The Book That Saved Me From Drowning
Someone tossed me a rope while I struggled in a sea of doubts
Have you ever had doubts? Not about whether you remembered to lock your car door, but about your core beliefs. I have.
The doubts were lurking and stalking in my mind. I didn’t ask for them. I didn’t want them. In fact, I felt wrong for even having them. But they wouldn’t go away.
So I assumed I would have to suffer through this alone—or worse yet, give in. Slipping under in a sea of doubts and questions, succumbing to the waves increasingly felt like the only option left.
But then I opened a book and read:
Every one has heard people quarrelling. Sometimes it sounds funny and sometimes it sounds merely unpleasant; but however it sounds, I believe we can learn something very important from listening to the kind of things they say.
The more I read, the more I realized I wasn’t alone. Someone had tossed me a rope. Almost 30 years before I was even born.
People often wonder why I’m so enamored with C.S. Lewis. For many of his fans, their journey with “Jack” began through the wardrobe into Narnia. Mine started there as a child as well, but it was Mere Christianity as a young adult that changed everything for me.
For a host of reasons, some of which were self-inflicted, I believed that doubts, in and of themselves, were wrong. I had them, but it was sinful for me to have them.
I remember at least one pastor preaching on the evils of doubting, and the cure was to simply have more faith. Seemingly, everyone around me accepted this, while I was crying the prayer of the father with a demon-possessed child: “I believe; help my unbelief!”1
I needed answers, but apparently no one else even had questions. That is, until I read Mere Christianity. There actually was a mental component to faith. I saw what it meant to love Jesus with all of your heart, soul, mind, and strength.
Tearing through the pages, I began to underline and write notes in the margins. It was the first time I had ever done that to a book.
I saw many of the questions I had, but I saw there were answers as well. Someone had already been wondering the same things. My Christianity wasn’t somehow defective for seeking understanding.
After finishing Mere Christianity, things were different. I knew at least one person thought through the same issues I had, so I devoured all of the Lewis books I could collect. I went back through Narnia with a renewed sense of awe at that world, its creator, and his Creator.
Lewis taught me to love and trust God more, even with my doubts. In facing them, I discovered that God could be trusted when I didn’t see the answer immediately. Simply because it wasn’t visible at that moment didn’t mean it didn’t exist.
The entire trajectory of my life was altered by reading through Lewis’ explanation of the Christian faith.
My master’s degree focused on philosophy and Christian apologetics. I bought and read dozens of scholarly and popular works on doubts, questions, and the validity of Christianity. Many of them I still consult regularly.
But to this day, outside of Scripture itself, I still go back to Mere Christianity more than all the others. To me, it’s like the classic hymn that never ceases to comfort and challenge.
What would be a more appropriate way to end than to quote the last two sentences from the book itself?
Look for yourself, and you will find in the long run only hatred, loneliness, despair, rage, ruin, and decay. But look for Christ and you will find Him, and with Him everything else thrown in.
Looking to Christ, you find everything, including the answers to the doubts you feel ashamed to have and the questions you feel embarrassed to ask. Sometimes, we need someone else to remind us of that.
I’ve met many people who have a similar story with Mere Christianity. Is that you? If it wasn’t Mere Christianity, what other book affected your faith the most?
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Mark 9:24
I categorize Christians into "oaks" and "palm trees".
The fundamentalists (oaks) are certain of the Bible (Protestants) or the Church (Catholics). They don't question any of it and so they have no doubts. Examples would be the Young Earthers (in the Protestant world) or the Latin mass folks (in the Catholic one).
However, for some people, this sort of "blind faith" is not enough. They have doubts and want tools to work through them. They want theology and science, and philosophy, and history together. These are the palm trees.
Why those names? Because when a storm comes, the oak looks strong. Its faith is rock solid. It won't move in response to that storm at all. No doubts! The oak can stand up to most of the circumstances and storms of life, but if it starts to fail, if any doubt seeps in, it will be pushed over. The faith of an oak is incredibly strong, but with enough wind in the right place, it will end up on the ground. And those disciplines like philosophy and history create weaknesses that the wind can exploit; better to stay focused on the Bible.
Meanwhile, the palm looks weak. It's waving all over the place, being bent and tossed by the forces of the world. It has lots of doubts. But it also has this amazing superpower, as it bends, it gets stronger. Philosophy and history and science may challenge the palm's faith, but it rolls with those challenges, and integrates them to make itself stronger. Doubts don't weaken it; they strengthen it. (At least to a point, even a palm can break.)
The oak says: "if you have doubts, your faith is weak. Pray harder."
The palm says: "If you don't have doubts, you're picture of God is probably too small."
I am the worship leader at my blue-collar, evangelical church, so I am surrounded by oaks. But I am a palm. I teach and study philosophy. (I once had a church board member tell me that reading Plato would destroy my soul. He's an oak, of course. I love him dearly as a brother in Christ, but I can't have a serious theology discussion with him.)
I've also taught my kids to be palms. One of them really wants to be an oak, but she's going to college next year and I need her to have some palm characteristics. Universities are places with lots of spiritual winds.
It isn't that one way is better, rather each way is suited to particular people. It sounds like you're a palm too, Aaron.
One of the weird things is that both palms and oaks seem to like C.S. Lewis.
PS: Ironically, I detest real palm trees. (Not the metaphorical ones here, the IRL ones.)