My whole life I've been told that to have faith you have to get rid of all doubt. The two cannot co-exist, it's one or the other. I've believed that wholeheartedly until a few months ago.
I've been in a bit of a reading phase over the past several weeks, mainly fueled by a individual crisis of sorts, okay, of faith. I've been experiencing more doubt than ever about all these things I've believed for most of my adult life, the truth about God, Jesus, Creation, Christianity, my own experiences, those who claim to follow Jesus, what happens when we die, etc... It's been very tough and to be honest simply depressing. At the same time it's been comforting to discover that many, if not all of the influential men and women of the Faith throughout history (even the non famous ones) have consistently battled with their own doubts about these things as well. St. Augustine, St. John of the Cross, Thomas Acquinas, Martin Luther, C.S. Lewis, Mother Theresa, the list goes on... Fyodor Dostoevsky, a Russian novelist (I'm told) said, "Sometimes the greatest act of faith is in the doubting." In my own recent experiences I've still felt moments that I would clearly describe as severe doubt. On the other hand I am also starting to understand what the Russian fella means,... I think? The fact that I'm "doubting" is causing me to really dig deep and put to test those things that I've taken for granted and just believed in some ways on "borrowed faith" of those I've looked up to. I, like many people in the community of American church-goers have done, am guilty of just taking my pastor's word for it without ever wrestling with the ideas being presented for myself, at least not wrestling enough. It's one thing to arrive at your perspective with an informed and somewhat educated understanding of the idea, it's another to just take the information as truth and broker the information without ever having researched it or sought it out for yourself. In other words I found myself not having ownership of what I thought was my own faith in God and the previously mentioned list of concerns is having to be either re-discovered, altered, or dropped altogether.
It definitely feels like the "switch" in my brain that controls the flow of faith has just been turned off. It's been difficult to say the least. More recently I've started shifting from labeling my thoughts and feelings as "doubts" and leaning towards "difficulties". I think this is a positive step back towards a slow resurgence of something that resembles the faith that I used to have. The longing to return to some solid ground is definitely there and the more I think about all of this the more I want to believe it has to be God that has put me in this season, that somehow I'll get out of this one day and "own" my faith.
I spoke candidly with a trusted friend a few weeks ago and an analogy just popped into my head, (as they often do, but often I'm the only one that "gets it" because they are weird and subjective, anyways...) this one actually made sense. If my faith was a mountain that I had ascended to the very top throughout the course of my 32 year existence, I've found myself suddenly at the very bottom with no explanation how I got there, wanting to return and discouraged that I may never get back to the top. The challenge is I'm forcing myself (or is God?) to climb it all over again, this time finding a totally different path that takes me up the opposite side, one that is not clear or illuminated by the fellow climbers of my youth and their flashlights, one that is dark and full of shadows and difficulty and my map is now horribly out of date. It sounds miserable huh? It is.
On a brighter note, a few weeks ago a close friend gave me a "word" (message from God). As usual I began processing it with much skepticism, but this one was different. One of the very few times in my life where someone has delivered a specific and accurate message to me that just skewered me to my chair. In a nutshell, it was a confirmation of this "mountain analogy" that I had been holding on to. I was going to eventually emerge from this difficult season and my Faith would never be the same, it would be stronger and better suited for what lies ahead for the rest of my life. Interesting...
John Henry Newman says this, "I am far of course from denying that every article of the Christian Creed, whether as held by Catholics or by Protestants, is beset with intellectual difficulties... However, ten thousand difficulties do not equal one doubt, as I understand the subject; difficulty and doubt are incommensurate". So more accurately, my "doubts" are being slowly recognized and better categorized as "difficulties". At the same time I'm realizing that the "pilot light of my faith" has apparently never gone out after all. Whew!... Then maybe, just maybe I'll have a consistent fire going again soon.
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