As soon as we ask what faith is and what sort of mistreatment of faith causes doubt, we are led to the first major misconception about doubt-the idea that doubt is always wrong because it is the opposite of faith and the same thing as unbelief. What this error leads to is a view of faith that is unrealistic and a view of doubt that is unfair.

At the supreme moment of his dying Jesus so identified himself with men and the depths of their predicament and agony that no man can now sink so low that God has not gone lower.

Christ is the only way to God, but there are as many ways to Christ as there are people who come to Him.

The question the doubter does not ask is whether faith was really useless or simply not used. What would you think of a boy who gave up learning to ride a bicycle, complaining that he hurt himself because his bicycle stopped moving so he had no choice but to fall off? If he wanted to sit comfortably while remaining stationary, he should not have chosen a bicycle but a chair. Similarly faith must be put to use, or it will become useless.

By our uncritical pursuit of relevance we have actually courted irrelevance; by our breathless chase after relevance without a matching committment to faithfulness, we have become not only unfaithful, but irrelevant; by our determined efforts to redefine outselves in ways that are more compelling to the modern world than are faithful to Christ, we have lost not only our identity but our authority and our relevance. Our crying need is to be faithful as well as relevant

The story of Christian reformation, revival, and renaissance underscores that the darkest hour is often just before the dawn, so we should always be people of hope and prayer, not gloom and defeatism. God the Holy Spirit can turn the situation around in five minutes.

Evangelicalism can only remain evangelical if it is passionately serious about truth and theology.