The Rev. J.D. Greear says too many Christians believe a lie: that questioning or doubting their faith makes them “bad” believers or there’s something defective with their faith.
The megachurch leader approaches the topic by quoting 19th century British preacher Charles H. Spurgeon: “Doubt is a foot poised to go forward or backward in faith.”
What matters, Mr. Greear says, is where the foot comes down.
Doubt “is a divinely induced struggle that God wants you to go through to get to the truth of what’s in his word,” said Mr. Greear, senior pastor of 12,000-member The Summit Church in Durham, North Carolina.
He said the idea for his latest book — “12 Truths & a Lie: Answers to Life’s Biggest Questions,” published by K-LOVE Books — grew from speaking with thousands of college students and members of Generation Z who flock to his church, people who are often skeptical about the Christian faith or who want to know why there’s suffering in the world.
His church sits in the Research Triangle area of the state, home to North Carolina State University, Duke University and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. The book started with a podcast Mr. Greear hosted at those campuses and the questions those students would ask.
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“What I’ve discovered is that people ask basically the same questions every time, the [same] set of questions,” said Mr. Greear, a former president of the Southern Baptist Convention. “What I want people to see is that these questions that mean ‘something’s wrong,’ they’re actually the questions that God wants us to ask.”
A frequently asked question emerges from people who say they want to live “my truth” versus what Christians call objective truth based on Scripture. Mr. Greear says objective truth can’t become subjective simply because someone wishes to declare it so.
“I can say that George Washington wasn’t the first president of the United States, but that’s objective truth regardless of how I feel about it,” he said. “We have a postmodern, post-truth, post-Christian society that is trying to discern the difference, really, between what those two things are and it has been wrong for people in times past to take subjective truth and to try to say … ‘This is my preference, [so] this is what is true for everybody.’”
“What we have is, right now, a culture that is yearning for some objective kind of things to stand on,” he added, noting the popularity of celebrities who offer concrete answers such as psychologist Jordan Peterson and podcaster Joe Rogan.
Just as Mr. Peterson and Mr. Rogan can offend some listeners, “I think what the Bible offers is a countercultural objective truth that is offensive in every generation,” said Mr. Greear, 50.
“I am a pastor at a church for college students, and they feel like [theirs] is the first generation to be offended by the Bible. And I’m like, ‘Look, it’s been offending people in every generation … and we would expect it to be if it is a word from God about what is true and what is false.’”
• Mark A. Kellner can be reached at mkellner@washingtontimes.com.
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