Dear Young Faith,
I was there for your funeral,
I shed a tear or two,
I had a fistful of regret,
And maybe those tears weren’t for you,
It was for the first love I had,
The kind that was hard to construe,
But when life was in turmoil,
I felt everything was untrue,
Maybe it was all wrong,
And maybe these trials are a cue,
For me to get back to my old ways,
A life of colour, my glamourous hue,
I can’t keep up with you anymore,
Now that my love lies buried,
Along with you.
Love,
Doubting Faith
Marty Sampson—one of the worship leaders in the original band of Hillsong United who wrote and composed the songs,‘All I need is you’, ‘King of Majesty’, ‘You are my world’ and ‘Better than life’. He has also co-written many songs like ‘My Best Friend’, ‘Tell the world’, ‘O praise the name(Anastasis)’, and many other in the list. His last album with Hillsong United was ‘Aftermath’ which came out in 2011, even after which he continued to lead worship at the church and contribute in the Hillsong’s album through song writingand singing.
But on August 10, 2019, the Christian world had a shock. An Instagram post, which was later deleted, announced the news that he was losing faith. A post saturated with doubt, but without any specifics, he pointed out that there are many contradictions in the Bible and nobody talks about it. “I want genuine truth. Not the ‘I just believe it’ kind of truth. Science keeps piercing the truth of every religion.” He also added that he is not looking for judgements but he welcomes answers. A lot of people speculated that he renounced his faith. Later, in another post, Marty clarified that he has not but admitted that he is standing on the shaky grounds and he has been listening to a lot of Christian apologists to find the truth.
Search the internet and you’d find many articles and videos that would give you the root cause analysis, speculating onhow and why it could have happened. You will find a lot of content where people showed unhappiness with the fact that being a prominent person, a celebrity, he openly renounced his faith which brought a negative impact with regard to thecredibility of Bible on people. But as the title suggests, this article is a call to anguish—What is ‘anguish’? In this context, the term means—to be extremely distressed about something.This distress is not really focusing on the fact that because of a public announcement, people might start to question the credibility of the Bible or that people would consider Christianity as ‘I just believe’ religion. When a people spend time reading the Scriptures, they come to the realisation thatthe Bible is very credible and not an ‘I just believe’ theology, because faith, that is the confidence of the things hoped for(Hebrews 11:1), comes from hearing the message and the message is heard through the word about Christ (Romans 10:17). So, the more you know God through the word, the more you will realise the authenticity of the Bible—we as christians are the representatives who share that truth. But our focus is on something that is found in Romans 9:2–3.
“I have great sorrow and unceasing anguish in my heart. For I could wish that I myself were cursed and cut off from Christ for the sake of my people, those of my own race, the people of Israel”. Here we see Paul in anguish because His people arenot saved. He was even wishing to be cut off from Christ if that would bring them to salvation. Similar case with Mosestoo, when he went to make atonement for Israelites; he prayed for their forgiveness and he said that if you do not forgive their sins let my name be cut of from the book of life that you have written (Exodus 32:32). We as people of God should be in anguish when we know that one more soul might go to eternal damnation and face the wrath of God because they did not believe the gospel. To be honest, when I first heard the news, I was really angry and all I could think of was, why didn’t he spend time with the Word earlier—why didn’t hepray instead of making it public; why didn’t he speak to the church leaders or search the scriptures for truth. When I was going through unbelief, I told God, I don’t know if I believe your word or in You, but I want to believe; so, reveal Yourself to me through Your Word. My faith was built through the revelation of God through scriptures. I wished Marty did the same, but then the Holy Spirit started making me realise that its not my place to judge him or question why he didn’t. My job is to pray—I need to be in anguish by the fact that a soul might be damned to eternal judgment, I need to pray for that person to be restored to faith as Nehemiah prayed when he heard the news that the remnant of Israelites is in trouble and shame, and the walls of Jerusalem is broken down and its gates are destroyed. Nehemiah wept and mourned for days and continued fasting and praying before the God of heaven.And that is the call that I want to put forward to you as well. Let us pray for everyone who is in disbelief, who have drifted away, or are fighting to know the truth. The ruler of this world does not want people to know the truth and that is why we need to pray that God would remove the veils of unbelief from the eyes of the people. The light of the gospel of truth—the gospel of Jesus Christ would shine through so that people would come to the realisation that salvation is found only in Him— and that every knee would bow and every tongue would confess that Jesus is Lord.