Doubt
When I first became a Christian, I thought that ministers never had to wrestle with doubt. They all seemed so shiny, so holy - and so very certain. I didn’t realise that their vocational choice didn’t guarantee them a doubt-free existence, which can make life difficult. It’s hard to fulfill one’s duties as a minister of the gospel while wondering if what we boldly proclaim as truth is actually true at all.... (‘sorry, PCC, but I’m going through an atheistic phase.....any chance of a couple of weeks off?..’.)
Doubt is a mosquito that I can never quite kill, and if past performance is anything to go by, I never will successfully swat it this side of the New Jerusalem. Most of the time, doubt rumbles rather than roars, the vaguest trembling of the ground that I stand on, distant, irritating, troubling even, but not turbulent enough to create a earthquake that Richter would be interested in. I don’t lose my faith. I just mislay it occasionally.
But every now and again I have a full on faith attack, with is more like a tsunami than an earthquake. Faith attacks strike without warning, and are triggered by random happenings.
Sometimes it’s the superstitious statements that Christians come out with that make Christianity suddenly quite implausible, and for a moment the whole faith construct seems as rickety as a coffee table made by a fifth-former in the woodwork class.
You can’t out give God, they say. Really? Then why not give every penny you possess and become utterly destitute (at least temporarily), if that’s really true...
God is in control. No, He’s not, at least not in the sense that everything that happens is because He wants it to. If that’s not the case, then why do we pray your kingdom come, your will be done, if in a bizarre che-sera-sera kind of way, everything that happens is because God wills it?
Things have gone wrong, so you must be doing something right is often trotted out by those who have an excessive view of spiritual warfare that may mean that Satan is, in fact, camping in my bathroom, a roaring lion crouched in the facilities.
I’m healed says the person who very obviously isn’t, but they say it because they think that they’re letting the side down if they don’t.
Or it can be a brush with death, which I had just recently, with the passing of a very close relative who was one of the best parts of my growing up. When I heard of her death, the Easter message seemed empty. I didn’t feel comforted, but instead felt that I was desperately trying to be hopeful, but it wasn’t working. The possibility of there being another place, somewhere else in the Universe, that she had traveled to - it all seemed about as likely as the Easter bunny being a real life carrot eater, or Santa breaking speed records with his sleigh - just wishful thinking. My faith was not rammed by a weighty locomotive filled with brilliant new-atheist arguments, but shattered by the hint of a satanic snigger.
Surely doubting that God exists, of fearing that he has abandoned us if he does is a fundamental part of the human condition. If I had choreographed the Calvary event, I wouldn’t have had Jesus yelling, ‘My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?’ as one of his last statements, even though prophecy was being fulfilled. That didn’t sound too good, did it, seeing as Jesus had announced that he and his father were one? Very bad as a parting shot, I’d say. I wonder what those who heard him say that made of it, without a team of forensic commentators standing by the explain it all in 3 points of alliterated sermonic clarity.
Perhaps Jesus was fully identifying with us in our lostness, bewilderment, and the feeling that heaven is ignoring us at times. On the cross, not only was he challenging the power of death, but identifying with us in the experience of hopeless, desolate life. Three days later, he rose to let us know, once and for all, that we are not abandoned or left destitute, and that death itself is rendered incapable of separating us from love.
And that leads me to another ‘parting shot’ from Jesus. Before dying, he said ‘You’ve forsaken me’. Before ascending he promised, ‘I’ll never leave you’. My occasional faith attacks/where are you God crises don’t mean that I’m a rubbish Christian, just another human trying to get into step with what is true. One day we’ll see Jesus face to face, and doubt will be banished. In the meantime, we don’t enjoy that clear view, so if we occasionally doubt, it’s just an indicator that we’re not actually dead yet. Doubt is just part of the normal Christian journey - an unwelcome companion, but one that we need not fear.