On Doubt & Faith: A Sermon
I preached this past Sunday about doubt and faith, and I had a chance to talk about the role that the apologist Cliffe Knecthle played in my life, which was really fun. I even have a copy of the Daily Texan where I show up in the background.
This is how I put it in my sermon:
“By the fall of 1992, I’d read scores of philosophy books and found myself becoming irritable with Jesus. There was something about him that I couldn’t shake.
I doubted so many things and I wanted to keep doubting everything that I read about Jesus, but a wise friend cautioned me against professionalizing my doubts. They’d become a cottage industry if I let them. “Doubt your doubts,” he told me. So I did. I started doubting my doubts.
And once again I found myself on the west mall at UT. It’s the fall of 1992. Minnesota’s Mall of America had just opened. Mae Jemison had become the first African American woman to travel to space. And both Ross Perot and Compact Discs were still a big deal.
Cliff Knechtle had returned to campus, and this time I quit all my classes to hear him speak for the 3-4 hours he spent answering people’s questions.
By Friday afternoon I felt like I was facing a decision: to keep doubting because it felt safe to be a noncommittal agnostic or to choose to try Jesus again.
I walked around to the south side of the mall and looked up at the words etched in stone at the top of the tower: “Ye shall know the truth and the truth shall set you free.” No author was attributed to the quote. Just a nameless maxim.
But I felt afraid to be a Christian again. I felt afraid of being disappointed—mainly by Christians. I felt afraid to trust God. I felt afraid to believe again.
The fear inside, in fact, was strong enough to tempt me to walk away again, but I couldn’t do it. What I could manage, however, was to walk along the fringes, as it were, to look at Jesus from a distance. Distance was my ally.
I leaned away from Jesus but I stuck around because I wanted to know what he had to say about the truth.
What I didn’t know at the time, however, is that my quest for truth would put me on the side of Pilate rather than Jesus himself.”
