faith on Pessimism

Faith and pessimism are incompatible. To be sure, we are not starry-eyed idealists; we are down to earth realists. We know well that sin is ingrained in human nature and in human society. We are not e...

Survival requires more than the basic biological necessities we readily acknowledge—oxygen, food, and water. It also demands something less tangible but equally vital: hope. When hope vanishes, the hu...

Writer Michael Novak says that doubt is not so much a dividing line that separates people into different camps, as it is a razor’s edge that runs through every soul. Many believers tend to think doubt...

The deepest, the only theme of human history, compared to which all others are to subordinate importance, is the conflict of skepticism with faith.

Most Christians can deal with inevitable doubts as long as there is room for doubt. But when a system is enforced that leaves no room for doubt, benign uncertainties can mutate into faith-destroying m...

Faith is a way of waiting—never quite knowing, never quite hearing or seeing, because in the darkness we are all but a little lost. There is doubt hard on the heels of every belief, fear hard on the h...

Let’s talk about how our beliefs shape our actions, especially when fear is involved. You've probably heard the phrase, "ideas have consequences," right? It's easy to see this in act...

Pragmatism may be defined simply as the approach to reality that defines truth as “that which works.” The pragmatist is concerned about results, and the results determine the truth. The problem with t...

We should aim for rational confidence in these sorts of pursuits because certainty is a mere will-o’-the-wisp. Finite minds simply can’t pull it off. Though the distinction between aiming at certainty...

Faith is a voluntary anticipation.

In an article entitled, What the New Atheists Don’t See , the British author Theodore Dalrymple shares his honest struggles with atheism. The subtitle of his article is fascinating, “To regret re...

Have you ever noticed that the phrases in our culture favor doubt over faith? The famed missionary and theologian Lesslie Newbigin pointed this out when we speak of “Honest doubts” and “blind faith”. ...

Doubt is really the felt tension that exists between a belief you have and a contrary claim you do not yet believe…Simply put, doubt is that experience of one of our beliefs seeming like it might be f...

As many theologians have helpfully described, there is a healthy place for doubting that is integral to faith. When approached thoughtfully and sincerely, these doubts can lead to a deepening understa...

Faith is dead to doubts— dumb to discouragements, blind to impossibilities, knows nothing but success. Faith lifts its hand up through the threatening clouds, lays hold of Him who has all power in hea...

A faith without some doubts is like a human body with no antibodies in it. People who blithely go through life too busy or indifferent to ask the hard questions about why they believe as they do will ...

We live in an age when belief comes hard because we’re much more afraid of being gullible (believing something that’s not true) than we are of being skeptical (not believing something that is true). W...

“They will look toward the earth and see only distress, darkness, and the gloom of affliction, and they will be driven into thick darkness.” (Isa. 8:22) In The Two Towers , the second novel in Tolki...

Hoping does not mean doing nothing. It is not fatalistic resignation. It means going about our assigned tasks, confident that God will provide the meaning and the conclusions. It is not compelled to w...

In faith there is enough light for those who want to believe and enough shadows to blind those who don't.

Faith makes all evil good to us, and all good better; unbelief makes all good evil, and all evil worse. Faith laughs at the shaking of the spear; unbelief trembles at the shaking of a leaf, unbelief s...

Rabbi Hugo Gryn used to tell of his experiences in Auschwitz as a boy. Food supplies were meager, and the inmates took care to preserve every scrap that came their way. When the Festival of Hanukkah a...

When most of us grow up in a faith tradition, we begin with an assumption that faith is good, while having doubts is bad. As we mature however, we realize that faith and doubt are not opposites, but i...

Doubts are the ants in the pants of faith. They keep it awake and moving.

Though God is at work, God hides… You have a choice: see God here or not; see salvation, or see only human courage; see the divine subtly at work, or see chance, luck of the draw on this day of lots.

Nothing that is worth doing can be achieved in our lifetime; therefore we must be saved by hope. Nothing which is true or beautiful or good makes complete sense in any immediate context of history; th...

[These thoughts come from a journal entry of about 10 years ago when I was experiencing a deep and dark night of faith] I have found insight and wisdom for my journey with Christ in the writings of J...

In Vanishing Grace , Philip Yancey examines the growing negative perceptions of evangelicals. Although the book was written in 2014, these dynamics have only intensified in the era of MAGA and Ch...

Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm.

Never doubt in the dark what God showed you in the light