For Doubters Only
Despite the religious persuasion, whatever denomination, whether Christian or Jew or probably any other religion, faith in God always has and always will leave some element of doubt or uncertainty about whether what you believe is what the truth is. Since an integral part of any religion is the philosophy of life after after death as well as during the present life, and since no one has returned from the dead to report on the portion of philosophy that deals with life after death the considerable or even the small niggling doubt about life after death has always remained. This is why these beliefs are called faith after all. The Bible says in Hebrews, "Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen."
What is a person to do about this?
There are some very pertinent remarks that G.K.Chesterton spoke many years ago that I think they are extremely timely today despite that it is now some 100 years later. He said, "Mysticism keeps men sane. As long as you have mystery you have health; when you destroy mystery you create morbidity. The ordinary man has always been sane because the ordinary man has always been a mystic. He has permitted the twilight. He has always had one foot in earth and the other in fairyland. He has always left himself free to doubt his gods; but (unlike the agnostic of today) free also to believe in them. He has always cared more for truth than for consistency. If he saw two truths that seemed to contradict each other, he would take the two truths and the contradiction along with them." These remarks are from the first chapter of Chesterton's book Orthodoxy.
Continuing his remarks from Orthodoxy Chesterton says, "The religious man's spiritual sight is stereoscopic, like his physical sight: he sees two different pictures at once and yet sees all the better for that. Thus he has always believed that there was such a thing as fate, but such a thing as freewill also. Thus he believed that children were indeed the kingdom of heaven, but nevertheless ought to be obedient to the kingdom of earth. He admired youth because it was young and age because it was not. It is exactly this balance of apparent contradictions that has been the whole buoyancy of the healthy man. The whole secret of mysticism is this; that man can understand everything by the help of what he does not understand. The morbid logician seeks to make everything lucid, and succeeds in making everything mysterious. The mystic allows one thing to be mysterious, and everything else becomes lucid."
Chesterton's writing style may be slightly difficult for modern people to fully comprehend but the gist of his insightful comments certainly is that the sensible solution to the natural doubts that a spiritual person has is spiritual assurances.
The bookmarks in this For Doubters Only series are mostly assurances from the Bible and the ones that are from secular authors or personalities are ones that are authenticated by Old and New Testament truths where spiritual assurances systematically attend to the natural doubts that people have..