Quotes on Doubt & Hard Questions
Christian quotes on Doubt & Hard Questions — with author, dates and source, from two millennia of Christian thought.
The strongest faith isn't a faith that never doubts. Rather, it's a faith that grows through doubts.
Craig Groeschel
I believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun has risen, not only because I see it but because, by it, I see everything else.
C.S. Lewis
Do you see the moon standing there? It's only half visible, and yet it's round and lovely! So it is with many things that we lightly laugh about, because our eyes cannot see them.
Matthias Claudius
The grip of our faith by which we hold on to the Lord may loosen. But the One in whom we believe holds us with his grip.
Helmut Thielicke
A man can no more diminish God's glory by refusing to worship Him than a lunatic can put out the sun by scribbling the word 'darkness' on the walls of his cell.
C.S. Lewis
Now that I am a Christian I do not have moods in which the whole thing looks very improbable: but when I was an atheist I had moods in which Christianity looked terribly probable.
C.S. Lewis
Faith comes and goes. It rises and falls like the tides of an invisible ocean. If it is presumptuous to think that faith will stay with you forever, it is just as presumptuous to think that unbelief will.
Flannery O'Connor
Our doubts are traitors, and make us lose the good we oft might win, by fearing to attempt.
William Shakespeare
All the persons of faith I know are sinners, doubters, uneven performers. We are secure not because we are sure of ourselves but because we trust that God is sure of us.
Eugene Peterson
Doubt isn't the opposite of faith; it is an element of faith.
Paul Tillich
Doubt, fear and self-hatred are overcome when we accept that we are accepted.
Brennan Manning
God remains faithful to me, even when I lose myself in doubt about him.
Helmut Thielicke
If your God never contradicts you, you might be worshiping an idealized version of yourself.
Tim Keller
You can be as orthodox as the devil himself, and just as ungodly.
John Wesley
Never doubt in the dark what God has taught you in the light.
Bob Jones
Christ never failed to distinguish between doubt and unbelief. Doubt is can’t believe. Unbelief is won’t believe. Doubt is honesty. Unbelief is obstinacy. Doubt is looking for light. Unbelief is content with darkness.
Henry Drummond
With my telescope I can penetrate millions of miles into space; but when I lay it aside, shut myself in my room and go down on my knees in earnest prayer, I see more of heaven and come closer to God than with the help of all the telescopes and instruments on earth.
Isaac Newton
A soul may be in as thriving a state when thirsting, seeking and mourning after the Lord as when actually rejoicing in Him; as much in earnest when fighting in the valley as when singing upon the mount.
John Newton
I note that some whom I greatly love and esteem, who are, in my judgment, among the very choicest of God’s people, nevertheless, travel most of the way to heaven by night.
Charles Haddon Spurgeon
Feeling God's love is something precious; but being able to believe in God's love, even when you do not feel it, is greater.
Charles Haddon Spurgeon
'Lord, I believe; help my unbelief' is the best any of us can do really, but thank God it is enough.
Frederick Buechner
"Lord, I believe; help my unbelief" is the most natural and most human and most agonizing prayer in the gospels, and I think it is the foundation prayer of faith.
Flannery O'Connor
Very few people understand how electricity works. But we don't sit in the dark for that reason until we've figured it all out. We cannot explain God, but we can live with him now.
Hans Peter Royer
The first sip from the cup of natural science makes you an atheist; but at the bottom of the cup, God is waiting.
Werner Heisenberg
Doubts are the ants in the pants of faith. They keep it awake and moving.
Frederick Buechner
We live in a culture that has, for centuries now, cultivated the idea that the skeptical person is always smarter than one who believes. You can almost be as stupid as a cabbage as long as you doubt.
Dallas Willard
The riddles of God are more satisfying than the solutions of man.
Gilbert Keith Chesterton
Faith is not belief without proof, but trust without reservations.
D. Elton Trueblood
I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use.
Galileo Galilei
A fire broke out backstage in a theatre. The clown came out to tell the audience. They thought it was a joke and applauded. He repeated the announcement; they cheered even louder. That, I think, is how the world will end.
Søren Kierkegaard
Whoever seeks the truth is seeking God, whether they are aware of it or not.
Edith Stein
One can indeed become godless, but one cannot get rid of God.
Alfred Delp
Christianity, if false, is of no importance, and if true, of infinite importance. The only thing it cannot be is moderately important.
C.S. Lewis
Don’t dig up in doubt what you planted in faith.
Elisabeth Elliot
My argument against God was that the universe seemed so cruel and unjust. But where did I get this idea of just and unjust? A man does not call a line crooked unless he knows what a straight line is.
C.S. Lewis
If you want a religion to make you feel comfortable, I certainly don’t recommend Christianity.
C.S. Lewis
The ultimate purpose of reason is to bring us to the place where we can see that there is a limit to reason.
Blaise Pascal
I know only two kinds of reasonable people: those who love God with all their heart because they know Him, and those who seek God with all their heart because they do not know Him.
Blaise Pascal
Whoever has found God in the cross of Jesus Christ knows how strangely God hides himself in this world and how he is closest precisely where we believe him to be furthest away.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
I could never myself believe in God, if it were not for the cross.
John Stott
People quoted here
Craig Groeschel, C.S. Lewis, Matthias Claudius, Helmut Thielicke, Flannery O'Connor, William Shakespeare, Eugene Peterson, Paul Tillich, Brennan Manning, Tim Keller, John Wesley, Bob Jones
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