Pesky doubt
When I first became a Christian, I thought ministers never had to wrestle with doubt. They all seemed so shiny, so holy – and so very certain. I didn’t realise their vocational choice was no guarantee of a doubt-free existence, or the problems this could bring. It’s hard to fulfil 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 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 I stand on, distant, irritating, troubling even, but not turbulent enough to create an 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. In my Christian walk, they strike without warning, and are triggered by random happenings.
Sometimes it’s the superstitious statements 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. 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 Satan is, in fact, camping in my bathroom, a roaring lion crouched in the facilities.
I’m healed says the person who obviously isn’t, but they say it because they think 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 wasn’t comforted, but instead felt 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 travelled 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, or fearing 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 it made of it, without a team of forensic commentators standing by to explain it all in three 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 we’re not actually dead yet. Doubt is part of the normal Christian journey – an unwelcome companion, but one we need not fear.