Without a Doubt
By Jack Wyman
The old senator peered at the young man.
It was a pretty big picnic. A lot of listening voters munched on fried chicken and coleslaw.
They all looked up.
The senator paused. He tried to read the young man’s earnest face.
“Well, where do you stand, Senator?” he asked - again.
It was the deep South. Prohibition was controversial. Liquor was bought and sold. The county had been legally dry for a long time.
“Well now, son,” the senator drawled, “that all depends. If by alcohol you mean demon rum, that brew stirred in the devil’s hell, that strong drink that ruins families and good health, the spawn of disease that causes accidents on our highways, costs our people jobs, and sends men to jail, well then, of course, I’m against it.
But if by alcohol,” the senator raised his voice for emphasis and smiled a broad smile, “you mean that warm and glowing substance that brings happiness and congeniality to every conversation; puts heart and mind at tranquility, and creates a sense of good-natured cheer, spontaneity and animation at every social gathering - well then, I’m for it.”
The senator frowned, but only slightly.
“And I want y’all to know, that’s my firm position and I’m stickin’ to it!”
We’re accustomed to politicians who see all sides, talk all sides, take all sides.
Personal ambition too often rises above principle. Fear weakens conviction. Indecision clouds courage. Apathy steals confidence. Deception covers surrender and confusion prevents judgment.
If we’re not careful, this can happen - to you and me.
It happens in numerous ways. It’s a subtle encroachment upon our heart and mind. As soil is eroded imperceptibly, so the Christian’s faith can be undermined in small steps and with small things.
“This I Believe” slowly devolves into, “That All Depends.”
It’s spiritual soil erosion. “Grounded and rooted” is pulled up - an inch at a time.
When the world idolizes tolerance as a god and spurns conviction as narrow-minded dogmatism, dare any of us be guilty of belief?
Young people in their teens and twenties are abandoning the church with a significant disconnect. The popular cultural shift toward widespread moral acceptance has led the young to view organized religion as unresponsive, censorious and downright irrelevant. No amount of raucous praise bands can change this, any more than the musicians playing hymns on the deck of the Titanic.
Youth today are into yoga, martial arts, nature and meditation. They’re not so much into Bible study or small groups.
How should we live? What can we do? What is our hope?
The Bible is never accommodating to relativism. Scripture can be twisted out of shape by ideologues on the left and right, who use it as a prop for their agendas. Left to speak for itself and for God, the Bible is changeless in its central message to every generation:
Keep the faith. Press on. Look up. Trust. Serve. Obey. Love. Finish strong.
Courage is exhibited throughout the scriptures, in example after example, in leader after leader, and in command after command. We see fewer examples of compromise and nearly all of those are negative, cautionary tales.
We seek guidance in how to live in these interesting times. We seek wisdom. There’s a way to do that.
We pray and ask God. He will give us wisdom. He will give us discernment. He will give us courage when ours has failed.
All the promises in the Bible are given by God’s own “Yes” and “Amen” through Jesus Christ (II Corinthians 1:20).
God is thoroughly reliable. Trustworthy. Good to the last jot and tittle of his divine word.
God wants us to ask him with the same assurance - the same supreme confidence - he gives us with his promise to answer. James says you and I must “ask in faith” (James 1:6).
Our faith has been handed down to us by the saints of old, to whom that same unchanging, unmovable faith was once delivered by God himself. It is a faith entrusted to us - to keep, to hold and to pass on. It must be a secure, unhindered and unaltered confidence in God and his word.
A faith unaffected by the ways of the world; uncompromised by the attacks of snide and arrogant scoffers and uninjured by change; a faith impervious to polls and popular thinking; a faith unrestrained and undaunted by the crisis of our time.
“Nothing wavering.”
Not heart or mind or soul.
We must go to God without a doubt. We must claim his promises fully, in joyful confidence. And if our hearts fail us in that critical moment, let’s remember the honest, desperate prayer of a pleading father for his hurting son: “Lord, I believe, help thou my unbelief” (Mark 9:24).
God will hear that desperate plea and will, in that very hour, restore our faith.
If we doubt. If we waver. If we shimmy. If we cave to those who would force us to deny our faith, we are, as James tells us, like the waves of the sea. Having lived most of my life in New England, I’ve seen those waves storming every which way, without thought, direction or purpose.
The waves are “driven with the wind and tossed.”
Driven by the winds of popularity, compromise, accommodation, and approval.
It’s an apt illustration of instability.
You and I must never live with divided loyalties. We cannot choose both God and the world. To choose one is to be the enemy of the other.
“A double-minded man is unstable in all his ways” (James 1:6, emphasis added).
One thing we cannot afford to be in these uncertain days is unstable. Doubleminded. We must not be “driven and tossed” by the latest social media posting, most recent release, or some nattering nabob of nonsense.
The world is unstable. You and I must live daily in the presence and strength of God’s divine stability.
We must trust God.
Today. Tomorrow. Forever.
Without a doubt.
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