Repentance and Doubt

Tonight these thoughts emerged from me as I pondered the ways I have struggled with doubt, and the ways God has met me in them:

The solution to intellectual doubts is not intellectual answers. The solution to intellectual doubts is to go deeper into repentance before God. This may seem like a non-answer, just as God’s glory may seem like a non-answer to the problem of hell. But there is a kind of certainty that comes from repentance and faith, even when our questions remain unanswered, and to the extent that it is a non-answer, it may expose how the question is itself part of the problem that needs to be dismantled. Sometimes only after giving them up can we see the role that our questions were playing in our heart, where we struggle with God, and where the truth has never really been in question. At any rate, God is not an intellectual slot machine, and while he may leave some of our questions answered, we cannot leave unanswered his: will you repent? will you surrender? will you believe? The crucial thing is not how God answers the questions we ask Him, but how we answer the questions He asks us.