Help with doubt

[Spelf]

Full disclosure, I’ve recently overcome a serious addiction to a certain kind of sin, and I’ve been over it for nearly a week and a half and I’m hoping I can continue to keep off. During that time I never doubted God’s presence nor his existence. Even struggling through sin, all I wanted to do was to be able to reach Christ. That’s what I wanted when I died - not a fear of hell, no, strong desire for heaven.

So satan’s grasp has been lifted, right? Unfortunately not. I’m now undergoing what might best be described in my head as cognitive dissonance. I know in my head that God is real, that he has blessed my family and I with an impossibly large amount of blessings. I know that God became man and was crucified, and rose again. But I don’t feel it inside me right now, I have lots of doubt. I feel awful, especially considering the Christmas season. I see a cross and I know that that is a representation of the real and true sacrifice of our God, but a small voice in the back of my mind says “that’s just a religious icon of medieval European people”.

I really don’t know what to do. Is this kind of doubt sinful? How do I escape this? Any help would be appreciated.

 

[phil_at_dayboro]

I have always thought that it’s good to poke & prod ,ask questions about your faith,
Faith can be like a candle in the darkness, the candle light represents your faith and the darkness represents the doubt , when in doubt , think about that candle light ,
Because if there were no light, there would be nothing,nothing but total darkness,
God gave you light to guard against the darkness , grasp that light,
Sometimes Pray is just not enough, so then make a change,
Find a large field , and pray out loud, works for me,

 

[Mystical_Seeker]

Without doubt, faith would be easy.

Like dude says :hey_bud: and then you’re like “k … coolio.”

Heb 11:1 Faith is the realization of what is hoped for and evidence** of things not seen.

If I see it, that is sight and not faith. If I believe it, then it’s belief, not faith.

If I just trust it and invest energy in it so that I may hope to “taste and see” the goodness of the Lord that may make absolutely no sense to me (loving enemies and the first is last, for example) until after I just “go with it” and keep my eyes, ears, and heart open as possible to see what happens.

If I will not allow myself to thoroughly examine my doubt, then I can never really be confident of anything I am “faithful” about. Otherwise I might be motivated by fear, crippled by confusion, and since I don’t even totally understand what I’m doing wrong I hide myself from any kind of inspection by myself, others – including confessors, or quite frankly the Holy Spirit. Perfect love drives out fear.

But perfect love, loves enemies and isn’t afraid of being taken down by them because He who is in us is greater than he who is in the world. Don’t be afraid to listen to what your doubts are saying; otherwise if you don’t hear them out you will always know there is some unfinished business down there, and your faith will lose power because you want to believe something but you can’t because there are some loose ends that don’t connect in your current favor.

One theologian I read suggested “doubt is not the absence of faith; doubt it a component of faith.”

Just like a scenery of a picnic table on a sunny day. You expect it to have a shadow, and you understand it. Telling the shadow it is bad is optional But whether you do or not, you’re neither afraid of it, nor do you place your food on it or trust it to hold you up – even though there is no light between the wood and the tablecloth so you might imagine there is a shadow right underneath your bright and shiny work surface!

Look at Summa Theologica by Thomas Acquinas, doctor of the Church. He played his own devil’s advocate, going back and forth on each issue in Theologia, questioning, answering the questions, and then questioning the answers.

MS**