Concerning Doubt

In my personal Bible reading, I recently worked through the Book of Luke (fitting, since I started reading it right before Christmas; and with the first few chapters being the primary source for the Christmas story...). It struck me as interesting to read through some of the passages contained in Luke four—the sections of Jesus’ temptation in particular and of Peter’s calling in chapter five. Right after Jesus is baptised by his cousin John, he wanders around in the Jordanian wilderness for 6 weeks, at the end of which Satan comes to tempt Him. Take a good look at exactly what Jesus’ temptations involve in this passage (Luke 4:1-13). If we look past the immediate things—the bread, the lordship and the frivolous demonstration of God’s power—there seems to be something else going on. In all three instances, Satan questions and challenges Jesus’ divine nature. He attacks Jesus’ authority & Jesus’ origin. Take a look: Satan says, “If you are the Son of God;” “If you worship before me;” and again, “If you are the Son of God” in this part of Luke’s Gospel when he’s trying his hardest to overpower Jesus.

Why did Satan phrase the temptations to Jesus in these ways? How come the Accuser of the Saints was spending all of his energies & efforts on the Son of the Most High God by questioning and attacking Christ’s divinity? From what I know about temptation and how Satan’s accusations work, it’s certain that Satan is the father of all lies (John 8:43-44) and that he seeks to find those whom he can devour (1 Peter 5:8). What, then, is the easiest way to overcome an enemy or to overpower a victim? Does the attacker go head-on to the most fortified position, the most heavily-defended point; or will he survey the victim, assaying which things pose a potential weakness & then exploit those weaknesses in order to break through defences? If Satan is smart (and I figure that he is), he definitely would want to maximise the potential for successful attacks by focussing on the weakest areas of defence.

I’m fairly certain that that’s how Satan works in my life, and I’m pretty sure it’s universal: he finds the areas of our lives where we’re the least certain, where we’re weakest & he exploits those weaknesses to trip us up, to make us fall, to tear us down & to destroy us. Often times, our weakest points tend to be related to the deep-set desires within. Greed is a twisted desire for comfort. Rage is a twisted desire for control. Lust is a twisted desire for the marriage relationship. Envy is a twisted desire for equality or fairness. Jealousy and pride are twisted desires for recognition. So what’s going on with Satan’s method of approach to Jesus in the wilderness, then? Why does he spend almost all of his efforts on questioning and undermining Jesus’ Sonship?

Here’s a possible explanation as to why Satan challenged Jesus in this manner: maybe Satan wanted to make Jesus uncertain. Maybe he was trying to put doubts into the Christ’s identity. Now I know that it’s nothing that we can confirm (or deny, I suppose) this side of heaven, but it would be an interesting thing to ask Jesus when I get to see Him face to face. “How much did the ‘fully human’ part of you, Jesus, come into conflict with the fact that you are the Son of God? Did you have to believe in your divinity the same way that we do? Did you ever struggle with that dual nature—being fully God & fully human? Did you ever have doubts?” We know that there were some miraculous attestations to Christ’s Sonship at the beginning of Jesus’ ministry: there was the voice from heaven after His baptism (Luke 3:21-22) and the prophetic declaration by John the Baptist that Jesus indeed was the divine redeemer (John 1:29-34)—both of which happened immediately before Jesus roamed around in the wilderness... but you’d still have to believe that what John said was true, and you’d have to believe that the voice from heaven which you heard was actually a real voice (for sometimes, when “voice from heaven” proclaims things, only certain people understand it [Acts 22:6-9]). It’s pretty clear from the Scriptures that John was convinced that Jesus was God’s Son, and we know that Jesus was certain as a child... but how many of us were thoroughly convinced of something as a child only to start doubting it later on in our adult lives? How many of us have heard promises about the future, and in the delay of their fulfilment, start to doubt if they would ever come to pass? If your mother told you as a 3 year-old that an angel came to her before you were born & said that you were the Son of God who would be the Saviour of the people, you probably would believe her... but when you turned thirty & all you’ve done with your life for the past 27 years has been to work with wood in a provincial town, it’s plausible that—as a human—you might question whether the statement made by your mom all those years ago might have been little more than “just talk.”

We believe that Jesus was fully human while He walked around on earth with us a couple of millennia ago. I wonder if Satan was trying to capitalise on the fact that humans are prone to weakness of faith in light of delay. I wonder if Satan was trying to trip Jesus up—trying to make Him doubt that He was the Son of God. I wonder if Satan’s challenges in the desert made any impact on the human part of Jesus. My Old Testament instructor back in Bible school almost a decade ago commented on this passage in the desert as being a perfect example of how & when humans give into temptation. His acronym to describe the scenario was HALT: Hungry, Angry, Lonely and Tired. The theory he proposed was that people will more often than not give into temptation when one or more of these conditions are present in the situation. In the desert, Jesus had been wandering around for forty days by himself. No doubt he was lonely & tried... and what do we see that Satan tempts Christ with first? The devil enticed Jesus to make food by challenging the authenticity of Christ’s divinity: “If You are the Son of God, tell this stone to become bread” (Luke 4:3). The style of this temptation is two-fold: if Jesus gave in, Satan would have caught Jesus in the trap of subservience, for if Jesus did what Satan told Him to do, Satan could cite that instance as being in higher authority than Jesus. If Jesus resisted the temptation, Satan could cite Jesus’ resistance to being a cover-up for not really being the Son of God. The more that Jesus resisted the devil, the more “ammo” Satan potentially had in trying to make Jesus doubt His own divinity.

The chapter in the book of Luke following Jesus’ temptation recounts for us the story of when Peter, James and John were called to be Jesus’ disciples. Luke relays the story, telling us that Peter had just spent a futile night trying to catch fish. Jesus comes along and tells Peter to go out one more time and drop his nets. Now Peter is a professional fisherman. He’s been fishing probably for his entire working life—maybe even longer. Jesus is the son of a carpenter. What does he know about fishing? Why in the world would the fish be out in broad daylight, when birds & other predators were at their most active? If they had no luck catching fish under the shroud of darkness when the fishing was its most fruitful, what made this wood-cutter’s son think that fish could be caught now? I wouldn’t be surprised if such thoughts were racing through Peter’s head when Jesus asked him to go out this last time. Even the tone of Peter’s reply in this Gospel betrays the fact that he had his doubts about the attempt: “Master, we worked hard all night and caught nothing, but I will do as You say and let down the nets” (Luke 5:5). Despite his doubts, Peter obeyed as he went out & cast his nets in the lake one more time.

Sandwiched between the stories of Jesus’ temptation & Peter’s miraculous catch, Luke tells the story of Jesus speaking to the citizens of his hometown. It, again, is a story of doubt and uncertainty. The people, after hearing Jesus claim ownership of some Messianic prophecies in the book of Isaiah, start murmuring amongst themselves, discussing with scepticism the credulity of whether this local carpenter’s son actually was the Christ. Motivated by their doubt, they challenged Jesus to prove to them that He really was the Saviour, and Jesus, in response, rebukes them for their lack of faith. Furious that this self-assuming wood-worker had enough nerve to think He knew more about the Bible than the leaders of the local synagogue, they decided to go throw Him off a cliff. They were convinced because of Jesus’ remarks and attitude that He was disrespecting and blaspheming God. No miracles were performed in Nazareth that day for the people, except—of course—that Jesus walked away from the murderous plot.

The people of Nazareth doubted Jesus’ claims and acted on these doubts so as to not believe a word He said. The result? Nothing: their doubts were neither dispelled nor confirmed. Instead, everything stayed the same as it always was. Peter, however, despite his doubts concerning Jesus’ skills at fishing nevertheless followed and obeyed. The result? A catch of fish so large that it began to sink two fishing vessels. Jesus, despite the fact that Satan tried to make the Lord doubt His own calling, obeyed the Father—even to the point of death by public execution. The result? Resurrection and eternal life for all of Mankind.

So what’s the point about all these stories? It seems to be that everybody will, at one time or another, be confronted by doubts concerning the things they believe. The question & the concern isn’t so much that we doubt—it’s more about what we do in response to those doubts. Do we trust & obey despite our doubts; or do we conform our actions to the “reasonable outcome” of what our doubts predict? Do we, like Peter, act on our faith in what God tells us even though our doubts tell us otherwise and as a result, witness the miraculous; or do we act like the people of Nazareth & respond to our doubts only to witness the results that our doubts would expect? I don’t know about you, but I’d much rather witness the miraculous than the mundane.

We all will have doubts. It’s unavoidable. Our response to these doubts, however, is the important part. Everyone chooses what they want believe, whether it’s true or manufactured—and it’s nearly impossible this side of heaven to confirm whether our beliefs are based on truth or not. Even scientifically proven beliefs are subject to uncertainty. Our beliefs undoubtedly will be challenged and will be subjected to doubts. We must, nevertheless, choose which position will guide our actions: our faith in what we believe or our faith in our doubts. A wise man once told me a proverb a long time ago that has helped me retain a good perspective on this struggle in life, and it goes like this: “It is alright to doubt your beliefs; just don’t believe your doubts.” A choice to place faith in our beliefs or in our doubts must be made. Which, then, will you choose?