Certainty “is grounded in the promises of God, not in changing experiences or imperfect good works.” We never overcome doubt by looking at ourselves, but only by looking away from ourselves to Christ, who is the sole pledge of God’s love to us.

Apologetics requires certainty and confidence. Its basic purpose is conquering doubts cast on the Christian faith. But what about the doubts of Christians? How do we defend a faith that we are not always certain of?
Doubt is not a virtue; it is a serious problem. Doubt is dishonorable. God wants us to trust him, to have faith in everything he has revealed. “Faith, by its very nature, is opposed to all doubt.”[1] In a fallen world we should expect unbelief. But it doesn’t glorify God. Doubt is also uncomfortable. Doubt makes us unstable “like a wave of the sea that is driven and tossed by the wind” (James 1:6). If left untreated doubt can keep us from trusting in Jesus who is the only lifeline for lost sinners. And doubt is paralyzing. It can prevent disciples from doing great things for God (Matt. 21:21). Doubt can be like a blindfold on our soul. If we can’t see God’s integrity, we won’t dare follow the hard path Jesus blazed.
Doubt is a problem. But it need not be disastrous if we understand it and face it according to the rule of Scripture.
We Need to Understand Doubt
“Doubt is a form of wavering; it’s to be of ‘two minds’ about something” (1 Kings 18:21).[2] Doubt is ambivalence about who God is or what he has said. It is like the first sin, and a sign that we are not yet completely remade in the knowledge of God. Doubt is so troublesome that God could use it as a threat to warn covenant breakers: “Your life shall hang in doubt before you. Night and day you shall be in dread and have no assurance of your life” (Deut. 28:66). In the restored cosmos doubt will be no more.
But for now, doubt will always be a counterpart of faith. Living by faith simply means that we trust what we cannot see. It is a reasonable hope for what we do not yet fully have. The very nature of faith leaves room for uncertainty. God’s thoughts are too lofty for us to comprehend (Ps. 139:6). “God is infinite, beyond our understanding, and He chose to reveal Himself to us in a way that sparks questions rather than settles all of them.”[3] God does us a favor by not telling us everything he knows; we couldn’t handle it! Imperfect knowledge is not the enemy of faith.
And doubt can be a healthy challenge to thoughtless acceptance of revealed truth. Doubt humbled Peter’s arrogant claims that he would always follow Jesus. And as we grow older it is natural and good to scrutinize the way we had believed certain truths. If you were taught that unbelievers are monsters, that every church member can be trusted, or that Christianity is easy, doubt can be a helpful corrective. In fact, sometimes our faith falters because we have been expecting easy answers our whole lives. “It is more dangerous to live in a safe little world refusing to acknowledge the wild, scary world of unbelief than it is to prepare well and engage it.”[4] Doubt forces us to venture “outside the fabricated safety of an untested faith.”[5]
But doubt can also be a result of excessive self-reliance. We might seek confidence in the quality of our faith and panic when we realize that it is small. If we make our understanding the standard for our security we will worry about how little we know. If we equate our value with our obedience to the works of the law we will doubt the gift of justifying grace. Doubt, even for Christians, is the result of believing that God is too small to be 100% what we need.
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If Christians come to view other Christians as oppressors based solely on their ethnicity or gender, if we exalt lived experience over the Bible, if we see oppression rather than sin as our fundamental problem, and if we see activism rather than Jesus as the fundamental solution, we’ll have deeply undermined this good news. God forbid.

Two weeks ago [04/10/22], David French wrote an article about the battle over Critical Race Theory that has engulfed both our culture and the evangelical church. If you haven’t read it in its entirety, I suggest stopping now and reading it here. Because French cited Dr. Pat Sawyer’s and my Gospel Coalition article “The Incompatibility of Critical Theory and Christianity,” I’d like to offer a few points of agreement/pushback.
Issue #1. The term “Critical Race Theory” is sometimes used extremely broadly and carelessly.
I agree. We can all find pundits and politicians who rail against CRT (or anything else) without apparently understanding what that term signifies other than alignment with their political opponents.
However, French writes that the label “CRT” has been “fundamentally and intentionally changed by conservative activists to encompass an enormous number of arguments and ideas about race, including arguments and ideas that have nothing to do with CRT.” This statement is more questionable, mainly because the category of “CRT” has evolved substantially over the last three decades.
For example in 2001 –long before “CRT” had appeared on the radar of most conservative pundits– CRT cofounder Kimberle Crenshaw wrote: “the name Critical Race Theory [is] used as interchangeably for race scholarship as Kleenex is used for tissue.” Similarly, in their seminal text CRT: An Introduction, Delgado and Stefancic state plainly that “although CRT began as a movement in the law, it has rapidly spread beyond that discipline” (Delgado and Stefancic, CRT: An Introduction, p. 7). They go on to mention education, political science, ethnic studies, sociology, theology, and health care as fields in which critical race theory has taken root (ibid, p. 7-8). Even more recently, the African American Policy Forum –which is led by Crenshaw herself– wrote that “Critical race theory originated in law schools, but over time, professional educators and activists in a host of settings –K-12 teachers, DEI advocates, racial justice and democracy activists, among others– applied CRT to help recognize and eliminate systemic racism.” Consequently, suggesting that conservative activists like Chris Rufo were solely responsible for the broadening of the term “CRT” is incorrect.
That said, when French states that “extreme manifestations of CRT can clash with Christian orthodoxy,” he’s implicitly recognizing that these ideologies are indeed properly included under the heading of “CRT.” So we may be in agreement here.
Issue #2. CRT is not the best term for the ideology Christians are concerned about.
On the one hand, I think we should use terms as accurately and precisely as possible. When I talk about the all-encompassing oppressor-oppressed worldview permeating our culture, I tend to use terms like “contemporary critical theory” or “critical social justice” rather than “critical race theory.”
On the other hand, we also should be wary of playing an endless semantic shell-game: We can’t critique “cultural Marxism” (“a Neo-Nazi conspiracy theory!”); we can’t critique “wokeness” (“cultural appropriation of African-American vernacular!”); we can’t critique “postmodern Neomarxism” (“Jordan Peterson’s made-up bogeyman!”); we can’t critique “critical race theory” (“it’s just a legal discipline!”). And on and on. This strategy makes it impossible to offer any critique whatsoever because any term we use will be deemed “problematic.”
To illustrate, this same strategy could easily be deployed against French himself. In 2018, French wrote an article entitled “Intersectionality, the Dangerous Faith” in which he repeatedly compared intersectionality to a religion, writing:
rising in the heart of deep-blue America are the zealots of a new religious faith. They’re the intersectionals, they’re fully woke, and the heretics don’t stand a chance.”
And
I’m hardly the first person to make this argument [that intersectionality is a religion]. Andrew Sullivan has noted intersectionality’s religious elements, and John Sexton has been on this beat for a year. Smart people know religious zeal when they see it.
And
There’s an animating purpose — fighting injustice, racism, and inequality. There’s the original sin of “privilege.” There’s a conversion experience — becoming “woke.” And much as the Christian church puts a premium on each person’s finding his or her precise role in the body of Christ, intersectionality can provide a person with a specific purpose and role based on individual identity and experience.
If I were a critic, I could write a long diatribe claiming that French is misusing the term “intersectionalty.” I could point out that the academic literature describes “intersectionality” not as a religion but merely as “an analytic tool [that] gives people better access to the complexity of the world” (Collins and Bilge, Intersectionality, p. 2). I could add that in his 2022 article, French says explicitly that Crenshaw’s 1989 article on intersectionality was “immediately enlightening.” I could therefore portray French’s 2018 article as a slanderous hit-piece aimed at pandering to his conservative base and riling them up over an esoteric sociological framework.
But, of course, all of that would entirely miss French’s point. Clearly, there is some set of extremely pernicious ideas that has a vice grip on our culture, our elite institutions, our major corporations, and even on some churches. What we choose to call it (whether “intersectionality” or “critical race theory” or “cultural Marxism”) seems like a secondary issue. And, to be fair to French, it is indeed possible to show that the concerns French had in 2018 about a “hierarchy of oppression” and the valorization of “lived experience” can indeed be traced to both intersectional scholarship… and to critical race theory.
For my part, I’ve emphasized over and over in my talks that what matters is the ideas themselves, not the labels we use to describe them. Moreover, even apart from considerations of precision and accuracy, conservatives need to recognize the practical importance of focusing on ideas rather than labels. If you firebomb a particular term like “woke” or “CRT,” scholars will simply swap out the offending term and continue promoting the same bad ideas under a new heading.
Issue #3. “Anti-CRT” bills don’t actually target CRT.
Issue #4. As long as we don’t treat CRT as a worldview, it’s compatible with Christianity.
Issue #5. CRT is not really making inroads within conservative evangelicalism.
Issue #6. The furor over CRT is partisan culture-warring.
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There’s nothing wrong with United Methodists wanting to have good interfaith relations, whether it’s with Pagans, Jews, Muslims, atheists,  or adherents of other religions. There’s also no problem with studying other philosophies and theologies that are non-Christian, but doing so from a distinctively Christian standpoint. Yet, given that Iliff has an admissions counselor who is pagan, multiple student-elected leaders who are pagan, a web page highlighting one of their pagan students and a class dedicated to pagan spirituality, the situation seems go beyond just seeking good interreligious relations.

One might assume that the official seminaries established and still heavily funded by the United Methodist Church would have a core commitment to the Christian faith, broadly understood. More informed United Methodists would at least expect that even the progressivism in our seminaries would remain Christian liberalism. But our denomination’s Iliff School of Theology in Denver has actually progressed so far to be oddly atheism-friendly and actually promote completely different religions – Unitarian Universalism and outright Paganism. And Iliff’s pagan connections run deeper than many realize.
Iliff, as a United Methodist seminary, receives funding from the church’s Ministerial Education Fund (MEF). The MEF is a large chunk of the apportionment payments demanded of local United Methodist congregations. According to official data compiled by Joe Kilpatrick, between 2009-2016, Iliff was supported by an average contribution of $806,763 per year from the fund. But with all of that money, they only educated an annual average of a mere 11 people ordained into American United Methodist ministry (out of a yearly average of 516 total ordinands). Iliff is not merely generously subsidized by United Methodist apportionments, but it is disproportionately supported, receiving an average of $71,712 per ordinand, well above the $48,942-per-ordinand average for all 13 official U.S. United Methodist seminaries. (Attempts to seek updated statistics from the General Board of Higher Education and Ministry, the General Council on Finance and Administration, and Iliff itself were unsuccessful.)
Given this amount of support, it may surprise the average United Methodist that Iliff intentionally trains clergy to promote Unitarian Universalism and that outright Paganism is openly practiced by people who study and work at Iliff.
Iliff’s extensive statement of its many “Core Values” makes clear the United Methodist seminary’s commitment to intersectional, progressive social justice, but says nothing directly about God, Jesus Christ, or the Bible. This official statement does not even have anything particularly Christian beyond passing references to the school’s “United Methodist heritage.” Another official statement declares, “Support of the LGBTQIA+ community is a core value at Iliff” and reports, “Since we began tracking the metrics in 2015, 35% of our student body has consistently identified as LGBTQIA+.” In deference to this constituency, the seminary has offered an entire course devoted to “Queer Spirituality in the Visual Arts,” in which students can explore such topics as “Queer Tarot.”
Iliff School of Theology: where commitment to the LGBTQIA+ cause is a core value, but following Jesus Christ is not.
This sidelining of Christianity seems to deliberately reflect the school’s commitment to a pluralist religious ethos. One current staffer and alumna has publicly said, “The Iliff School of Theology is a United Methodist school of higher education but its alumni and students are Hindus, Universalists, Jews, Christians, Muslims, Buddhists, atheists, agnostics….” An alumni profiles section of the website—the sort of place where schools brag about select alumni of whom they are particularly proud and with whom they want to publicly identify the institution’s reputation—includes a glowing profile of a minister of a “social justice-oriented” United Methodist congregation in Iowa in which “people identify as Catholic, Methodist, Buddhists, Unitarians, agnostics and spiritual seekers.”
Apparently, even something as basic as belief in God is not a boundary for Iliff. The alumni profiles section also celebrates a chaplain who is part of the atheistic American Humanist Society. And a faculty profile highlights an Iliff professor who “now describes himself as a ‘lapsed Buddhist,’ and a current atheist.”
Iliff’s influences from neo-paganism and Unitarian Universalism are especially noteworthy. The former is a loose movement of Westerners rejecting mainstream religion to re-adopt various religious beliefs and practices from pre-Christian Europe. The latter is a liberal, post-Christian religion known for its belief in the relativistic equality of different religions. Unitarian Universalists often call themselves “UUs” for short.
Even when students first apply to Iliff, they may interact with an admissions representative who is a self-described member of the “LGBTIQ+ community” and pagan priestess, or as her official bio puts it, she “is ordained with a Norse pagan organization called Forn Sidr of America and serves as their Gudellri/head clergy.” Shouldn’t official ambassadors for a school so heavily funded by the UMC be Methodist, or at least some sort of Christian?
Such pagan influence is seen in the culture of Iliff’s student body. The seminary’s student government is “an elected representative body” called the student Senate. An official seminary email sent in November to alumni celebrated the election of five student leaders to this body. Two stand out in particular: Kyndyl Greyland and David Dashifen Kees.
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