TRUE FAITH-Is It Still Possible?

Lost Faith

Many things can cause people to lose what faith they may have.  Among them are the traumas and trials of everyday life.  Professor Michael Goulder, for example, was a parish priest in Manchester, England, at the time of the 1958 Munich air disaster in which many of the Manchester United football team were killed.  In a BBC television program, announcer Joan Bakewell explained that Goulder "felt helpless before the scale of people's grief."  One result was that he "lost his faith in a God who intervenes in human destiny."  Goulder stated his belief that "the Bible isn't . . . the inerrant word of God" but, rather, "the errant word of man, perhaps with some divine inspiration here and there." 

Sometimes faith just withers away.  That was what happened in the case of writer and broadcaster Ludovic Kennedy.   He says that from childhood his "doubts and uncertainties [about God] went to and fro and [his] disbeliefs grew."  No one, it seems, could give him reasonable answers to his questions.  His father's death at sea was a serious blow to what was already a very weak faith.  Prayers to God to "preserve us from the dangers of the sea and from the violence of the enemy" went unanswered as the converted passenger liner his father was on was attacked and destroyed by German battleships during World War II. -All in the Mind-A Farewell to God.

Such experiences  are not unusual.  "Faith," says the apostle Paul, "is not a possession of all people."  (2 Thessalonians 3:2)  What do you think?  Is true faith in God and in his Word still possible in an increasingly skeptical world?  Examine what the following article has to say on this subject.

Next time: You Can Have TRUE FAITH

Watchtower, 2001