Doubt vs Religious Faith

I began to doubt the existence of God during my early teens. Much of this doubt stemmed from skepticism about the Bible’s credibility. For example, how could the Good Book accurately record the universe’s beginning when no one was there to observe it? That and other Biblical accounts struck me as mythical.

To dissuade my skepticism, believers proclaim that such accounts were divinely inspired. But because divine-inspiration cannot be proven by scientific standards, accepting the Bible as true requires—what else—faith. Thus, the struggle between doubt and religious faith.

In an opinion article, a local pastor/columnist, Paul Prather, addressed this doubt-versus-faith struggle. Regarding criticisms of the Bible being mythical, Prather said: “Myths aren’t necessarily false… A myth, as the Britannica says, is a ‘symbolic narrative’ by which people make sense of life.” While the Genesis account of creation “might not be factual in a scientific or historical sense, (it) could be profoundly true in a spiritual sense.”

I’ve often wondered why God could not have made His existence and works undeniably plain—not subject to any doubt on my part. Another pastor theorized that by creating us with a free will (Gen. 1:26), God invites us to doubt and overcome it with faith. But why didn’t He just create us as believers with no doubts—spiritually faithful robots? Maybe He created man with free will to doubt so that when man voluntarily comes to faith, it pleases Him in a way that robots cannot.