The Thomas Factor: Using Your Doubts to Draw Closer to God

by Gary R. Habermas and Shanae Johnson

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• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0805417206
• ISBN13: 9780805417203
• Release Date: January 1999
• Publisher: B&H Publishing Group
• Length: 141 Pages
• Weight: 0.45 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.4" x 5.6" x 8.5"

Customer Reviews

An Excellent Resource For Doubt

I believe it's best to state if there is any bias a reviewer might have up front so let me tell you that yes, I do have a bias. I have communicated with Dr. Habermas and he is an excellent friend and help through struggles of doubt. Dr. Habermas does not just write this out abstractly. He really lives it. Every reply I've got from him has led me to the belief that he truly does care about me and connect with me. When I meet Christians who are doubting, I'm always eager to point out Dr. Habermas's materials. This one will not disappoint. What I like about Habermas's style is that he doesn't speak in the heavy philosophical or apologetic language. Now I love both of those fields deeply, but I wonder about people who seem to speak exclusively in those fields. I wonder if a lot of people just try to use fancy terminology to make themselves look better. Dr. Habermas does not make me wonder about that. This is the kind of advice he'd give if he sat down to talk with you at Starbucks. I've heard Dr. Habermas speak a number of times on this topic before and I could practically hear his voice reading the passages. Also, it works. That's what's really important. Dr. Habermas has helped me immensely with self-doubt mainly and he has used the principles taught in this book. I also liked how he had in this one a chapter on differences amongst Christians. I have frequently been in Christian circles where I am the lone outsider with a different view, always within the pale of orthodoxy of course. This can be a hard one, but Dr. Habermas explains it well. Dr. Habermas also distinguishes between the kinds of doubts and how to deal with each of them. He shows how the most common kind he deals with when people come to him is emotional doubt. That has been my case as well when I'm dealing with some sort of doubt. There can be a factual kernel somewhere, but the flower that has come up is essentially emotional. Dr. Habermas would tell you that you need to know where your emotions get off. They're not bad things, but they're not meant to control you. Dr. Habermas is realistic about apologetics also. When I started the field, I had this delusion that if you just went out there and gave the answers, people would convert. That delusion doesn't last long. It also doesn't work when we argue with ourselves and have the "What if?" questions. Habermas's approach is that the "What if" questions are the problems. They can be anything and they don't usually have a factual basis and could be used to explain away anything or to refuse believing anything. I think all Christians should learn the lessons that Habermas speaks of in this book. Not only would we be helping ourselves, but maybe if we opened the doors of fellowship in our churches and were able to show the dark sides we're experiencing as well as the light, maybe we'd grow stronger together in Christ and be able to do more for him.

Aimed at Christians

I ordered this book while going through a bout of doubt both about my current girlfriend and my faith (strange how some things are linked at times). Of course, since I live in Switzerland, the book took its time to arrive, and by the time I read it, my doubts had been blown away like the clouds on a windy day - by a four-hour phone call with my girlfriend. Previously, they had been exacerbated by reading the book "What is Atheism" by Douglas Krueger, to the point where I was wondering what would happen if I renounced my faith. When the sharpest doubt subsided (the "O boy, he is intelligent and logical and convincing and here I thought it was all true, what do I do now) I realized that while I still wanted to reread Krueger's book and check his arguments against those of apologists (dealing with factual doubt), any decision as to my beliefs should be made with a level head and not while in a panicked frenzy (i.e. while suffering from emotional doubt). The mere fact of doubting something does not mean it's necessarily wrong, and it would be foolish to change convictions every time someone rattles you with his or her arguments. (As reviews demonstrate, neither Atheists nor Christians seem to do that.) This is the main point Dr. Habermas is making, and his goal is clearly to lead any doubting Christian to the point where he or she can take a step back, take a look at the whole picture, and decide rationally and calmly on the course to be taken. It therefore seems to me that Bill Hays mistook Dr. Habermas' main thrust for a recommendation to exercise blind faith. Not so! Dr. Habermas encourages Christians to read apologetic books to counter factual doubts instead of simply using psychological tricks to push them aside; where he urges Christians not to question is in the area of emotional doubt, where questions frequently are "what ifs" of the destructive kind. To give an example: the question "What if I had married a more beautiful woman?" is not only destructive to your marriage, it tends to preoccupy your mind and preclude a levelheaded assessment of your wife's true qualities. The same is true for questions of the type "What if God does not exist despite what I factually know?" Rarely does anything positive come of them. (If the question is reduced to "What if God does not exist?" or "What facts are there about God's existence?", I believe it can lead to a very positive outcome.) In fine, Dr. Habermas has written a clear, logical assessment of doubt (it clicks very nicely with what I've experienced), throwing aside many popular misconceptions in the process. The reason I do not give it five stars is that I have not yet been in the position to apply his principles (I'm on a surprisingly long doubt-free period) and therefore cannot evaluate them. (Another reason is that I dislike the free-flowing margin - looks sloppy - but that's not his fault.) All in all I'd recommend this book to people who are worrying about their faith; to othe