Using doubt as an excuse to not change.

People today are the same as people in the time of Jesus and the apostles. Why did many of Jesus’ own people reject him? (John 1:11). Why did the most religious people on earth led by the high priest in God’s holy temple crucify Jesus? They knew the prophecies, they saw and heard Jesus, they witnessed the miracles of Jesus and yet they did not believe in him. Jesus addressed this problem in Matthew 13:10-17 when he spoke of the people’s hardness of heart and their closing their eyes and ears to him.

Sometimes people doubt because even though these evidences are in the Bible they do not read the Bible. The Bible is the most purchased but least read book in the world. Others read the Bible but read it with a closed mind controlled by traditions or preconceptions. Some read and teach the Bible academically and professionally without faith in its contents. Some have accepted world views like materialism or macroevolution that rule out faith.

Sometimes doubt can be a quick out or excuse for those who don’t want to change their lives. They know that if they believe the Bible they will need to change their lives. They don’t want to change their morals or their behaviors. They don’t want to answer to a higher power so doubt becomes an easy, noncommittal intellectual cop-out or excuse.

God presents the evidence but does not overwhelm, coerce or compel anyone to believe in him. We have the freedom to listen or not listen, to see or not see, to believe or not believe. The Apostle John wrote that God gave evidences so that we “might believe that Jesus is the Christ.” However, we must accept and act upon that evidence before we have life with God. It’s in our believing the evidence that we have “life in his name” (John 20:30-31). God gives us choices, and he lets us do what we want, but all these choices do have eternal consequences (John 8:21-24).