Pressing through Doubt

I am still reading through the scriptures - or should I say "slugging" through it. Sometimes it's easy to read the scriptures. It seems so alive with story, hope, faith, love, grandeur, the glory of God. Sometimes it is not. Sometimes it is filled with questions. There are questions of "why would you include this in the scripture?", "what is the value of this?", "I don't understand any of what this is about."

I know there are some people who claim they never struggle with scripture - that it is only light and life - but I cannot say that. As I've read over the Prophets - today's reading was in Zechariah 7 - 14 - I am struck by the harsh tone, the predictive judgments, the language and lack of faith, hope and love. It is a reason why some people simply avoid this section of scripture. It's almost a passive form of saying, "I don't believe God wrote this section."

There are also people who want to make the Bible not only Old and New Testaments, but also Old and New God. The temptation to do that is understood, even if foolish. No, what we struggle with is doubt. How can we understand God in the midst of this language?

It's the same story of the little girl who asked her father one day: "If God loves us so much why doesn't he make us happy all of the time?" It's a good question; but then the realization is that we might lose sight of what real happiness is if all we experienced was happiness. As important as being happy is, if that becomes our object, then God will not. We go through the valleys of doubt because - perhaps - God's goal isn't for us to be happy, but to be good, godly, willing to slug it out in our valleys of doubt and learn to trust when all is not well...when all is not happy.

Peace


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