I have my doubts...

Exploring Boston: A Puritan preacher doubts God's love

I once heard a story about a man who fell into a deep ditch. He couldn’t get out, so he began shouting for help.

A priest passed him and he said, “Father, I’m down here in this ditch, can you get me out?!” The priest wrote a prayer, threw it in, and walked on by.

Then a doctor passed. “Doctor! I’m here in this ditch, can you get me out?!” Then the doctor wrote a prescription, threw it in, and walked on by.

Finally, his friend walked by. He shouted, “Joe! It’s me! Please, I’m down in this ditch and I need your help getting out!” Unexpectedly, Joe jumped into the ditch with him. To which this man replied, “What are you doing?! You were supposed to help me! Now we’re both stuck in here!”

His friend Joe then assured him, “I know. But I’ve been down here before, and I know the way out.”

From Dunse to Stirling, from Stirling to Edinburgh, then from Edinburgh all the way back to Dunse (his home); this period of Thomas Boston’s life resembles one big circle. But it wasn’t only a geographical circle; within his own soul, there were downward spirals caused by hyperintrospection, followed by a return to the sufficiency of the whole Christ.

Doubting the love and faithfulness of God can be debilitating. But it’s a comforting thing to look on the “dark night of the soul” of others, such as Thomas Boston, and see how they got out of the deep ditch of doubt. Here, he enters the ditch with us as a friend and lends a helping hand.

Doubting Thomas

Boston had sought to leave the Presbytery of Dollar after much rejection and misunderstanding from the people. Therefore, he made his way to Edinburgh for a commission to make an appearance for formal transfer, comforting himself in the Lord through prayer during what was a painful waiting period for Boston. He still had not settled down in a church ministry, and thus, this period produced much doubt in his heart. Since Boston’s memoirs are nothing more than a series of journal entries, he now shifts from narrative to his inner life and introspection.

The aforementioned downward spirals reached a head on January 1, 1699. During his private worship before the corporate gathering, he doubted God’s faithfulness and wrestled with the notion that God would leave him.

Then, after he preached that day, Satan tempted him with more thoughts. This led to more prayerful dependence on Christ and his writing of the booklet, “Soliloquy on the Art of Manfishing,” which embodied his true desire to become fishers of men as Christ commanded His disciples. But after a brief gap of time, the mental spiral ensued once again.

January 21 began with another bout of doubt. While meditating on Jeremiah 31:3, “I have loved thee with an everlasting love,” he drifted into the ditch:

“I thought I loved Christ…I saw love began on Christ’s side; yet I could not but with doubting assent to the conclusion, that God loved me.”

Translation: “I thought I loved Christ, and thought He loved me, but the more I thought about it, the more I doubted the fact that God truly loved me.” It may seem strange that doubt can come while meditating on Scripture, but thankfully, Boston charted the way forward.

How to Deal with Doubt

In an age of deconstruction where many will receive the invitation to doubt and make a home in the ditch of the unknown, Boston’s wrestling here is an invitation for us to doubt our doubts. Though all of us will doubt, even the best of us, we don’t always have a plan for the next outpouring of this turmoil upon our minds.

The first (and probably most obvious) step was, “I went to prayer.” In doubting God’s love for him, he didn’t run away from God; He ran to God in prayer.

Related to that, the second step was lament. The burden of unbelief he found within his soul was a breeding ground for much mourning, so he poured it out on His Lord in honesty.

The third step was continual meditation upon the latter half of Jeremiah 31:3, “Therefore with loving-kindness have I drawn thee.” Upon extrapolating that passage to the message of the gospel, he realized that through Christ’s finished work, he was drawn to the Father and thus found the true ground of His everlasting love toward him.

The third and final step for dealing with his doubt was taking his “dull heart” to the gathering on the Lord’s Day. He described the Word of God “reviving” him when Hosea 14:5 hit his heart, and Psalm 51 sang from his lips. Through this long process, assurance had come: “I stood up with courage, for I thought the Spirit of God was my stay; and in the night when I awoke, I was still with God.”

During this period, he not only circled back to where he began geographically, but he circled back to where he began spiritually, namely, the love of God in Christ, the hope and stay for the weary, doubting soul.

Conclusion

In sum, the solution for doubt is not to pay a visit to the talking heads on YouTube, but to prioritize prayer, lament or mourn your doubts—to speak honestly with God about them—meditate on Scripture, and see the gathering of the Saints under the Word of God as supreme.

This may seem ordinary and obvious, but in practicing this, a whole Christ makes us whole. We run to the sufficient one. One who suffered agony in His soul in the garden of Gethsemane, sweating great drops of blood for our salvation. He’s the friend who can truly say to us, “I’ve been down here before, and I know the way out.”

---

Seven Weeks Coffee is a coffee company dedicated to supporting the pro-life movement, with over 5,000 unborn lives saved already! Type the discount code REFORMANDA to save on your first purchase.