Do doubts ever keep you awake at night?

Psychiatrists say nightime anxiety, which can keep us awake at night, is a common issue for many people.

I certainly sometimes find myself awake at night, with troubling thoughts about all sorts of things. Occasionally, I think about belief. Am I really right in what I believe? What if I am wrong about something …. or even all of it?

Are you the same?

Doubt isn’t restricted to night-time of course, and it isn’t the best time to try to settle doubt. But when I have time to think, this is how I respond to doubts about what I believe.

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Three important guidelines

I have been following Jesus for more than 60 years. I have had my share of questions, doubts and challenges. Many of these have changed the substance of what I believe. But my core beliefs have stood the test.

Over the years I’ve developed an understanding of how I best consider my doubts.

1. Think it through …. again

CS Lewis advised that when we have serious doubts, we should go over in our minds the reasons why we have believed. Has any of the evidence changed? Are our reasons for belief affected?

It is easy, he says, to feel doubt as an emotion, even if the facts and reasons haven’t actually changed. Going over the facts allows us to see if our doubt has a reasonable basis.

2. Read widely

They say we are what we eat. And in many ways, what we believe is strongly affected by what we read and listen to.

So if our doubt comes from listening to sceptical sources, we can make sure we give the other side equal time, so we have balanced information to work from.

3. Get priorities right

There is all sorts of evidence for and against Christian belief. But not all evidence is equal. Some facts are more fundamental than others. I recommend starting with the most fundamental evidence and move down the list like this:

1. Before anything can happen, there has to be a universe, a world for us to live in. Any belief that can’t explain this can’t really get off the launching pad.
2. Before I can exist to doubt, there has to be a human race with all the abilities that enable us to think reasonably and ethically. My beliefs need to explain how the human race has these abilities.
3. Other people have experiences, recorded in history and contemporary. This a vast amount of human experience and knowledge to build off, and my beliefs must be able to account for it.
4. Finally, I have my own experiences. They are very real to me, but it is a sample of one, a relatively small amount of information compared to all the above. I must fit my own experience within the larger context.

How it works out for me

Time and repeated doubts, questions and reviews have refined my understanding. This what I have come to ….

1. The universe

It’s not possible for something to come out of nothing. Philosophers can argue if that statement can be proved, but really, it’s just common sense. So the only way anything can exist is if something always existed, outside of time, to begin this material, temporal universe. That can’t be the universe itself, it clearly isn’t outside of time and eternal.

So I have to believe something outside of time and non-material created everything material that we can see. Nothing else makes sense.

What’s more, cosmologists tell us that if the universe had have just been a little different at the beginning of the big bang, if the laws that describe the universe had been even a little different, the universe wouldn’t have lasted long enough to allow planets and life to form. Or else it wouldn’t have been complex enough for life – just a thin soup of hydrogen or helium.

They say the probability of a life-allowing universe is infinitessimally small. It looks like it was designed. So again, it looks like something made it the way it is.

These arguments make it impossible for me to be an atheist. Any argument against God’s existence has to be made in a universe that already shows God probably does indeed exist. So atheistic arguments lose a lot of their force.

2. The human race

Human beings are wonderful animals. We are conscious of ourselves, we can reason and we have a moral sense. And it feels like we have free will to make choices. It is hard to see how any of these arise if we are only material.

If our thinking is no more than chemical reactions and electrical currents, then we have laws that describe how those things work. The processes are fixed and there is nothing in our brains to change them – if materialism is true.

It is also hard to see how any moral sense we have can be anything more than an evolutionary survival mechanism. Thus there can be no true right and wrong – if materialism is true.

And it is even difficult to show how a materialistic brain can properly reason. The argument is too comlex to go into here, but you can read more here.

But it is difficult if not impossible for humans to live and human society to function if free will, true ethics and genuine reasoning are illusory. So if materialism is true, we are all living in an illusion of freewill, ethics and reason. Which would be very strange.

I find it more reasonable to believe we really do have freewill, some things really are right and wrong, and our reasoning (as I’m doing here) really can be based on truth. And so it is much more likely that materialism isn’t true, and God really created a universe that allowed life like us to evolve.

3. History

History isn’t as certain or fundamental as science, but it can still give us information about whether events in the past really occurred or not.

Historians tell us that some of the events in the Old Testament of the Bible are probably not historical. But historians are much more confident that the biographies of Jesus in the New Testament are based on real events and give us reasonably reliable information about the life and teachings of Jesus.

Of course most historians say that historical study cannot answer the question of whether Jesus really did miracles or was really resurrected. But they can say he was believed to be a healer (even by those opposed to him) and his followers believed right from early days that he had been resurrected.

We are left with the choice of him either genuinely being God’s representative on earth, or his being mistaken about his role. The choice is ours. I believe him being genuine is the most likely, and this conclusion fits within the above arguments.

4. Human experience

The majority of people who have ever lived have believed in God or gods, or have some sort of spirituality. Of course they have very different beliefs about the supernatural, but many of them share some experiences in common.

Hundreds of millions of people alive today believe they have been healed by God, or have observed someone being healed. Many cases have been documented and medically verified. Remarkable recoveries have occurred after prayer.

Many people have had visions of God or have experienced some sort of deep and overwhelming spiritual experience. Many people believe they have encountered God and this has totally changed their lives.

It may be tempting to think that these are weak impressionable people, but that would be a misunderstanding. These sorts of experiences happen to all sorts of people, most of them psychologically healthy.

I suppose many reports of God’s intervention in lives are mistaken, misunderstood or exaggerated. But enough them have been documented and verified that it seems impossible to dismiss them all.

These facts certainly don’t show definitively that God exists. But they are consistent with God being active in the world and in people’s lives.

Not everyone’s experience

It is obvious that not everyone has a positive experience of life that points them to God. Some people experience trauma caused by religious people. Some people tried to live as a Christian and felt that God didn’t come through for them.

Some people feel God is totally absent from the world and from their lives, even when they have searched diligently for him (or her!).

Worst of all, the world is full of pain and suffering and evil. This seems to be especially apparent right now, with wars killing the innocent in many parts of the world, and with inequality making so many lives miserable. And pain from broken relationships, unexpected illness and terrible accidents.

I believe these are strong reasons to doubt there is a good God.

But for these evils to occur and to be known as evil, we first of all need to be human beings living in a physical universe. If there were no humans or no universe, the suffering wouldn’t occur.

So while the pain and suffering hurts me and sickens me, it doesn’t negate the reasons to believe God exists that I’ve already outlined. Others see it differently, but I’m left with a pain in my heart but a belief I can’t deny.

Religion is poison?

Critics point out how religion can be detrimental to humanity – religious wars, abuse, trauma, control, etc. And all this can be true.

But studies show that most wars are not caused by religion, though religion may be used to justify them. People and society benefit from religion more than they suffer – religion helps our brains, gives us purpose, helps us behave more altruistically and leads to better mental and physical health.

5. My life

I haven’t had any dramatic experiences of God. But when I look back on my 80 years of life, I can point to several times when it seems God did act to help me – to prevent my daughter from drowning, to save me from a serious road accident, to lead me to a life partner and to give me peace, direction and answers to questions I was asking.

Unlike many other people, whose belief or disbelief are the result of their own experiences, I feel my experience is not nearly as fundamental as the facts about the universe, humanity and Jesus, which together convince me still.

Putting it all together

I’ve lived with Christian belief for more than 60 years. I’ve doubted, questioned, challenged that belief. But every time (so far) I’ve followed CS Lewis’ advice and found that the reasons still hold up.

I don’t suppose that will change in the years I have left.

I don’t pretend the issues are all easy. I don’t pretend that everyone will or should conclude as I have done. But I offer my thoughts as something for others to think about too.

What about you?

Do you have a story to tell? I’d love to hear it. Please feel free to leave a comment below.

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Check out some of these reasons more fully

Photo: Cottonbro Studio.