Have Mercy on Those Who Doubt

The path to giving up is plagued with tiny moments. But the path to holding on to the end is drenched in mercy.

Have mercy on those who doubt – Jude 22

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about what keeps a person hanging on to the end. Maybe it’s because I spent the last year marinating in John’s Gospel, and he was the last disciple standing at the end of his life. Just like in marriage or parenting, the Christian life has high moments and low moments. Some stand at death’s door, kept by Christ, and reminded of a faith almost lost. But God, they say. If he hadn’t sustained me, where would I be?

I have friends and family who used to worship alongside me, and now don’t. Their stories are too complex to simplify into 500 words, and they aren’t mine to tell anyway. But every time I read Jude’s words, I think of them. Could we have done more? Could we have held their doubts more sensitively? Could we have sat with them in their questions?

In her book, The Woman They Wanted, Shannon Harris (ex-wife of Joshua Harris, former mega-church pastor and best-selling author), writes about the lack of mercy in her doubting before she ultimately walked away. She writes:

The church of all places should be a refuge where it is safe to be human. And yet I found it was the church that struggled to associate with the not-so-pretty thing— the suffering, the weak, the broken. They wish to avoid being identified with the appearance of failure. Leaders scoot away from the fallen as fast as they can manage. He must not have been one of us, they say. The dividing wall goes up; the finger of shame is pointed. The church’s opportunity to love and remember its own humanity is lost. It is disappointing. Because until the church is willing to go to hellish places with people who are hurting, they will continue to live lives steeped in illusion, disconnected from reality.

Jude’s exhortation in his letter to have mercy on the doubting rings in my ears a lot these days. What leads a person to doubt? I think for a long time, I thought it was unbelief. They can’t handle truths about Christ. Perhaps that is one angle Jude is addressing. People reject Christ’s claims all the time—the apostle John is deeply concerned about this in 1-3 John. But I think another angle he addresses is the tender doubter who wants to believe, there’s just so many barriers in the way.

A sin problem she can’t shake.

A pastor who she thought she could trust, now fallen.

A church he once loved, now fractured.

A faith he once embraced, now divided over politics and ideology.

If Jesus Christ is the good shepherd, why do his surrogates act like wolves? If the gospel really changes lives, why is sin still creeping at your door?

Jude saw a lot of things. John saw a lot of things. All the apostles saw a lot of things. They led a fledging movement of new converts who once hated one another. There were a lot of kinks to work out in the assembly of new Christ-followers. Cultures upended. Lives transformed. Families divided.

What their eyes saw looked bleak at times. It would have been easier to silo back into their own communities, where everything was comfortable. People spoke the same language, had the same customs, and understood the same jokes. It would have been easier to go back to the old life then embrace the new one that was frankly harder to live every day.

Have mercy on those who doubt.

Those who doubt Jesus Christ is enough.

Those who doubt a better home is coming.

Those who doubt justice and righteousness will reign one day, even though the darkness is thick as mud and light is nowhere to be found.

Those who doubt that there is a better picture shown in our attempts at unity than our flagrant division.

Those who doubt that shepherds will lay down their lives for the sheep when all you see are wolves in sheep costume.

On any given Sunday, our churches are filled with doubters. Some doubt because of our cultural moment. Some doubt because they’ve never trusted Christ. Some doubt because the pain of this life has stayed with them for too long, a tattoo of suffering marking them forever.

Jude reminds us that we are the path towards belief for them. What would have happened in Shannon Harris’s life if the church had been a safe space for her questions not a guillotine, crushing them to death. We are the ones where the Spirit of our Lord Jesus Christ resides, and we can show people that Jesus is real. We can show people that Christ is bigger than our doubts. He has enough room to hold them while we wrestle.

Jude saw his fair share of crazy. Like every leader and Christian, he experienced Christians who didn’t act like Jesus saved them out of darkness. John watched every other friend die. And yet, they tell us with the plea of a father, hold fast to what you’ve heard from the beginning. Have mercy on the doubter.

Often people don’t give up because of one catastrophic moment. It’s a slow roll towards unbelief. But the path there is plagued with tiny moments of doubt, where no one stepped in with an extended hand of mercy. The call to the church in this moment today is to not withhold the hand. Lift a doubting person up. Hear their stories and questions. Let them wonder aloud.

And wait.

The path to giving up is plagued with tiny moments. But the path to holding on to the end is drenched in mercy.