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Question: I saw a TikTok vid that was saying when we have doubts ask God and wait for Him to answer. I looked down below the comment section and a unbeliever said “God will only give vague answers to your doubts not logical answers” My question is how would you guys respond to that?

Profile: Male, North America, Under 19

Answered by: Christopher Plumberg, who has been a volunteer with us since October, 2009.

Answer: Hi and thank you for this question!

The short answer is that both the video (as you’ve quoted it) and the unbeliever’s response are incorrect and profoundly unwise.

First, let me deal with advice from the video itself.  The biblical response to doubt is certainly not, in general, to simply “ask God and wait for Him to answer.”  To be sure, this should be part of one’s response to doubt, since faith is something that only God can grant (cf. Acts 11:18) and is therefore something which should be sought from Him through prayer.  However, if this is all that is meant by the TikTok video’s advice, then it falls woefully short of what someone should do in order to build faith and seek to eradicate doubt.

As discussed in this GotQuestions article (https://www.gotquestions.org/struggling-with-faith.html), the proper response to struggling with faith is not only to seek God in prayer, but also to immerse oneself in truth.  And this means not just seeking out the truth found in Scripture, but openly searching into the relevant evidence which forms part of the foundation for the Christian faith.  For example, if one is doubting that Jesus really rose from the dead, it would be foolish to ask God for faith and then do no investigation whatsoever into the abundant evidence that Jesus really did rise from the dead (https://www.gotquestions.org/why-believe-resurrection.html).  Instead, the response to such a doubt should be just like Jesus’ response (https://www.gotquestions.org/doubting-Thomas.html): namely, to present the doubter with evidence relevant to his or her doubts.

So the TikTok video’s advice is already badly deficient, but the unbeliever’s response is nearly as bad.  Why should it be true that God’s responses to our doubts will be vague or unhelpful?  Indeed, based on Jesus’ response to Thomas’ doubts in John 20:24-29, God’s response to our doubts would be exactly what we needed in order to believe.  So it is simply not true that God would necessarily give vague answers, as opposed to logical ones.  The unbeliever is simply assuming that God will not respond to the doubter’s request for faith.

TikTok (and other social media platforms) offer a voice to many different kinds of people, including those who give profoundly bad advice on matters of faith.  For this reason, it is a good idea to avoid consuming any advice on these subjects from such platforms.  We must always base our approach to God, not on the recommendations of TikTokers or their commenters, but on the Scriptures which God Himself has given to us.

I hope you find this response helpful.  Please write back if there’s anything else I can help with.  Thanks again for contacting GotQuestions!