Lost Stories Gem #30
Why We Lose Faith and How to Recover It
When people lose faith, it rarely happens all at once. It erodes gradually, brick by brick, as doubt accumulates and questions go unanswered. The struggle between certainty and doubt is perhaps the oldest human tension of all.
Some lose faith when tragedy strikes. Others when institutional authority disappoints them. Still others when the world refuses to match the picture they were taught to believe in. And many struggle with faith simply because the existence of suffering, disease, and death seems incompatible with a loving God.
But before we can address why people lose faith, we need to acknowledge what sustains it in the first place.
Evidence in the Beauty That Surrounds Us
In the struggle between certainty and doubt, many factors weigh into the fray. On one hand, there are the obvious clues to the presence of God in the Universe, which can’t help but elicit a faith in such a God: the splendor of a desert sunset, the glory of a star-filled night sky, the magnificence of a lush island paradise.
There's beauty in the animal kingdom that takes our breath away: the exotic design of peacock feathers, the breathtaking breach of the ocean's surface by a humpback whale, the majestic demeanor of a roaring African lion.
And there's profound beauty in humanity itself: a wide-eyed infant held securely in a loving mother's arms, a child's giggle as it reaches for a father's outstretched hand, a lover's lips on the tear-stained cheek of their beloved.
For anyone willing to look, the natural world delivers an overwhelming message: something transcendent created all of this.
The Dark Mirror: Why Suffering Undermines Faith
But here's where the trouble begins.
There's more to life than the beauty that adorns the creation. There's also a tragic side to all that's good and wholesome—a dark mirror reflecting back a world of sadness and pain, of suffering and disease, of cruelty and death.
Many point to this gross negativity in an attempt to undermine faith in God altogether. As long as suffering, disease, and death exist, they argue, we need no more proof of the utter futility of believing in a God Who would allow such horrors.
For unbelievers, this is one of the oldest arguments against God's existence. It's as though they have discovered some perverse flaw in God's creation that He is too embarrassed to admit He can't control and is therefore powerless to fix.
For believers, this presents one of the most painful obstacles. In confronting suffering, disease, and death, they struggle with the nagging question: How can these great enemies exist in a world created by a loving God?
But the problem actually goes deeper than the suffering itself. The real problem is that suffering, disease, and death cause us to view God as aloof and untouched by our predicament. If God exists, the reasoning goes, surely He can't be as concerned with our pain as we'd like Him to be.
What the Creation Actually Reveals
Yet even in the midst of this perceived absence of the Divine, Scripture invites us to see beyond our condition and grasp the real truth.
As it is written in The Psalms: "The Heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of His hands. Day after day, they pour forth speech; night after night, they reveal knowledge."
As such, God may seem absent due to the consequences of humanity's early choices, but that doesn't mean that the reality of God has stopped manifesting in the Universe. From time immemorial, Scripture teaches that in addition to the written word given to humanity, there's the grandeur and beauty of the natural world itself that demonstrates—and even articulates—God's existence.
The Apostle Paul wrote: "For God shows His anger from Heaven against evil people who suppress the truth in wickedness. They know the truth about God, as He's made it evident to them, because ever since the world was created, people have seen the Earth and sky. By way of everything that God has made, they can clearly see His invisible qualities, His eternal power, and divine nature."
In other words, since the dawn of time, Nature itself has carried a message about God. But this knowledge has been actively suppressed, especially by those with cynical minds who reinterpret what they see. Like the Pharisees who could see nothing marvelous in the raising of Lazarus or the miracles of Jesus, there will always be those who look upon the Universe all around us but can never see beyond it to the Creator.
The Pattern Woven Through Scripture and Nature
Then there's something remarkable that few ever notice: both Scripture and Nature reveal the exact same pattern.
In the natural world, we see this pattern played out in the Earth's biosphere. Every stratum of life depends symbiotically on the death of countless others. The chemist Jean-Baptiste Dumas described it: "Everything that the plants take from the air, they give to animals, then the animals return it to the air; this is the eternal circle in which life revolves but where matter only changes place."
In Scripture, the same pattern appears repeatedly: death and resurrection, both figurative and literal, all foreshadowing and culminating in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ Himself.
Taken together, this dual pattern points to a powerful truth. If Nature and Scripture reveal correspondence in something so improbable as death and rebirth, then this confirms that the written record of Scripture, with all its talk of miracles and revelation, is simply the inevitable by-product of a supernaturally designed Universe.
Within the matrix of life, then, we see inescapable evidence of a marvelous pattern. On every level of existence, from the lowest lifeforms to the most complex, matter is never lost but always transformed from one level of existence to another. This isn't what we'd expect from a purely naturalistic world. It's evidence of intentional design.
Why People Struggle with Faith When They Forget This Pattern
The central drama of The Bible is one of an infinite God Who repeatedly stoops down to interact with finite humans. Those humans respond in awe and reverence, yet that relationship is inevitably spoiled by our presumption, pride, and selfishness.
It happened with Adam and Eve. With Noah's children after the Flood. With Joseph's brothers driven by jealousy. With the Israelites worshiping a golden calf. Again and again, God communes with humanity, and we, in turn, ruin His original plan by making it alien to His purpose.
But here's what sustains hope: even when God withdraws His wisdom in response to human apathy and disregard, He never entirely removes His revelation. The direct revelation may pause, but another form of revelation never stops communicating God's presence and power to an onlooking world.
That revelation is the creation itself.
Moving Beyond Cynicism Toward Hope
Any theological doctrine may be debated and disproved, but what can never be disproved is the self-evident reality of creation. You exist. The world around you exists. A life and a world filled with vitality, beauty, and grandeur.
When we examine the present creation in its totality, we don't just see life that succumbs to death. We also see abundant evidence for death that inevitably gives way to rebirth. Cynicism teaches us to groan at the stench of death. But when seen through the lens of hope, our eyes open to a brand-new way of viewing one of humanity's most dreaded enemies.
Here's an old adage worth remembering: "It's not the bad thing itself that makes you or breaks you. It's whether it drives you toward God or away from Him. If it drives you away from Him, it'll break you; but if it drives you toward Him, it'll make you."
Although today we see only the world as it is—fallen, agonizing, anticipating—it's one that is harmonious even in death as a result of God's presence in the life cycle of every organism. God works out a marvelous drama of rebirth and renewal. Our so-called "imperfect world" yet contains in it the seeds of tomorrow, a foreshadowing of a world in which God will inevitably fulfill His promise of life everlasting.
From this, we might now see that the struggle between certainty and doubt isn't resolved through argument alone. It's resolved through a willingness to look beyond our pain and see the pattern that God has woven through all of creation. When you understand how death itself is part of a larger design of renewal and restoration, you may find that the questions that once drove your faith away can instead drive you toward the God who created it all.
