The Role of Doubt, and Helping Doubters

[go4tli]

The implied conceit of a lot of contemporary Christian rhetoric is
that God is waiting for us to come to Him with open arms so that we
can be safe and secure.

I'm not convinced that God *wants* us to be safe and secure.

The sneaky thing is that as much as we long for them, safety and
security keep God at a distance. When all is well, we don't recognize
our need for Him.

If this is true, doubt is not some spiritually destructive force that
destroys the relationship between you and God. Doubt does things that
nothing else can.

The temptation when doubt comes is to push it aside, hoping that it
will go away on its own. But removing rest may be the *point* -- when
you can't rest, you have to move.

Doubt isn't leaving God behind. Doubt is leaving *your ideas* behind
-- be they about God or about yourself. It is part of the process of
dying to oneself that following Christ is all about (Matthew 10:38-39;
Galatians 2:20; Colossians 3:3).

When we have to change our ideas about God, we realize that we don't
control God. We don't have a handle on God. We don't completely
understand God.

Doubt is immunity against convincing ourselves that we have the
answers -- that we know what church He goes to, how He interprets the
Bible, who He votes for, what movies he watches, and which people He
approves of.

The proper response to doubt is not denial. It's patience. And
honesty. And courage. And gratitude; God is about to bring you to
the next level. You are *being transformed*.

It's painful, but God means to have all of you. Even the part no one
sees -- not even you.

In this vein, Psalm 88 and Psalm 73 are tremendous comforts. The
first one is someone who feels abandoned by God. The second one finds
it hard to trust what God has said. Both are amazingly useful for
people taught to see things according to a "Christian worldview", and
who are curious and intelligent enough to realize that reality is much
more complicated than that. They've been taught that their faith can
explain the world, and suddenly, it can't. So they leave.

Faith is not meant to be a safehouse. Doubt is meant to get you
moving.

Early Christian teachers understood this. It seems many have
forgotten. And that's a shame.

We seem to prefer that our spiritual lives consist of what we can
understand and articulate. So we spend lots of effort and time trying
to *remove* doubt. Great chunks of Christian media are geared towards
giving answers quickly and easily -- often *too* quickly and easily,
frankly. We learn by implication the misbegotten lesson that faith
that is deep enough has no struggle, and the way to *avoid* struggle
is to deepen faith.

This in spite of the fact that wiser Christians have told us that
doubt is *vital* for the Christian life. Indeed, conversational names
for these periods of doubt (e.g., "the dark night of the soul") often
come directly from Christian writings on the subject (in this case,
St. John of the Cross, and his mentor, Teresa of Avila). The point of
the darkness is to show you that on your own, without the familiar
ideas you had about God to prop you up, there is nothing you can do.
It empties us before God and takes away the background noise so that
we can hear Him more clearly.

If you're wondering why you can't be a happy Christian like that other
guy you know, rejoice! God may be able to speak to you in your
emptiness in a way He could never speak to someone who's full.

Freedom and joy come from letting go of our attachments and fears. We
need to live like it.

Faith without doubt is too easy, more like a hobby or a job than a
relationship. Thank God that He's not willing to let us be safe and
secure!

I think that coming to understand this has, at long last, given me my
answers for what to do when confronted with demonstrable untruth
masquerading under the name of Jesus. It's deceptively simple.

(1) Be unapologetic, but polite, about the untruth you're being
confronted with, while simultaneously being open to having your mind
changed; after all, you never have all the facts.

(2) If the person refuses to correspond further, you have done what
you can.

(3) If the person asks for more information, supply what you can.
Remain open to conversation and changing your mind throughout.

(4) If this throws the person into doubt, gently and sympathetically
show them why this doubt is reason to rejoice. Offer to help wherever
you can, and ask permission to come alongside them, just in case the
perspective-altering things they discover in their newfound openness
are things that ought to be changing *your* perspective, too.

This is hardly an ironclad guide, of course; it's more along the lines
of the "stages of grief" that I mentioned so long ago. Helpful in
allowing one to determine how best to help based on what someone
suffering *might* be going through.

If helping people in this way interests you, too, the work written by
the aforementioned St. John of the Cross -- named, appropriately
enough, "The Dark Night of the Soul" -- outlines ten steps designed to
deepen love (which all Christians should be interested in!) while
working through my Step Four above. It was written while the author
was imprisoned by his Carmelite brethren, who opposed his attempts at
reforming the Order. Consider, too, Psalms 13, 22, and 44, written by
a "man after God's own heart".

[go4tli]

On Jan 11, 10:24 am, go4tli <go4...@gmail.com> wrote:
>  (2) If the person refuses to correspond further, you have done what
> you can.

There's a follow-up to this idea of speaking truth. It has to do with
when people won't listen when you try to draw attention to the facts
of the matter (see Step Two, above). Sometimes, you've done what you
can. Other times, continuing to stay quiet enables some people to
harm others -- and even if *no one* listens, simply remaining quiet is
not the right option.

Consider the recent Supreme Court decision in Hosanna-Tabor
Evangelical Lutheran Church and School vs. EEOC:

http://www.scotusblog.com/case-files/cases/hosanna-tabor-evangelical-lutheran-church-and-school-v-eeoc/
http://www.pewforum.org/Church-State-Law/The-Supreme-Court-Takes-Up-Church-Employment-Disputes-and-the-%E2%80%9CMinisterial-Exception%E2%80%9D.aspx

A teacher got sick and took a leave of absence. The school refused to
let her return, because the fact that she got sick means that she
might get sick again -- and employing people with medical conditions
is more inconvenient and more expensive than employing people without
medical conditions. The congregation agreed to this; it was a
collective action. (They told her that, contrary to her doctor's
opinion, she was not healthy enough to return that year or the next,
and offered her a crappy buyout to resign -- apparently because they
didn't want to honor her contract, offering her *much less* than she
was entitled to. She asserted her contractual rights.)

The school here is teaching a lesson more important than any in its
curriculum. (Yes, even more important than the science I like to
shout about -- because science is nothing without moral guidance in
its application.) The lesson here, as far as most people are
concerned, is that the right thing, the responsible thing, the
Evangelical thing, the *Christian* thing is to kick sick and weak
people to the curb so they don't slow you down. (Sadly, some would be
able to rationalize this away simply because, in their minds,
Lutherans aren't true Scotsmen(1).)

The Supreme Court affirmed (9-0) that the school has the legal right
to behave badly. Evangelical believers can now hold their heads high
and claim their Constitutionally-granted right to be unChristian. But
some of us find that a reprehensible thing to be teaching our
children. The prospect of high SAT scores is meaningless in light of
the chance that our kids could grow up thinking that behaving like
morally stunted jerks is okay.

Fittingly, the school has been closed.

Unlike many issues surrounding the weird persecution complex that
Christians have in the United States, standing up for the right thing
to do here is standing against the tide and the expressions of the
government's stance. It's even standing against, in a sense, one's
own people, which brings a different kind of discomfort to the mix.

But I trust you can see why remaining quiet is not an option. And why
we should decry it, lest people -- even Christians -- start to
conclude that refusing to let the weak drag you down should be some
kind of *selling point*... but that's a topic for another rant.

This actually came up after we took my daughter to see "Beauty and the
Beast" in 3D this past weekend (part of a birthday present for her).
She said her favorite part was when the beast defended Belle against a
pack of wolves after she'd run away. That, and Gaston's attempt to
lead the village people to kill the beast after seeing it, gave us an
excellent opportunity to discuss that *what one is fighting for* makes
all the difference in whether or not the fight is a good one. I don't
know if anyone ever compared Jesus to Disney's beast before, but
that's how our conversation went. :)

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(1) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_true_Scotsman