DOUBT IS GOOD
In the maturation process we sooner or later — but hopefully sooner — come to doubt that religious teachings offered by humans are not adequate to satisfy our desire for growth. We come to understand that neither church, nor synagogue, nor preachers, nor rabbis, nor prophets, nor apostles are able to adequately teach us about God. We hunger for good spiritual food that comes directly from God’s mouth.

We come to the realization that we do not want our maturity to be limited by the maturity or immaturity of others — no matter how mature they appear to be. When we begin to question (i.e. doubt) the effectiveness of human teaching, and question the legitimacy of religion, we can be sure that God is at work in the long process of setting us free from Old/First Covenant religion and transforming us into New Covenant disciples. This process begins with goads from God that cause us to doubt the validity and efficacy of our religion. Once these doubts set in, we will not want to let anything or anybody limit our knowledge of God or obstruct the maturing of our relationship to him.

When we are going through this uncomfortable phase of life, we don’t realize it, but we are actually beginning to hear God’s voice. Every time a thought that questions our religion comes to mind we have a life and death choice. And it is not an easy choice to make. Do we reject the teachings and religions of our parents and our friends, or do we trust that God is speaking to us and beginning to show us a righteous alternative to religion?

STUDY TIP: This phase of doubting and questioning is part of what some call Pre-Rapture Tribulation.

It is important to consider and reflect on these doubts when they come. God considers rejecting them or setting them aside to be hardening of the heart.

STUDY TIP: See IT IS ALL ABOUT TODAY and this link for scriptures about responding to God’s voice for more about responding to God’s voice in a timely manner.

When we begin responding to God’s voice, many things will start to change in our lives. First, we stop looking to others to give us evil, soulish food. We take personal responsibility for feeding ourselves and digging our own spiritual wells. Next, we will disassociate with religious institutions (i.e. churches, synagogues, ministries, etc.) and the religious leaders on whom we have been dependent for spiritual food. We will find them to be inadequate to the task of feeding us and hundreds and perhaps thousands of others who may not have the same appetite for God as we do. We will say to ourselves, and maybe to others, “My hunger for God is greater than their ability to feed me. I must study myself if I want to grow spiritually.”

When we get to that place, the meaning of the narrow gate takes on special meaning for us and we are no longer content to be a part of the crowd that enters the wide gate. If God is merciful to us, we come to understand that the wide gate that we and others have historically entered is nothing better than and Old/First Covenant religion of religious do’s and don’t s that has snared and injured ignorant people who depend on teachers drunk with spiritual pride to direct their religious behaviors.

At the same time, we also come to understand that God has been gently guiding us toward the New Covenant where the law is written in our minds and on our heart. He is guiding us toward the place that we believe that he speaks to his people and listen to his voice. In the maturation process, he uses the finite, religious laws of men written on articles of incorporation, bylaws, doctrinal statements, weak spiritual leaders, liturgies, programs and orders of service on Sunday mornings to frustrate us and cause us to repent for trying to achieve righteousness by our religious works. He has used the frailty of religious leaders and dead religious works as a tutor to lead us to quit depending on them for spiritual food and lead us to Christ.

And when we get to that point we are ready to say to God, to ourselves and others,

“Enough of this religious stuff! Enough of depending on men for knowledge about God. No more religion. From now on it is just me and God and his laws written on my heart.”

That is how it was for Saul the Pharisee when Jesus stopped him on the road to Damascus in Acts 9:1-22. Paul later reports his version of the event in Acts 26:12-19:

 “Thus I journeyed to Damascus with the authority and commission of the chief priests. 13 At midday, O king, I saw on the way a light from heaven, brighter than the sun, shining round me and those who journeyed with me. 14 And when we had all fallen to the ground, I heard a voice saying to me in the Hebrew language, ‘Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me? It hurts you to kick against the goads.’ 15 And I said, ‘Who are you, Lord?’ And the Lord said, ‘I am Jesus whom you are persecuting. 16 But rise and stand upon your feet; for I have appeared to you for this purpose, to appoint you to serve and bear witness to the things in which you have seen me and to those in which I will appear to you, 17 delivering you from the people and from the Gentiles–to whom I send you 18 to open their eyes, that they may turn from darkness to light and from the power of Satan to God, that they may receive forgiveness of sins and a place among those who are sanctified by faith in me.’ 19 “Wherefore, O King Agrippa, I was not disobedient to the heavenly vision,

We all  know this story. Saul was one of  the most zealous religious people around. He made a career out of persecuting and killing followers of Christ. We learn from Paul’s report that Jesus had been bothering Saul before the incident on the road to Damascus. When  Jesus said, “It hurts you to kick against the goads,” he meant that God was trying to deliver him from Old/First Covenant religion toward listening to his spoken voice. In his zeal for maintaining Old/First Covenant law and all the traditions associated with Judaism, he had attracted God’s correction (i.e. goads.) And now, God had finally increased the pain of correction to the point that he blinded Saul to get his attention in a way he could not ignore.

This story provides several object lessons in symbolism. First, physical blindness is equated with spiritual blindness. The blindness tells us that Saul could not see (i.e. accept) that Jesus was the fulfillment of The Law that Paul so zealously advanced and protected. He was a religious Pharisee who took great pride in his knowledge of the written law and in his ability to obey every last facet of it. His life was very closely tied to The Law of Moses and all its various religious requirements, including temple services and sacrifices which produced income for him and other Pharisees. He and his fellow temple leaders were greatly threatened by Jesus presence and his ability to attract people to himself. If the people followed Jesus, the power, status and income of the Pharisees would be greatly diminished.

Next, we find symbolism in the scales that fell from his eyes after he received the Holy Spirit. The scales represent the rigid devotion he had to the legal system of the temple leaders. Their livelihood and very reason for living was wrapped up in the temple and everything for which it stood. Up until the point of being struck blind, the temple and The Law was all Saul could see. He could see the letter of The Law clearly, but he could not intellectually understand (i.e. see) that there was an underlying “Spirit” to the law that Jesus had come to fulfill.

Spiritually speaking, what Saul was blinded from was the truth of Jeremiah’s prophecy regarding the New Covenant. Being a student of The Law, he surely knew about the Jeremiah’s prophecy and other prophecies about a Messiah, but somehow he and other Pharisees had come to believe that the fulfillment of the prophecy would happen at some future date under other circumstances. It is curious that others recognized Jesus as the coming Messiah, but many, especially religious leaders, could not make that connection. We can imagine that the main reason Saul could not see this is because of his great investment in the temple’s religious ceremonies. To put that more succinctly, we could say that he  was blinded by the letter of The Law to the reality of Christ as the spiritual fulfillment of The Law.

Next, we can look at Ananias laying his hands on Saul as symbolic of anointing by the Holy Spirit. Another way to look at this is that regaining of his physical sight and baptism represent a new ability to see spiritually and act with the power of the Holy Spirit. Sometime thereafter, people started calling him Paul to reflect that his character (i.e. name) had changed also.Then, we can look at Paul’s training and release into ministry. Spending time with Damascus disciples is symbolic code for training.

Finally, we can step back and look at the symbolism of Paul’s history and how it relates to our own lives. Paul is a type of Christ (i.e. he had new life after death in Old/First Covenant religion), and he is a type of us who should also desire to be brought to new life after spending years in the captivity of Old/First Covenant religion.

Paul represents all people who are raised and indoctrinated into religion. It does not matter that Paul is a kind of special case because he was a Pharisee. In our own ways we are all Pharisees if we hold to the doctrines taught by men. It does not matter what religion (Jewish, Catholic, Protestant, Hindu, etc.) we follow. If we practice some form of religion, we are indoctrinated. And if we are indoctrinated, we, like Saul, are blind to the truth of who Jesus is. We have scales on your  eyes that must be removed before we can see spiritually and be released into effective ministry empowered by the Holy Spirit.

Paul’s story, therefore, is every man’s story. We all are goaded like he was to change direction regarding our religion. We get little goads here and there as we wonder if our religious activities mean anything to God. We know that they mean something to those with whom we worship because they keep coming and keep paying for the religious services provided by the church, synagogue or temple where we worship. But, because things don’t appear to change much, despite all our prayers and worship songs, we entertain doubts about whether it all means anything to God. Doubts are God’s goads to move us from religion to New Covenant life.

In the meantime, we keep attending our preferred place of worship and keep doing our same old religious rituals and activities because they make us feel righteous and good — even though we don’t see much tangible benefit from them. And because our friends and family show no signs of relaxing their religious zeal, we continue with our habitual religious practices.

But, if we are honest with ourselves and with God, we notice that from time to time, doubt creeps in. The doubts are goads from God to open our eyes so that we will reject religion. We do well to pay attention to the doubts.