Let’s go back in time. I want you to pretend you’re a child again. You’re hungry─what do you do? You’re scared─what do you do? You hit your head on the table while running around (even though Mom told you not to run around the house) and you’re hurt and crying─what do you do? It’s instinct. You run to your parents.
As a child, there is no doubt. There is no doubt that your parents will provide you food. There is no doubt that your parents will protect you from whatever scary thing you just saw. And there is no doubt that your parents will make the ‘hurting’ stop. But then we grew up, and doubt became our friend.
In Christianity, in order for us to understand doubt, we need to look at its origin. Doubt precedes sin. The first doubt in the Bible came when the serpent said to Eve, “Has God indeed said, ‘You shall not eat of every tree of the garden’?” (Genesis 3:1). At that moment, Eve did not respond as a child. She did not run to her Father when the strange serpent spoke to her. She entertained the serpent’s words, and thus allowed doubt to enter her heart─doubt in her God and her Father.
We are no different from Eve during that moment. We see the world’s logic and it draws us in. We entertain its ideology. We do not run to God─our Father. But, hold on, let’s be real with each other; it’s not like we walk with God as Adam walked with Him, or see Him raise the dead like His disciples did, or speak to Him face to face like Moses did. Isn’t it natural to have doubts sometimes? Isn’t it normal for us to wonder if He really does hear us when literally everything is going wrong in our lives or wonder if God’s even out there? Correction: I should say, isn’t it normal for our corrupted nature, the one that seeks worldly wisdom, to have these doubts? Yes, it is. Adam doubted when he ate from the tree, Moses doubted when God literally appeared in front of Him in the burning bush, and even Christ’s disciples doubted from the boat in the storm to the crucifixion of our Lord. The more important question we must consider is what should we do when all of these doubts come rushing at us?
How can we have faith like the saints who cast out demons and heal the sick? We look at these saints as spiritual giants who are clearly free of doubt, and we often yearn to have their strong faith. But we can’t be like that, right? I believe the reason we have so much trouble with this question is because we sometimes think that faith is something that can be worked for. We think that if we do one hundred metanyas every day, wear our ésharbs and tonyas, and attend every tasbeha posted in our group chats─we will get one step closer to the holiness and faith of the saints. Don’t get me wrong, these are all important aspects of our spiritual life but only as a reaction to our love for God, not as a way of earning “holiness points.” Faith comes from God, not from us.
Faith is a gift of the Holy Spirit (1 Corinthians 12:9) that dwells within us. By understanding this concept, we may learn how to cast out all doubts. When we look at the famous “Who do you say that I am” story, where St. Peter cries out saying “You are the Christ, the Son of the Living God,” what is Christ’s response? Jesus says, “Blessed are you, Simon Bar-Jonah, for flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but My Father who is in heaven.” (Matthew 16:17). St. Peter’s strong faith was not from him! It was from God! St. Paul reaffirms this idea when he says that “no one can say that Jesus is Lord except by the Holy Spirit” (1 Corinthians 12:3).
I love the story of St. Simon the Tanner because all of the bishops, all of the monks, and even the Pope were praying to move the mountain; yet it was a man living in the world, a tanner, who’s faith moved the mountain. Faith is a gift from God, it is not earned, and it can be given to us who live in the world. But how? By asking.
One of my favorite moments in the Bible is when the father of a demon possessed child begs Jesus to heal his son after Christ’s disciples could not heal him. Jesus says to the father, “If you can believe, all things are possible to him who believes” and the story goes, “Immediately the father of the child cried out and said with tears, ‘Lord, I believe; help my unbelief!’” (Mark 9:24). God works with us. When we lack faith in the most trying moments of our lives, we need to take the example of this father and cry out with tears saying, “Lord help my unbelief!” God directly tells us the answer to combatting doubt when He responds to His disciples asking why they could not cast out this demon: “This kind can come out by nothing but prayer and fasting.” (Mark 9:29).
Prayer and fasting are a direct cry to God that we are helpless children without Him. Prayer and fasting is the way we silence our worldly thinking, and beg the Spirit that dwells within us to grant us true faith that only comes from God. This is what St. Paul speaks of when he says, “the Spirit also helps in our weaknesses. For we do not know what we should pray for as we ought, but the Spirit Himself makes intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered” (Romans 8:28). When Jesus saw Mary weeping when her brother Lazarus died, He too “groaned in the spirit,” making intercession for her, even when she doubted that her brother could rise again. Prayer and fasting are so effective in casting out doubt because prayer unites us with God, and fasting detaches us from the world─allowing the spirit to rise above the flesh, allowing us to draw closer to our innocent nature that clings to our Father rather than earthly wisdom. So the next time doubt creeps into your mind, resort to prayer and fasting, cry out “Lord help my unbelief!”─and God will grant you the faith of little children.