When My Son Has Doubts…
Question: A concerned Mom writes, “Our youngest son has decided that maybe God isn’t real, maybe there is no hell, and then of course there is no value in going to church, etc. I thought he had a [salvation] experience as a small child but it isn’t real to him. I think he may also have had some negative influence from some older bachelor guys he has contact with.
How could we approach this problem to show that God is real ? I’ve talked to him about creation and the fall, and he says “So why didn’t God do it right the first time ?” Some ideas would help.”
Answer: Thanks for the good question. Of course, your son is only saying what the Bible itself plainly says–that “there is no God.” But unfortunately for him, the context reminds us of the kind of person who makes such a statement. God says he is a fool (Ps. 14:1). The reason it is foolish to deny the existence of God is that the evidence of His amazing handiwork is all around us (Ps. 19:1). So much so that sinners are “without excuse” for refusing to believe in Him (Rom. 1:20).
When you think about it, there is a certain arrogance to atheism. To say there is no God to be found anywhere in our vast universe, one has to claim he knows absolutely everything that’s out there! To assert such a thing is foolish indeed, causing Lewis Sperry Chafer to state, “It is probable that a consistent atheist has never existed.” An older theologian (John Foster) says, “Unless this man is omnipresent, unless he is at this moment in every place in the universe, he cannot know but that there may be in some place manifestations of a Deity by which even he would be overpowered.”
Many books have been written in defense of the existence of God and the reliability of the Bible. Both C. S. Lewis and Josh McDowell have written on such themes. If your son were a reader I might suggest The Case for Faith, by Lee Strobel (published by Zondervan in 2000). Over the course of about 400 pages he deals with all the common objections to faith that unbelievers throw at us–the problem of human suffering, how could a loving God send anyone to hell, and so on. A valuable book to have in one’s library.
Another “book” that is going to be read by your son whether you like it or not is your own life. If God is real to you, and Christ’s salvation truly means something to you, your life will show it. That ongoing testimony can have a powerful effect on your son. In a poem called “The World’s Bible,” Annie Johnson Flint wrote, “We are the only Bible / The careless world will read, / We are the sinner’s gospel, / We are the scoffer’s creed.” And “What if the type is crooked? / What if the print is blurred? / What if you hands are busy / With other work than His? / What if our feet are walking / Where sin’s allurement is?” Good questions!
Regarding your son’s concerns about creation, Peter speaks of scoffers who ridicule the Word of God, saying they “willfully forget” some things (II Pet. 3:5, NKJV). They deliberately shut their eyes to the facts. No one who found a ticking watch in the woods would immediately assume all the parts had come together by themselves without any outside help. There had to be an intelligent designer and a maker. And anyone looking at the intricacies of creation is forced to come to a similar conclusion.
Whatever your son’s study of the natural world has been, he has reached a false conclusion, indicated by his question, “So why didn’t God do it right the first time ?” The answer is, He did. When the work of creation was complete, “God saw everything that He had made, and indeed it was very good” (Gen. 1:31). The wonders of creation caused the psalmist to cry, “O Lord, how manifold are Your works! In wisdom You have made them all” (Ps. 104:24). What has happened to the world since it was made is not a result of sloppy workmanship on God’s part. It is a result of human sin.
God gave human beings the responsibility of caring for our planet (Gen. 1:28), but their “dominion” was always to be restricted and governed by God’s rule over him (Gen. 2:16-17). When Adam and Eve disobeyed the Lord–in effect, rejecting His rule–God punished them by placing a curse on creation. Though it still reflects the wisdom and power of God, nature is now seriously flawed (Gen. 3:17-19), and man’s care of it is handicapped accordingly. Added to that, the fallen nature of man causes him to continually abuse the natural resources we have. Selfishness and greed, carelessness and waste, strip the rain forests and fill the air with pollutants. None of this is God’s fault.
So why didn’t God simply make human beings with no power of choice, creatures that were programmed to obey Him? The answer is because He did not want mere robots, or puppets. He wanted intelligent beings that could fellowship with Him, that could love Him and be loved in return. And for such a relationship to be sincere and meaningful human beings had to be able to choose whether to trust and obey God or not. They had to have the power not to trust Him, not to obey Him and not to love Him.
But I want to return for a moment to the words of Peter–that “wilful forgetting” he speaks of. Herman Wouk, in his novel War and Remembrance, about the Holocaust, speaks of “the will not to believe.” A denial of the existence of God, and the existence of hell, is often a morally loaded conclusion. That is, there is a rejection of God’s authority which manifests itself as a denial of His existence. In order to continue in his sinful ways, without accountability to God, the sinner may try to write God out of the picture. That is why Psalm 14:1 (quoted in part, earlier) says in full, “The fool has said in his heart, ‘There is no God.’ They are corrupt, they have done abominable works, there is none who does good.” Atheism and a sinful lifestyle are connected.
It is important to establish a belief in God at a young age, and to ingrain a sense of moral accountability to a higher authority. Solomon writes about that in Ecclesiastes. In his later years he had drifted away from God (I Kgs. 11:1-8), but I believe the book of Ecclesiastes is a testimony of his repentance and return to God, near the end of his life. He says, “Remember now your Creator in the days of your youth, before the difficult days come, and the years draw near when you say, ‘I have no pleasure in them.’…Fear God and keep His commandments, for this is man’s all. For God will bring every work into judgment, including every secret thing, whether good or evil” (Ecc. 12:1, 13-14).
If your son’s conclusions about spiritual things have been carefully considered, then I would certainly doubt the earlier “experience” you speak of. Jesus says, “By their fruits you will know them” (Matt. 7:20). In the article “Assurance of Salvation” I list seven things that are the fruit of salvation. To one degree or another, each of these should be in evidence in the life of the born again person.
One other possibility, and I only mention it in passing for your consideration, is that your son is emotionally depressed for some reason. Whether this has a physical, a psychological, or a spiritual cause needs to be investigated. Sometimes doubts arise out of an emotional despondency. In that case, medical treatment or counselling may be what is needed.