When I was a boy, I always admired the committed parishioners in our church—the people I knew and loved my entire young life. I was especially moved when they would stand at the Wednesday night prayer meetings and testify, “I know without a doubt that Jesus Christ is my Savior.”
How I wanted to be like them: to be sure. In fact, I wanted it so fiercely that, at first, I pretended to be a believer. But the pretense gnawed at me like a dog chomping at the morrow in a shank of bone. To this day, those doubts were more psychologically painful to me than anything I have ever experienced. My disbelief was excruciating, but to be a pretender was even more agonizing.
The more I studied, the more my dwindling faith became shrouded in doubt. During those days of incredulity, my believing friends and family would say, “Allen, don’t make it so complicated. Just take it on faith. Besides, the Bible says it’s so, and the Bible is the infallible word of God.”
Really?
So, I poured over the scriptures, only to be assaulted with more doubts. The words and deeds of Jesus Christ were not so much reassuring as they were troubling, even frightening. The qualities I saw in the Gospels did not draw me into the fold; they scared the hell out of me. For example:
- Christ’s jealousy: “If anyone comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple.” (Luke 14:25)
- Christ’s vindictiveness: “And you, Capernaum, will you be exalted to heaven? You shall be brought down to Hades.” (Luke 10:15)
- Christ’s sadism: “The Son of man will send his angles, and they will gather out of his kingdom all causes of sin and all evildoers, and throw them into the furnace of fire; there men will weep and gnash their teeth.” (Matthew 13:41-42)
- Christ’s curious curse: The next day as they were leaving Bethany, Jesus was hungry. Seeing in the distance a fig tree in leaf, he went to find out if it had any fruit. When he reached it, he found nothing but leaves, because it was not the season for figs. Then he said to the tree, “May no one ever eat fruit from you again.” And his disciples heard him say it. (Mark 11:12-14)
Increasingly, the loving God my family of believers exalted did not seem at all loving. Scripture might be a political manifesto, I decided, but certainly not the infallible word of a God who loved me beyond all comprehension.
Because I wanted to get it right—or as right as I could—my doubts led me to a scholarly study of the gospels and the historical Jesus Christ. Books that were particularly helpful included Misquoting Jesus by Bart D. Ehrman, When Jesus Became God, by Richard E. Rubenstein, Zealot by Reza Aslan, and The Five Gospels by Robert W. Funk. Regarding Mormonism, the book that was most insightful—although, not surprisingly, reviled by the church—was entitled No Man Knows My History: The Life of Joseph Smith by the historian, Fawn M. Brodie. All of these books taught me there were too many discrepancies, too many questionable motives, and too many political schemes to warrant unequivocal devotion.
I will always be a doubter—in fact, I’m proud of that propensity—for it is through the careful examination of my doubts that I arrive closer to the truth.
