“Scientists are some of the humblest people.”

I was traveling to one of my friends’ homes for Thanksgiving. For a long stretch of this eight-hour train-ride, I found myself seated next to a rather private individual. He ordered his food, he stared out the window for a bit. At first I had been working, or chatting with my friends. Then I noticed he had a book with him titled The Fallacy of Materialism, so I asked him about it. I was soon to find out he was studying philosophy and neuroscience.

He grew up in a Catholic household, but had become agnostic and went to study science. Some questions kept irking at him, however: Why are we here? Is there a purpose? Studying science more deeply, he had marveled at the purpose behind all these laws, but he didn’t know where to look for God. He’d studied many philosophies and was currently going through sections of the Bible himself.

“I believe,” he told me, “that eventually the truth will prevail.”

We agreed that it seemed there must be a purpose behind the world around us.

“It’s pretty arrogant,” I told him, “for scientists to rule out the existence of God.” I had expected him to agree. “Actually,” he told me, “scientists are some of the humblest people I know.” As I asked him more questions, I realized that his definition of humility centered around doubt. He thought the agnostic was one of the humblest people. Many of the scientists he knew simply didn’t know whether God existed or not. They certainly didn’t know why they were here, or if there even was a purpose. This new philosopher-friend of mine thought that was real humility.

Is that true? Does true humility involve doubt? What does God reveal?

Fake Humility

Consider what Christ said: “I thank thee, O Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because thou hast hid these things from the wise and prudent, and hast revealed them unto babes” (Matthew 11:25). God reveals His truth only to those who humble themselves as a little child (Matthew 18:4). Think about what that means: if God isn’t revealing His truth to you, then you aren’t humble.

We can take this even further.

Scientists often pride themselves in knowing that they don’t know. But will they admit that they can’t know? Will they admit that without God’s revelation, they can’t figure out why we are here? It takes humility to turn to God for the answers to life’s fundamental questions. Until you genuinely concede you can’t find this knowledge yourself, God has closed off His revelation. This is why the wise and prudent have been cut off from God’s knowledge: They still think they can uncover it themselves.

Consider what Christ tells us about the Father. When God sees His children come to Him for understanding, then He reveals His truth to them. God wants to know whether we trust Him more than we trust ourselves. That’s a fruit of true humility. The philosophers of this world have an air of humility about them, but they lack true humility (Colossians 2:8, 23).

Humbly Moving Mountains

Herbert W. Armstrong defined doubt as “negative thinking about something one does not know enough about to warrant this form of unfounded disbelief.” Romans 14:23 shows that doubt is a sin—it is faithlessness, not humility. When you don’t know whether God exists, that’s doubt. It’s not self-doubt, it’s God-doubt.

Faith and humility go hand in hand: when you stop trusting yourself, you can learn to rely on God. God will never break that trust!

Christ showed us how far God will go to preserve our trust. “[W]hosoever shall say unto this mountain, Be thou removed, and be thou cast into the sea; and shall not doubt in his heart, but shall believe that those things which he saith shall come to pass; he shall have whatsoever he saith” (Mark 11:23).

If we really trust God to move a mountain, He will! Of course, we often have doubts because we don’t know God’s will, or we haven’t been compliant enough to God’s Spirit. But we can know God’s will, and move mountains! Mr. Armstrong demonstrated that kind of faith. You can see it clearly when he started Ambassador College or fought the State of California.

Of course, Mr. Armstrong didn’t always have this kind of faith. For many years he had no strong convictions on religion whatsoever, he had just assumed that what the preachers taught was from the Bible. He did not yet know, much less trust God. “But when I was age thirty,” Mr. Armstrong writes in his Autobiography, “He began to deal with me in no uncertain terms.”

Respecter of Faith

Consider what it took for Mr. Armstrong to come to believe without a doubt that God existed. At age 34, he dove into a six-month, night-and-day study in an attempt to prove God’s existence. He wrote: “very early in this study of evolution and of the Bible, actual doubts came into my mind as to the existence of God!”

He no longer mindlessly accepted God’s existence, but neither did he leave the question unsettled. Mr. Armstrong saw this was no superficial question: His life was on the line.

“Suffice it to say here that I did find irrefutable proof of the existence of God the Creator,” he wrote. All his doubts were gone, and unlike my philosopher-friend, Mr. Armstrong knew God existed with just as much certainty as the rising of the sun. He explains how you can achieve this same kind of certainty: “If one is not certain—if he has not proved a doctrine or a fact—then the teaching of God is, with open mind free from prejudice, to seek all the facts—to prove it. This is not negative, but positive thinking and procedure. Doubting is not proving.”

If we are humble, we will seek out positive proof of what God says, and God will provide. Mr. Armstrong used this same procedure to prove that the Bible was God’s inspired word. God had dealt with him in no uncertain terms, just as God deals in no uncertain terms with all those He calls.

This is not a task any man can perform. Only God the Father can instill this kind of certainty. Only He can call someone out of this world, which includes acknowledging the truth (2 Timothy 2:25). But why would God call Mr. Armstrong, and not all those agnostic scientists? Why would God call you and me, but not yet the friend I met on the train?

Christ explains to His disciples: “But there are some of you that believe not. … Therefore said I unto you, that no man can come unto me, except it were given unto him of my Father” (John 6:64-65). God is no respecter of persons, but He is a respecter of faith! How can God work with someone who doesn’t have the humility to trust Him? Many couldn’t disprove what Jesus said, but they walked away nonetheless (verse 66).

Full Assurance

“For me, life is simple,” I told my new friend. “If I read it in the Bible, I believe it. But how do you determine what to believe, and what not to believe?” I asked him. I was genuinely curious; I had forgotten just how comforting it is to believe God.

My friend responded that he looked for explanations that were simple, without contradiction, and that explained as many phenomena as possible. Any theory that did not fit those criteria, he rejected.

My mind turned to family. When you consider that God is a Family, it makes Him simple to understand. It leaves the Bible without contradiction, and it explains all phenomena. I didn’t tell him about the God Family, of course, but the rest of my conversation with him revolved around family. The concept of family also explains humility.

Just imagine the lack of humility it would display in a young child, if his dad warned, “The stove-top is hot: Don’t touch it” and he touched it anyway. From God’s perspective, doubt is not humble, but arrogant. It makes us want to touch the stove-top. When we doubt God, we don’t trust His Fatherly advice, so we burn ourselves.

On the other hand, when we are humble enough to completely trust God, God will never break that trust. Our understanding of God’s doctrines, way of life, and prophecy can have this kind of certainty to it, only if we are humble! When God opens our minds to understand His truth, that is because we trust Him. And when our understanding is complete, we will have “the full assurance of understanding” (Colossians 2:2). That’s the kind of faith that can move mountains!

We can all have that kind of certainty. We just have to trust our Father.