times we live in Brothers, and a stranger World as well. We often ask ourselves why matters of eschatology can't be clear cut and black and white like they used to be. Why are there so many grey areas in the realm of faith? When did all this doubt creep in? Is it possible that people always doubted the way we do now?

     Chapter 1 of James leads one to think that struggling with doubt is not something unique to our so-called post-modern age. "5 If any of you lacks wisdom, you should ask God, who gives generously to all without finding fault, and it will be given to you. 6 But when you ask, you must believe and not doubt, because the one who doubts is like a wave of the sea, blown and tossed by the wind. 7 That person should not expect to receive anything from the Lord. 8 Such a person is double-minded and unstable in all they do." James 1:5-8

     Here is James, half-brother of Christ himself, writing to the early Judaic Christian Church (which is getting the Word and the Truth explained by actual living and breathing Disciples) about doubt. So, apparently there was enough doubt even then (a mere thirty years after the death of Jesus Christ) to cause James to caution against it and the destabilizing effect it had on a man's character and salvation. But why caution against it at all? Isn't doubt an important thing? Aren't we encouraged to doubt, as opposed to blind faith?

     It seems to be a problem of attitude with James. It's fine to ask God for wisdom if you lack it, because He will generously give it to you--but there comes a time to put doubt to rest, like Thomas when he felt and saw the actual holes in the hands of the risen Christ.

     Doubt, per James, is less of a rigorous intellectual test by man, equipped with the God-breathed power of reason, than a persistent tendency towards a procrastination borne of flesh-based instability. As such, a man stuck in the low-gear of a persistent doubt, who cannot come to a decision based on all he has seen, heard, felt and experienced will flutter to and fro like a wind-borne wave. His mind will be divided in two (at least) and his life will be marked by instability in ALL of his pursuits.

     Such men, who live and die without ever fishing or cutting bait, are unlikely to live to purpose for they can formulate no goal higher than the satisfaction of their own internal quest for a truth requiring no leap of faith whatsoever; seeking not to be led by the Spirit, they demand that God placard bumper-sticker-instructions in the clouds: "BELIEVE IN ME".

     Unlike our fore-fathers, Men Of Doubt take no truths as self-evident, and thus ultimately die having seen nothing for which a stand was ever worth taking. This then is the danger of doubt. This then is why James calls upon Christians to ask God for the wisdom to set aside doubt and become men of stable purpose. May it be such with us Brothers. May we help each other toward that end. Aye.