The Dilemma of Doubt

I sat at my cherry wood executive desk. My genuine leather New American Standard Bible with Hebrew and Greek references lay open. It was well worn from years of use. Pen lines underlined vital verses, and yellow, green, and orange highlights marked text with deep meaning. My Greek encyclopedia, commentaries, and other study tools littered the wide desktop. In a few hours, I would stand before a congregation of people who wanted to hear The Word of God, the Truth, and the meaning of the Scriptures. I was the one who would deliver that message.  

I felt a twinge of doubt. Just a little at first. Is this really "The Truth"? Is this the absolute final Word of what God had to say to the people of earth? Was everyone who didn't believe this going to Hell? I wanted to believe this was the true Word of God. I had believed that since my conversion. But as I have lived life and experienced other people and places, it just didn't seem that simple anymore. Maybe we were wrong. Maybe I was wrong. Part of me believed, but another part, a new part, did not think it was so cut and dry. The conflict pulled at me like a game of tug of war at a church picnic. I found myself believing two opposite things at the same time. Is this possible? It is, and it has a name. It's called Cognitive Dissonance. It is an extremely anxious feeling.  

You experience cognitive dissonance when you learn new information that conflicts with your previously held ideas, values, or beliefs. When this happens, you will do everything you can to resolve the contradiction and reduce the feeling of anxiety. Typically, we will look for ways to confirm our original ideas. Unfortunately, this leads to another psychological phenomenon called confirmation bias. 

To understand cognitive dissonance, consider this example. Let's say you like eggs and were taught that they are good for you, but one day you learn that they lead to high cholesterol.   You don't like this new information because you love eggs. You start to research all the ways that eggs are good for you. This makes you feel better, and you can keep eating eggs. Now you have avoided all the information about how eggs are bad and only looked at the information about how they are good for you. That's confirmation bias. Now let's say you continue to hear about eggs causing high cholesterol, so you began to read more recent research. You become convinced that new research into eggs is very accurate, but you still like eggs. Now every time you eat eggs, you have a guilty feeling. You know you're harming your body, but you like the damn eggs. When this feeling, the cognitive dissonance, gets too strong, you abandon eating eggs, your anxiety is lowered, and you feel better about your choice. (FYI, I’m not suggesting eggs are bad. It’s an open debate. It’s just an example).

The more widely I studied the Bible and compared it with other belief systems I began to be confronted with the idea that Christianity, as I was taught it, may not be entirely accurate. This began to produce a great deal of anxiety. I had dedicated my whole life and career to Christianity. I sought to reduce these anxious feelings about God and the Bible by studying harder and reading more works by influential authors and scholars, but I had to be fair. I had to read what the opposing views were as well. I often found those views as compelling as my traditional views. These varying views on God and the Scripture had good reasons, logic, and research.   

I could no longer maintain the belief that I was right and everyone else was wrong. I didn't abandon my faith at this point, but I did open up my mind. I no longer looked at others as wrong and myself as right. Instead, I looked at it as having different points of view. The Spiritual Journey has many roads, I told myself. I was able to justify this and reduce my cognitive dissonance with the words of Jesus himself. Jesus said, "The kingdom of God is within you." It is the God within that matters, not the facts and details about history, places, or people. This gave me an openness to all people. It allowed me to see people with compassion and understanding rather than a need to convert them. I simply needed to love people.  

This was life-changing. It worked for me for a while. But the claws of cognitive dissonance would continue to scratch at my soul.

It wasn’t just this intellectual conflict that would lead me to abandon the last 20 years of faith it would be the encounter with the realities of life, with people of other faiths, and my own internal struggles that lead me to escape the chains of faith.