How can I fully believe and not doubt?

Q. Please help! I have struggled so hard to believe. I have begged God to take away my doubt and give me the faith and belief in him that He desires. I have done all of this with a truly sincere heart and I have asked all of this in Jesus’ name. Yet no matter how hard I try, no matter how hard I pray and beg God to take away my doubts, I just can’t fully believe.

I hope it will help you to hear that believing fully does not mean having no doubts.

The capacity for faith and the capacity for doubt are the same. If you did not have any doubts about what you believe, you would not be believing it by faith.

Faith is the reasonable belief in something that we cannot prove. Because we cannot prove it, there will always be some doubt about it. But that does not mean that it is not true or that it is not a reasonable thing to believe.

So please stop tormenting yourself for having doubts. They come with the territory of being a Christian. All believers have them. As we grow in our faith, more and more of our doubts are resolved. We come steadily to have more faith and less doubt. But this is a process—a natural process—and we can’t rush it. But that’s okay with God. He knows that we humans are finite and need to grow into our faith.

Here’s how I know that this is okay with God. The gospels record how a man asked Jesus to heal his child: “If you can do anything, help us,” the man said. “‘If you can’?” Jesus responded. “All things are possible for one who believes.” The man replied, “I believe; help my unbelief!” Jesus did not rebuke him and say, “Well, if you really believed, without any unbelief, I would help you, but since you have doubts, you don’t really believe, and so all things are not possible for you.” Instead, recognizing that the man had genuine faith, even though it was still mixed with doubt, Jesus healed the man’s child.

Some ancient manuscripts say that this man “cried out with tears” when he told Jesus that he believed but needed help with his unbelief. Certainly it was very distressing to him to think that he might not believe fully enough for his child to be healed. But Jesus treated him with kindness, mercy, and compassion. And Jesus regards you in the same way that he regarded this man. He does not condemn you. He sympathizes with you and will walk with you on the path to greater and greater faith. Please show yourself the same kindness that Jesus is showing you. Thank you.

Are Christians supposed to love even the Antichrist?

Q. Christians are supposed to love everyone, but would that include even the Antichrist mentioned in the book of Revelation? Are Christians supposed to pray for the salvation of everyone, including the Antichrist? Does God love or hate the Antichrist?

I think the answer to your question lies in our understanding of the terms “love” and “hate.” It has been well said that, in a biblical sense, “love is not a feeling, it is a commitment.” Specifically, it is a commitment to act consistently in the best interests of another person.

Conversely, but in a complementary way, in a biblical sense, “hatred is not a commitment, it is a feeling.” As I say in this post, godly hatred is “that feeling of strong antipathy towards anything dishonoring to God that makes us want to have nothing to do with wrongdoing and not join in with wrongdoers. … But if instead we are ‘out to get’ somebody, that is, if we are committed to acting consistently contrary to their best interests, then this is not really ‘hatred’ in the sense that the godly psalmists use the term. It is instead bitterness or vengefulness—something we cannot in good conscience indulge.”

So to speak in light of this to your question, I would say that Christians should not harbor bitter, vengeful feelings even towards the Antichrist. In the best interests of that person, we would still need to oppose his efforts to destroy the worship of Jesus on earth. For his own sake, we would need to try to keep him from doing such a thing that was so opposed to God. (And for the sake of our own Christ-likeness, we should not be bitter or vengeful either.) At the same time, we would need to recognize that the Antichrist had made a series of choices that had led him to become the arch-enemy of Jesus, and that should fill us with a strong antipathy that would make us want to have nothing to do with him or his purposes.

While God knows what is in the depths of the hearts of people, other human beings don’t. Christians have various understandings of how the prophecies in the Bible about the end times will be fulfilled. But suppose, for the sake of discussion, that there were believers alive on earth during the time of the Antichrist. I’m not sure they they would know definitively that this was indeed the Antichrist. For all they knew, with prayer and sacrificial love, this person might turn from the path of opposing Christ. So I would say that, given the limitations of our knowledge as finite humans, we can’t really ever give up on anybody. We should pray for the salvation of everyone, knowing that “God is not willing that any should perish, but wants all to come to repentance.”

We also need to recognize, however, that God has given people the freedom to make moral choices, and that a long series of wrong moral choices may lead a person to the place where he or she becomes definitively opposed to God. But that is something we would recognize only in principle. In the case of any given person, we could not know whether they had reached that point. So we pray with realism but also with hope.

I would say that God loves the Antichrist in the biblical sense I have described: always wanting what would have been the best for him, always wishing that he had made different moral choices. And I would say that God hates the Antichrist in the biblical sense I have described: not wanting to have anything to do with someone who opposes love, peace, and justice to the extent of oppressing people cruelly and even trying to exterminate the worship of his beloved Son.

What made Lucifer turn away from God?

Q. What made Lucifer turn away from God?

There are two passages in the Bible that are addressed, in the first instance, to pagan kings, but in which many interpreters see a further reference to Lucifer (the “light-bearer”), the angel who has now become known as Satan (“the accuser” or “the adversary”).

One passage is in Isaiah, and it is a “taunt against the king of Babylon”:

How you have fallen from heaven,
    morning star, son of the dawn!
You have been cast down to the earth,
    you who once laid low the nations!
You said in your heart,
    “I will ascend to the heavens;
I will raise my throne
    above the stars of God;
I will sit enthroned on the mount of assembly,
    on the utmost heights of Mount Zaphon.
I will ascend above the tops of the clouds;
    I will make myself like the Most High.”
But you are brought down to the realm of the dead,
    to the depths of the pit.

The second passage is in Ezekiel, and it is a “lament concerning the king of Tyre”:

“‘You were the seal of perfection,
    full of wisdom and perfect in beauty.
You were in Eden,
    the garden of God;
every precious stone adorned you:
    carnelian, chrysolite and emerald,
    topaz, onyx and jasper,
    lapis lazuli, turquoise and beryl.
Your settings and mountings were made of gold;
    on the day you were created they were prepared.
You were anointed as a guardian cherub,
    for so I ordained you.
You were on the holy mount of God;
    you walked among the fiery stones.
You were blameless in your ways
    from the day you were created
    till wickedness was found in you.
Through your widespread trade
    you were filled with violence,
    and you sinned.
So I drove you in disgrace from the mount of God,
    and I expelled you, guardian cherub,
    from among the fiery stones.
Your heart became proud
    on account of your beauty,
and you corrupted your wisdom
    because of your splendor.
So I threw you to the earth;
    I made a spectacle of you before kings.

I agree with the interpreters who caution that these passages should be understood, in the first instance, in their original context, as references to pagan kings whom God is going to judge. However, the prophets announce these judgments through what might be called an extended metaphor. They draw a series of comparisons between these kings and the “morning star, son of the dawn,” the “guardian cherub.” This means some mighty angel who fell from a glorious state into ruin, just as these kings are going to do. The description of this angel’s rebellion and judgment fits what is said about Satan in the rest of the Bible.

So we can infer from these passages—I am convinced this is a legitimate use of them—that the angel formerly known as Lucifer turned away from God because of pride. He did not regard his created power and beauty as gifts from God to be used in the grateful service of God. Rather, he thought that because he was so powerful and beautiful, that meant he was like God or even greater than God, and he rebelled to try to take the throne of the universe away from God. But his power was created and so finite, meaning that it was inconsequential compared with God’s infinite power. God effortlessly crushed his rebellion and expelled him from his former position. For reasons that we do not fully understand (which I discuss in various other posts), God has allowed this being, now known as Satan, to continue to exist and to have some freedom of operation. But we know from the Scriptures that in the end God will judge and punish him definitively.

In the meantime, the example of Lucifer is a clear warning to all of us. Ideally we will all become aware of the talents and capabilities that God has built into our lives. It is important to know how God has gifted us so that we can concentrate on serving him with those gifts and not try to do something else at which we would be less effective. But our mindset must be, as Paul wrote to the Corinthians, “What do you have that you did not receive? And if you did receive it, why do you boast as though you did not?” We should see all of our abilities as gifts from God to be used in grateful service to him.

So, the short answer to your question, “What made Lucifer turn away from God?” is: “Pride.” This raises a further question: How can we escape the dangers of pride, which clearly are very great? Through the humility that comes from gratitude. Whenever we become aware of any capability, whenever we achieve any success, we should say, “Thank you, God, for this gift. Please enable me to use it humbly and gratefully in service to you.”

Is it all right to read the book of Enoch?

Q. The Nephilim, or the offspring of fallen angels and humans, mentioned in Genesis and 1 Enoch are very confusing to me. Are these so-called giants actually real, like Og, the king of Bashan, or are stories like Enoch similar to modern day fan-fictions or spin-offs? I am reading Enoch currently and it is deeply spiritual and I hope so much that it holds water like the rest of the Bible. Why was Enoch and other gnostic gospels and apocrypha considered heresy, and would it be harmful for my faith to read these, as they may not be God’s word? Would God want me to read these ancient texts? Are they intended to be taken literally?

Regarding the identify of the Nephilim, please see this post:

Who were the Nephilim?

Regarding reading 1 Enoch and similar books, please see this post:

Why were some books removed from the Bible and is it a sin to read them?

In that post, I say, “If you belong to a community of Christians, and if this issue is important within that community, you could explain to anyone you told about reading these books that you were not reading them as Scripture, but as edifying literature that has come down to us from within the tradition of our faith. I hope no one would be upset about that.”

I might note that while 1 Enoch is not part of the apocrypha, so it is not found within the Bible that Catholic, Anglican, and Orthodox Christians read (which has a few more books than the Bible that Protestant Christians read) it is accepted as canonical by one Christian communion, the Church of Ethiopia. For more information about these differences, see this post:

Do different Christian communities really consider different books Scriptural?

Will we know our loved ones when we get to heaven?

Q. Will we know our loved ones when we get to heaven?

Yes, I am convinced that we will. The Bible depicts heaven as a place where individual personalities are still distinct and recognizable. Jesus said, for example, that “many will come from the east and the west and take their places at the feast with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven.” A hymn that I like very much (“Ten Thousand Times Ten Thousand”) sums up this idea well in what I consider to be biblical language:

Then oh what glad reunions on Canaan’s happy shore,
What knitting severed friendships up, when partings be no more.
Then eyes will shine with gladness that brimmed with tears of late,
Orphans no more fatherless, nor widows desolate.

Do the apocryphal books mention reincarnation?

Q. Do any of the books from the Dead Sea Scrolls or any of the apocryphal books that were left out of the Holy Bible ever mention anything like reincarnation? Thanks.

Reincarnation is not mentioned in the apocrypha. This is also true of the books of the Old and New Testaments. (The Dead Sea Scrolls are not an additional source of works. They contain mostly Old Testament books and three apocryphal books.)

The idea of reincarnation does not figure in the Christian understanding of this life and the afterlife. Christians believe that God creates each soul individually and that each person enters his or her eternal destiny after leaving this life. Christians also believe that it is not necessary to go through a long cycle of reincarnations in order ultimately to enter heaven. When Jesus died on the cross as the Savior of the world, he brought forgiveness of sins and opened the way to heaven for everyone who trusts in him.

What will God do to people who cheat on their spouses?

Q. I have a friend who is having an affair. I am worried about her and what this will do to her and her relationship with God. She is a Christian and is a regular churchgoer. If she continues in this affair or if it someday results in a divorce, what will God do? She told me she is praying each day for forgiveness for being involved with this other man. I too am praying for her but I am scared she’ll go to hell for this. What does God do to people who are cheating?

Thank you for your question and for your concern for your friend.

The first thing I would say is that affairs don’t just happen. When married people go outside of their marriages for love, affection, and (frankly) excitement, that is a sign that those things are not present within the marriage in the way that they should be. This does not excuse the affair. But it does put it in a broader context that shows that the person is probably not deliberately doing something evil. The person is wanting good things (love, affection, excitement) but getting them in the wrong place. I would say that God understands this and takes it into account.

Nevertheless, I would also say that God will certainly do something in this case. The Bible says, “The Lord disciplines everyone he loves. He corrects everyone he accepts as his child.” Since your friend is a Christian, she is God’s child, and so God will correct her. God loves her too much to allow her to continue on this destructive course.

I expect that this will most likely happen through the affair being discovered. This may occur in a most unexpected way, hinting that God was responsible for the discovery. Then your friend will be held accountable for her actions and her choices. God will intend this for her good, so that she can repent, receive forgiveness, and be reconciled to her husband, and so that the two of them can find help and healing for their marriage.

However, knowing that this is likely to happen, I would certainly encourage your friend to end the affair now, before it is discovered and exposed. It will be much better for her and her marriage if she ends the affair on her own, confesses to her husband, seeks his forgiveness, and goes with him for counseling.

There’s one more thing I’d like to note as well. Sometimes people say, “I know this will be a sin, but I will ask God to forgive me for it, and he will forgive me.” That is true. But when we sin on that basis, even though we do receive forgiveness, we nevertheless irretrievably miss the opportunity to do the right thing on that occasion and bring glory to God and the hope of salvation to others through our obedience.

How much better it would be if your friend could say, “Yes, we’re going through a rough time in our marriage, but I made a vow before God and my family and friends to be faithful to this man, and I intend to keep that vow. We’re going to get the help we need, and we’re going to make this marriage work. In fact, we’re going to get the spark back. Just you wait and see. In the years to come, we’ll be more in love than ever!”

That is the kind of example we need Christian people to set. That is the kind of commitment they need to show, the kind of faith in what God is able to do. A testimony like that is incredibly powerful.

I recently heard a woman share how she and her husband had such a rough time in their marriage that even though they were both Christians, they got divorced. But they both continued to seek what God had for them, individually and together. Ultimately, after receiving much healing and experiencing genuine reconciliation, they got remarried to one another!

That is the kind of testimony we are able to give when we resolve that we are going to honor and obey God and seek to do what brings him glory. I believe that this is what God wants for your friend more than anything else, more than meting out any punishment for the affair. But as I said, the Lord also disciplines those he loves, so your friend should expect that God will act to end this affair if she does not.

Is it okay to believe in an “infinite consciousness”?

Q. I recently came across the concept of non-duality, specifically what Rupert Spira shares about an infinite consciousness as the concept of “I,” that beneath (or above?) our self, thoughts, and feelings, it’s this consciousness that exists. I have been gravitating towards this, but I am concerned that it could be a false teaching that would pull me away from God. Can you help shed some light on this, whether it’s okay for me to believe in this non-duality or the infinite consciousness? I only want to serve one master and that is our Lord.

I must admit that I am not familiar with Rupert Spira or his teachings. Your question is the first that I have heard of them. I’m not sure that I would do justice to them if I tried to track them down and look them over briefly in order to give an opinion in response to your question. So let me respond this way: Do you have peace in your heart about these teachings? Or do they make you, as someone who only wants to serve Jesus, uncomfortable? If they make you uncomfortable, then I would recommend not pursuing them. I am suggesting that you can rely on spiritual discernment—the Holy Spirit in your life leading you into all truth—to decide about the character these teachings. Someone else may have occasion to read and study them thoroughly and give an evaluation of them in the light of biblical truth. But I think for your own purposes at this point, if you have these concerns about them, they are probably better left alone.

Can a Christian drink alcoholic beverages?

Q. Is it permissible for a Christian to drink alcoholic beverages?

As I understand it, this would be a matter of individual conviction. In Romans 14, Paul discusses various things about which Christians of good will can have honest differences of conviction. At the beginning of the discussion, he mentions eating meat (probably in context meaning food offered to idols) and observing the Sabbath. The principles Paul teaches are that each person “should be fully convinced in their own mind” and that everyone should “make every effort to do what leads to peace and to mutual edification.” That means specifically not doing anything that would lead fellow believers to violate their own consciences and fall into sin. At the end of the discussion, Paul says by way of summary, “It is better not to eat meat or drink wine or to do anything else that will cause your brother or sister to fall.” This suggests that he considers whether or not to drink wine also to be a matter of individual conviction, like Sabbath observance and eating meat.

The Bible does stress that drunkenness is a sin. So any Christian who feels the liberty to drink alcoholic beverages such as wine must do so in moderation. This is a second qualification on the freedom, in addition to the mandate not to cause a fellow believer to sin.

I should also note that in that same discussion in Romans, Paul says, “Let us stop passing judgment on one another.” On matters of individual conviction, we answer to God, not to other people’s opinions of what we should or should not do. Paul says this even more strongly in Colossians: “Therefore do not let anyone judge you by what you eat or drink, or with regard to a religious festival, a New Moon celebration or a Sabbath day. These are a shadow of the things that were to come; the reality, however, is found in Christ.” Ideally we can recognize that choices that rest on individual conviction are minor matters, and we can concentrate on major matters, which have to do with how we can all grow up into the image of Christ.