The Serious Dilemma of Doubt

In facing the serious problem of doubt, our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ says, “Take heart; it is I. Do not be afraid.” (Matthew 14:27). This Sunday we look at this very real issue. On the one hand, we mustn’t soft-peddle the fact that doubt is a serious threat to faith and whatever threatens our faith threatens our salvation in Christ. Doubt isn’t our friend, but as one theologian put it, “Doubt is the beginning of unbelief.”  At the same time, we cannot condone “Christian” attitudes which present true believers as stoically never being confronted with doubt. St. Peter is presented in this week’s Gospel in Matthew 14 as very much experiencing doubt. The account is there not for us to criticize Peter, but to take heart in that the Lord understands His children. We do experience doubt. It is what flows from the hearts of poor sinners who need the Savior Christ! This is the human side of the equation which we cannot ignore or suppress. The Gospel this Sunday does not exist to condemn us for doubt, but to teach us what God does about our doubt. First of all, our Heavenly Father sends His Son Jesus to save us from all doubt; and secondly, we are taught about how — in our lives with Christ — to deal with our tendency to doubt not in order to replace His grace in Christ by returning to works of the Law, but by living in what the book of Hebrews describes: “looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith…” Not to oversimplify, but the Word seems clear: when Peter kept his eyes on Jesus, he walked on water. This Scripture is not here for us to go out and test God with a bunch of weird self-serving experiments, but it is here to give us God’s answer to what makes faith strong — not faith itself, not anything we do — but Christ and Christ alone! Dr. Espinosa

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