Even those regarded as heroes of the faith have struggled with doubt. The patriarch Abraham laughed at God when he told him he and his wife Sarah were going to become parents in their old age—the same Abraham who is called the “father” of Israel, and to whom God made covenant promises. The apostle Thomas doubted the resurrection as reported by the other disciples and refused to believe until he saw the resurrected Christ with his own eyes and examined his wounds himself. The apostle Peter, invited by Jesus to join him walking on water, ventured out then began to sink when doubt overcame him. Jesus did not dismiss either man as faithless or worthless! John the Baptist—who announced the coming of Jesus and baptized him, who testified of him as “the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world,” in the final days of his life sent messengers to Jesus asking, “Are you really the one?”

Throughout history, many leaders of the church have experience uncertainty, sometimes for long periods of time. The great reformer Martin Luther struggled mightily with doubt, questioning his own faith, his mission, and even at times the goodness of God. Many of Luther’s biographers report that his anguish over these doubts was never completely resolved.

Mother Teresa, who gave her entire life to service to the poor in the name of Jesus, confessed toward the end of her life that she had been experiencing a terrible spiritual dryness for decades. She told her spiritual director, “I feel just that terrible pain of loss, of God not wanting me, of God not being God, of God not really existing.”[2]

“Here’s the point,” wrote one pastor and seminary professor to his college-age daughter. “It’s normal to struggle with doubt in the Christian life. It doesn’t mean something is wrong with you. The issue is not whether you face doubt but how you respond to it.”[1]