Prior to attending the [un]Apologetic Evangelism Conference, Kara Griffis, a first-time attendee, was a student at Dallas Baptist University in the late 90s, where she began to experience “contagious doubts” in her faith.
“My minor at DBU was religion, and I love history, so I took as many crossover religion and history classes as I could. Up until that time, I had never questioned anything I had been taught in church,” said Griffis. “[But] as I learned more about those topics, for the first time in my life, I had questions I could not answer with a Christianese mantra or Bible verse. I began to question if big, confusing and important doctrines were true or just “decided” by Catholic priests during councils. One question turned into another, and they multiplied quickly.”
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‘Genuinely afraid’
She said she “got genuinely afraid” when she began to question Jesus.
“I remember when I first really started questioning if Jesus really was who He says He was, and I got genuinely afraid,” Griffis said. “I remember in class one time I asked my professor, [who] was talking about what makes somebody an Orthodox Christian, and he listed the essential doctrines, and the Trinity was in there, and I remember raising my hand and saying, ‘So if you don’t believe in the Trinity, then you’re not a Christian,’ and he stopped and addressed it… that’s when I got worried about my salvation.”
As her doubt snowballed, becoming bigger, Griffis came to a point where she decided, “I can’t believe this anymore.”
Restored faith
She said, “Eventually, after a long and slow process, God restored my faith.”
“Over a really slow amount of time, probably 10 or 15 years, I just reluctantly would take small steps forward, and, I mean, God was really patient with me because I would take some steps
forward and some steps back… I think that would put up a lot of like kind of walls in me about God [but] I would surrender a little bit at a time,” said Griffis. “[Eventually], God restored my faith… and when I started going to the church I’m at right now, I feel like the kind of dominoes started falling into place as far as getting better discipleship and getting [a] better understanding about who God is.”
“I’m not the only person”
Griffis said the [un]Apologetic conference was a “full circle moment” for her because she was able to be equipped with tools to defend the faith she once doubted.
The [un]Apologetic Evangelism Conference is a conference that helps individuals strengthen their faith and learn how to engage others with the gospel. In February, the conference welcomed Tim Barnett, apologist and speaker with Stand to Reason (STR), and Alisa Childers, apologist, blogger, speaker and author, who discussed doubt and faith deconstruction.
Griffis said she has been “drawn to apologetics for a few years” so she followed Barnett’s “Red Pen Logic” page on TikTok, where Barnett “applie[s] the red pen” to bad theological thinking, for “about a year” before the conference. She said he started talking about his book “The Deconstruction of Christianity,” which he co-wrote with Childers.
“I immediately bought it and read it, and I have passed it along to several friends,” Griffis noted.
From there, Griffis started following Childers on social media, too, as well as reading her books and listening to her podcast.
She said what impacted her the most while reading “The Deconstruction of Christianity” was how much she related to Childers’ testimony of deconstruction.
“When I [deconstructed], I didn’t call it deconstruction because it wasn’t a movement. This was like the late 90s, and I was at DBU, and everyone I had grown up with was a Christian, and I couldn’t relate to anyone, and] no one could relate to me,” Griffis explained. “I don’t really know anyone who deconstructed and then came back to historical, biblical Christianity. So Alisa’s story really drew me in in that regard because I don’t know that she ever fully lost her faith, but she started going, I think, in that direction, and then ended up back in like truth. So that really made me feel like, ‘Oh, I’m not the only person.’”
So when Childers announced on social media that she would be a keynote speaker at [un]Apologetic Conference alongside Barnett, she registered.
Doubting with others to get genuine answers
Griffis said since the conference, several points have stuck with her: “doubting out loud,” “find a safe place” and seek answers.
On the first day of the conference, Childers and Barnett led the first keynote session. Childers shared her testimony, and Barnett followed by teaching attendees what it looks like to doubt in a healthy way. He used John the Baptist as an example.
“[He] talked about John the Baptist and how he doubted out loud, and he doubted with others… [because doubt] snowballs and it kind of gets out of control before anybody is aware of it. So [he said], ‘Don’t suppress your doubts,’” Griffis said. “[He] said doubts left ignored or unanswered are deadly, and I find that is true for me.”
She said because she didn’t have a solid understanding of “who God is [and] what the gospel is about” before deconstructing, she still struggles with doubt and has “lots of questions,” but her pastor and small group leader have welcomed those questions. She said that has made a difference in her faith today.
“I will always struggle with understanding some things and having doubts creep in. But I think what’s different is I used to have this almost tortured approach to it, where if I didn’t have an answer for something, I couldn’t move on,” explained Griffis. “Now if I don’t have an answer, I still want to answer, but if something doesn’t make sense to me or I can’t really quite wrap my head around it, I think I just have more trust in God that I don’t have to understand it [right away]… But it doesn’t stop me in my tracks and derail me into a million other doubts and questions.”
Griffis said this is partly due to “being able to ask questions to people that I trust” and receive genuine answers.
The second point that has impacted her is to “find a safe place with others… and then seek answers.”
“[Childers] listed all these things, ‘What do I know? Truth exists. God is real. The Bible is reliable.’ … and then that Jesus can handle your doubts too,” said Griffis.
She said in Barnett’s portion of the keynote, he encouraged attendees that “[God’s] big enough to handle [doubts and questions]. You don’t have to hide it or stuff it away… [because] doubts are normal, and they actually can be valuable.”
EDITOR’S NOTE — This story was written by Jessica King and originally published by Texas Baptists.
