We began a new teaching series on 11Jan09 called Doubting Your Doubts. Some folks have asked for some of the quotes from C.S. Lewis and Tim Keller.

Lewis quotes will be from different resources. Keller quotes will be from The Reason for God unless otherwise noted.

C.S. Lewis:
C.S. Lewis - in The Letters of C.S. Lewis to Arthur Greeves - “I think the trouble with me is lack of faith. I have no rational ground for going back on the arguments that convinced me of God’s existence, but the irrational deadweight of my old sceptical habits… and the cares of the day, steal away all my lively feeling of the truth, and often when I pray I wonder if am not posting letters to a non-existent address. Mind you I don’t think so - the whole of my reasonable mind is convinced: but I often feel so.”

C.S. Lewis - in a A Grief Observed (p.5) - “Not that I am (I think) in much danger of ceasing to believe in God. The real danger is of coming to believe such dreadful things about Him. The conclusion I dread is not “So there’s no God after all,” but “So this is what God’s really like. Deceive yourself no longer.”

C.S. Lewis in Christian Reflection - “Everywhere, except in theology, there has been a vigorous growth of scepticism about scepticism itself.”

Tim Keller:
Keller to believers: “a faith without some doubts is like a human body without antibodies in it. people who blithely go through life too busy or indifferent to ask hard questions about why they believe as they do will find themselves defenseless against either the experience or tragedy or the probing questions of a smart skeptic… Believers should acknowledge and wrestle with doubts - not only their own but their friends and neighbors.”

Keller to skeptics: “The only way to doubt Christianity rightly and fairly is to discern the alternate belief under each of your doubts and then to ask yourself what reasons you have for believing it. How do you know your belief is true? It would be inconsistent for you to require more justification for Christian belief than you do for your own.”

Note: I took the title and concept from The Journey, St. Louis (hat tip to Darrin Patrick). We will follow their topical trajectory though the messages will be different.

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David Thew
Sojourn Pastor
Thewblog
twitter.com/davidthew