A Message from the Pastor

                 After his resurrection, Jesus, according to Matthew’s Gospel, instructed his disciples to meet him in Galilee, the place where their ministry began. In the concluding verses of the gospel we read the following: “Now the eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain to which Jesus had directed them.  When they saw him, they worshiped him; but some doubted.”

        I find at least two things to be noteworthy in those verses.  First, there is the assertion that “some doubted.”  “Some”?  But just how many doubted?  Was it two?  Was it three?  Seven?  Could seven of the disciples have doubted that they stood in the presence of the risen Jesus?  The second thing I find noteworthy is that Matthew, in the midst of celebrating the defining event in Christian experience, would acknowledge that doubt burdened anyone present to experience the risen Lord. Matthew’s principle aim in composing his gospel, after all, was to make the strongest case possible for belief in the resurrection.  Why raise the issue of doubt at all?

        “When they saw him, they worshiped him; but some doubted.”  Perhaps, just perhaps, Matthew didn’t regard doubt to be the embarrassing detail many of us might deem it to be. Writing on the subject of doubt, Rowland Croucher offers the following: “There’s nothing wrong with doubt, provided it’s the right kind of doubt.  Negative doubt is cynical, not wanting to come to a knowledge of the truth.  Constructive doubt can lead to faith.  The opposite of faith is not doubt but unbelief.  Doubt is ‘can’t believe’; unbelief is ‘won’t believe’.  Doubt is honest; unbelief is obstinate.  Doubt is the process of looking for light; unbelief is content with darkness.”                     

              The great twentieth century preacher, Harry Emerson Fosdick, a preacher for whom the title “Prince of the Pulpit” was coined, preached a sermon to which generations of aspiring preachers have

been introduced. The sermon’s title? “The Importance of Doubting our Doubts.”

        In that sermon Fosdick names a list of people who at one time or another struggled mightily with religious doubt, John Knox, one of our Presbyterian forbears, and Martin Luther, among them. His congregation was counseled to accept doubt as a fact of the religious life, declaring, “The noblest faith of the church has come out of that struggle [with doubt.] You don’t really possess the Christian faith until you have fought for it.”

         “You don’t really possess the Christian faith until you have fought for it.” In our struggles with personal doubt some of us have become dismayed or discouraged.  Perhaps we might consider ourselves blessed that God deems us worthy to shoulder such burdens, if such burdens are ultimately to be rewarded with a faith we can authentically call our own.

        If you happen to be struggling with doubts about your religious faith, this pastor is available to help as I can.

Blessings, friends.  See you in church,

                         Neale L. Miller