John Ortberg - Know Doubt: Embracing Uncertainty in Your Faith

Resources by John Ortberg

Everybodys Normal Till You Get to Know Them

(book, ebook, audio)

God Is Closer Than You Think

(book, ebook, audio, curriculum with Stephen and Amanda Sorenson)

If You Want to Walk on Water,
Youve Got to Get Out of the Boat

(book, ebook, audio, curriculum with Stephen and Amanda Sorenson)

Know Doubt

(book, ebook, previously titled Faith and Doubt)

The Life Youve Always Wanted

(book, ebook, audio, curriculum with Stephen and Amanda Sorenson)

Love Beyond Reason

The Me I Want to Be

(book, ebook, audio, curriculum with Scott Rubin)

Soul Keeping

(book, ebook, curriculum with Christine M. Anderson)

When the Game Is Over, It All Goes Back in the Box

(book, ebook, audio, curriculum with Stephen and Amanda Sorenson)

Who Is This Man?

(book, ebook, audio, curriculum with Christine M. Anderson)

ZONDERVAN

Know Doubt

Copyright 2008 by John Ortberg

Previously published as Faith and Doubt

Requests for information should be addressed to:

Zondervan, 3900 Sparks Dr. SE, Grand Rapids, MI 49546

ePub Edition September 2014: ISBN 978-0-310-34092-8

The Library of Congress has cataloged the hardcover edition as follows:

Ortberg, John.

Faith and doubt / John Ortberg.

p. cm.

ISBN 978-0-310-25351-8 (hardcover, jacketed)

1. Faith. I. Title.

BT771.3.078 2008

234'.23 dc22

2008013133

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Cover design: Jamie DeBruyn

Cover photography: Getty Images

Interior design: Beth Shagene

First printing September 2014

More than thirty years ago I and my best friends sat at the feet of a redheaded, poor-joke-telling, large-hearted, deeply sensitive, idea-loving, self-effacing, life-changing Greek professor,

Gerald Hawthorne.

He led us into a larger and deeper world as an act of grace. I learned more from him than I could ever say. To him, this book is most gratefully dedicated.

CONTENTS

I will tell you my secret: I have doubts.

I have spent my life studying and thinking and reading and teaching about God. I grew up in the church. I went to a faith-based college and then to a seminary. I walked the straight and narrow. I never sowed any wild oats.

And I have doubts.

Ill tell you more than that. There is a part of me that, after I die, if it all turns out to be true the angels are singing, death is defeated, the roll is called up yonder and there I am there is a part of me that will be surprised. What do you know? Its all true after all. I had my doubts.

Is it okay if we ask questions and consider objections and wonder out loud?

Is it okay if we dont pretend that everybody is split up into two camps: those who doubt and those who dont?

Is it possible maybe even rational to have faith in the presence of doubt?

Because I have faith too. And I have bet the farm.

And faith like doubt grows in unexpected places. A few months ago I received an email requesting a thousand copies of a book I had written. That was an unprecedented request from anyone besides my mother, so I was curious about the story.

It was from a young man named Kirk, a high-functioning corporate type, father of three young daughters with a brilliant future before him, who found out one year ago that he had ALS Lou Gehrigs disease.

But Kirk was convinced that in the midst of tragedy faith was his only hope. And he decided to use his final months to invite the people he loved deepest to reflect on what mattered most.

The doctors told him he had two to five years to live, but he died in nine months. I write these words on a plane returning home from a dinner that his family sponsored, with hundreds of people, where we saw a videotape of Kirk, in a wheelchair, fighting for breath, speaking of his faith in God as the only force that could sustain him.

Kirks dad drove me to the airport. He told me of difficulties in his life how his mother had died when he was four, how now in his seventies he had lost his son. He told me of how he had once been an agnostic, and how he had come to believe.

I do not know why tragedy, which destroys faith in some people, gives birth to it in others. Suffering both raises unanswerable questions and tells us that our only hope must be a hope beyond ourselves.

There is a mystery to faith, as there is to life, that I dont fully understand.

When we take seriously the reality of faith and doubt, the most important word in the phrase is the one in the middle.

Because most people I know are a mix of the two.

And it strikes me as arrogant when people on either side of the God-question write as if any reasonable person would agree with them because, of course, they wouldnt hold an opinion if it wasnt reasonable.

Can I be faithful and still follow truth wherever it leads?

Is it possible that doubt might be one of those unwelcome guests of life that is sometimes, in the right circumstances, good for you?

I want to know....

Writing a book, like having a child or buying a used car or getting out of bed in the morning, is always an act of faith. This one would not have happened without the encouragement and generosity of Menlo Park Presbyterian Church, which gives me both the time to write and stimulation to think.

I am also grateful to several folks who read the manuscript: to Chuck Bergstrom who doctored the text, to Christine Anderson who gave wonderful encouragement, to my daughter Laura who added ideas and readings and joy, to Mark Nelson who gave feedback that was scholarly and witty and accompanied by small cartoon illustrations that I wish could have been included in the text.

John Sloan is an editor who brings a deep love for the craft of writing to every project, and I am grateful for the growth he makes possible. Laura Weller gave careful labor to get every word right. And as the years pass I am increasingly grateful for getting to be part of a team and a community with Zondervan.