Why do I feel like I believe in God because of people and not God? When I feel I have a weak relationship with God and don’t want to be a Christian anymore, people around me change my mind.
Ryan Pauly
Ryan Pauly is the founder and president of Think Well and the Director of Immersive Experiences at MAVEN. He has been working with junior high, high school, and college students for over a decade as a missionary, school teacher, field guide and speaker. After graduating from college he became a missionary in the Dominican Republic where he spent four years teaching English, Worldview, Apologetics, and Leadership to junior high and high school students. Ryan moved back to Southern California in 2015 and started teaching Historical Christian Doctrine and Apologetics, Comparative Religions and Worldviews, and Philosophy of Ethics at a Southern California Christian high school. He taught high school full-time for 12 years until 2023 when he left to work with Think Well and MAVEN. Ryan started in the apologetics world back in 2015 with his blog, Coffeehouse Questions. This led to the podcast in 2016 and YouTube in 2020. Think Well was officially launched in June of 2022. Ryan joined MAVEN as a field guide in 2017 and was promoted to Director of Immersive Experiences in 2023. He also serves as a faculty member at Summit Ministries, a member of the Evangelical Theological Society and the Reasons to Believe Scholar Community, and a volunteer at www.talkaboutdoubts.com. Ryan received a Bachelor’s degree in Theology with an emphasis in youth leadership from Vanguard University. He completed his Master’s degree in Christian apologetics from Talbot School of Theology and is currently working toward a Doctor of Ministry in Practical Theology. His research is focused on what Scripture says about the most pressing practical issues of our day like gender and sexuality, race, technology, politics, deconstruction, and more. He also holds a certificate in Science Apologetics from the Reasons Institute.
think-well.org 
April 25, 2020 at 6:44 pm
Hi I’m Goal’d. I was a believer for about 20yrs and thought I’d never leave the Faith. But that’s what happened because instead of denying my doubts or suppressing them, I investigated my doubts.
I stopped using the devil as an excuse to ignore my doubts: thinking it was a spiritual attack when my conscience was trying to warn me. Its human to doubt things that seem wrong. Its the exact same feeling for everything that arouses suspicions in us. That means our doubts are trying to protect us.
What if you were doing a difficult math problem and wrote down your best answer. And as you looked over the problem, this doubt comes over you that says it wrong. Do you ignore the doubt and go on to the next problem or redo the problem? You do the latter because you’d rather investigate the doubt and be right than ignore the doubt and be wrong.
This is what every Christian should when they have doubts: Investigate! Something about the Bible rubs you the wrong way? Search deep on why that is. Don’t silence your conscience when it’s trying to warn you.
It’s unwise to look to your friends with the math problem because they don’t believe in checking their work. Even if they’re wrong, they’d rather trust their answer is right and would convince you to do the same.
Don’t get so comfortable suppressing your doubts that you get numb to it and you lose the sense of that warning signal you were born with.
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