On intellectual doubt

This is something I wrote in response to a friend's Facebook post. I cut it down a bit before posting, but thought I'd put the whole thing up here.

This is a response to Jemimah, who asked this question the other day: To my Christian friends: what was the last thing god did in your life? And what makes you believe god did it and it wouldn't have happened anyway? I'm not being facetious or trying to disprove anyone's faith... I'm genuinely interested... Inbox me

Firstly, I know we have been out of touch for ages, sorry for coming at you out of the blue!

I wanted to write a response because your question resonated a lot with where I was at a couple of years ago. I did a degree in Psychology and Philosophy at Oxford (not name-dropping, but rather to say that it was a very challenging academic course that didn't leave much space for hiding behind assumptions). I came out it with my faith kind of in shreds, and although I'm still a Christian and that's what I build my life around, I've never quite regained the confidence I had in God. Phrases like 'sure hope' and 'confidence in the Gospel' make me really uncomfortable, because they're just things I can't say I have anymore. So this is written very much from a Christian perspective, but not just.

So just a few thoughts on this from someone who's been there (possibly still is there?):

1. Firstly, I admire your honesty and your courage! I never really had the courage to voice my questions so clearly, to say out loud when I simply didn't believe any of it. To my shame, the reason I never quite made the jump was because I am simply too afraid of God if He's real and I'm not on His side.
2. Secondly, fear. My experience is that Christians are really uncomfortable discussing this sort of thing, and I think that's down to fear. Partly this is because we might be wrong; partly because if we're saved by what we believe, then questioning it feels like putting our salvation at stake. For me, it was, and still is, fear that if I walked away God wouldn't come looking for me, which keeps me looking for Him.
3. Thirdly, experience. When I am trusting God, that's when I can see Him at work in my life. When I am questioning Him I simply can't. This is because of what paradigm/worldview you're working in. I think this is true for a lot of people and is consistent with either way of looking at it. For the Christian, the Bible is pretty clear that God rewards faith, so it makes sense that when we're trusting Him we will see Him at work. From a psychology perspective, we tend to look for the things that support our way of looking at things: when I'm trusting I will look for places where God answers prayer, when I'm doubting Him I'll look for places where He's not obvious.
4. Fourth, assumptions. A Christian worldview begins with the assumption of a loving, sovereign God, every good thing that happens is a reason to thank Him and every bad thing that happens is a reason to run to Him for help. It doesn't matter whether it 'would have happened anyway' because on this way of understanding the world, without God nothing would have happened at all. This is how we're taught to think growing up in the church.
   Science on the other hand begins with the assumption that the world follows rules, and it looks for the rules that most closely match the evidence we have. That's why it makes sense to try and track what we pray for and find out whether it has happened.
   The reason I mention this is that it's important to recognise that there are assumptions on both sides. I'm sure there are lots more I haven't mentioned. When you're looking at it from one perspective, it's hard to see what your assumptions are.
   They are also not incompatible – that is, there's no reason not to believe in both God and science, even though churches are often afraid of science.
5. Fifth, the brain. You've chatted in the comments about how our brains work, and whether we're 'hardwired to think religiously'. I could spend hours on this topic – the brain is so fascinating, and we still know so little about it. I'd say without much doubt that we ARE hardwired to think religiously, not so much because of what little we know about brains but simply looking at history and culture: pretty much every one has some sort of religion. We also tend, as I mentioned above, to look for evidence and arguments that confirm what we already believe and to ignore other evidence, to believe things that are in line with how we behave, and we are very capable of believing things that contradict each other! It's something that's worth being aware of when you're trying to figure things out, but it doesn't really provide evidence one way or another. It makes sense for God to make people with the capacity to believe in Him, but the fact that people are like that isn't a reason to believe in Him or not.
6. Sixth, truth. When people's experiences don't match up, sometimes it's easiser to say that everyone has their own truth. I think you have to be careful with that, because some question are about facts – things that are true or not. I think that if you ask 'does God exist' and you are clear on what you mean by 'God' (and 'exist', but let's not go there #worstessayI everwrote) then there is a right answer, whether it is 'yes', or 'no' (that's even if we don't have a way of finding out the answer for sure).
7. Seventh, choice. Some people come out of a search for truth convinced by one side's arguments; I certainly didn't. If you're not 100% sure, you still have to decide what to live by. For Christians, that's what faith actually is; choosing to believe when there's not much evidence. God doesn't promise much evidence!
8. Don't give up. It's worth looking at these questions; don't settle for someone else's conclusions, because whatever beliefs you end up with, you are going to struggle to live by them if you're not sure of yourself.

For me, intellectually, it came down to other people's experiences: people I trust telling me about things they've seen God do, rather than things I've seen God do myself. I go to the sort of church where people pray for miracles and see them, so I'm thinking of personal friends and particular stories, as well as of things I've read in books. I'm not saying I don't see God doing things, but I mostly see Him doing things that I could have explained a different way. I'm okay with that.

And to actually answer the question, the last prayer God answered for me was one I prayed Sunday before last. For a long time I've found it really hard to talk to God because of things I get angry about or I'm afraid to think about (I get panic attacks and some thoughts are triggers – that's a whole other story!). So I asked for a gift of faith; that whole week I was able to pray without getting panicky, which hasn't happened for a long time, and last Sunday I was able to sing praise songs and actually mean them for the first time in a while. To put it in perspective, it's been months, and I have prayed many times in those months. God could have said yes any of those times, and He didn't. Still I was pretty darn grateful when He did say yes...!