Faith Questions

Aim: To show that asking questions of our faith is as old as our faith, and showing that having questions doesn’t mean we don’t believe or can’t follow.

Key ideas to communicate:

• Doubt and questions are good.
• People ask questions of God in the Bible.

Start by welcoming the group and explaining what you are here for; we’re together to explore over the next few weeks, some of the common objections, criticisms, and questions around the Christian faith. As this is the first activity of the first session, it would be good to find out what the groups’ expectations of this are. Why are they here and what do they want to know? If you know the group well, or you have a small group, it might be worth doing this all together. If the group is larger or doesn’t know each other well, then start in pairs or threes, and have them consider one or two of the following questions:

• What place do questions have in our faith?
• What is the opposite of doubt?
• How comfortable are you when people ask questions about faith?
• Can you define doubt?
• How does it make you feel when you learn about something that seems to be opposed to faith?

Note that the point of this is not to come up with a definitive answer, but to start to explore what the participants think and to get the group comfortable with one another.

Watch the video above or download the video at the bottom of the page.

Have the following extract from the video printed out to be read by one of the participants:

‘An area that can throw us with this is that we can feel like we don’t often see doubt in the Bible. We see people who lived their lives faithfully for God, who followed Him as best they could, but this is often because of the way that the Bible tells us about character. We are used to modern ways of storytelling, where the feelings, motivations, and thoughts of characters are often spelled out in detail. The Bible doesn’t tell us about character in this way, and we are often left to imagine the thought processes going on under the surface.’

If you are working with a group who are comfortable and knowledgeable about the Bible, start by asking them to name people from the Bible who display doubt, or stories from the Bible about people questioning their faith. Make a note of these centrally so you can look at them together.

• If you are working with a group who may not be so confident in their knowledge of the Bible, or group with mixed knowledge, it may be best to suggest some passages to look at. This will mean that the group can engage together without feeling uncomfortable about either not knowing enough or feeling that they are showing off about what they know. Split the group and either have them each look a one of the below, or choose one that you think they will be able to engage with best. Some suggested passages are:
  • 1 Kings 19:1-14, Elijah and the still small voice.
  • Exodus 33:12-23, Moses asking to see the Glory of God.
  • Luke 7:18-23, John the Baptist asks if Jesus is really the Messiah.
• What is going on in the above?
  • In all of them we see a key leader, who had done amazing things for God, and who had drawn others to God, suddenly felt that it was all too much. They began to doubt, Moses asked to see God, Elijah felt the weight of the responsibility was too much, and John began questioning the knowledge that he had been so certain of
    before.
• Were there any common themes in what was shared in your group?
• Was the result broadly positive, negative, or neutral for the person who expressed doubt in the reading? When we express doubt in our own faith, do we think the result will be positive, negative, or neutral?
  • If the answer for the above two questions is different, it might be worth digging into why we think our doubting is different to the doubting we see in the Bible.

Using the Option Printouts (download at the bottom of the page), explore with the group what they think the outcomes of the different scenarios will be and why.

Option 1:
A person hears the message that through faith in God they will live a life free from doubt and uncertainty. They start to follow Jesus but a while down the road they discover some of the conversations around interpreting the Bible, and the question of how reliable the historical narratives in the Bible are. Because they been taught the Bible is inerrant and have no way to explore doubt as part of their faith. Perhaps they feel they have to make a choice between faithfully following Jesus or rejecting their faith.

Option 2:
A person grows up in a Christian home, where the presence of God in everyday life is an accepted part of the world. As they grow they attend church pretty regularly, and are part of children’s and youth groups. When they start at secondary school they come across some alternative ways of viewing the world, and are part of conversations where agnostic and atheist worldviews are explored. These conversations lead them to ask questions of their faith, and the things they had thought of as certain. Their youth worker has some fairly open conversations with them about the ways that these different worldviews collide, and lets them explore the ideas for themselves.

Prompt questions:
• What might happen if a different approach was taken to exploring questions around faith in the scenarios above?
• Are there some questions that it isn’t ok for Christians to explore and think about?
• Would you have any advice for the people in the scenarios above?
• What happens when we close down these conversations?

Final thought:
Ask the group if they think doubting is something we can avoid? If not, then what is our best response to it?

Have each participant have a tealight, or similar, and something central to light them from. Using a table, mark out one side as being Faith, and the other as being Doubt. Explain that, as we have seen in this session, things are not as stark as seeing ourselves as believers or doubters, but we can spend time between these points. When they feel ready, ask the participants to take their candle, light it, and place it on the table in the middle between the points, as a sign that they want to acknowledge we live in a world where certainty can be hard, and doubt can be difficult, but God will help us walk through it all.

Once all those who want to participate have done so, pray and ask God to go with you all as you go out into the world, that you will see where He is active, and be aware of His presence with you this week.

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