Present-Tense Doubt

I've been really thinking lately about doubt and the way the church fails to address it. This is not at all intended to be a tirade about how the church is a failure; doubt is a topic that is scary and awkward and uncomfortable. I guess when you feel like there's a lack of candor about something, the best place to start is with some honesty. Doubt has been a continual struggle in my life. The past four years have been particularly plagued with what a dear friend described as "God's persistent silence" in my life. My journey with doubt has been a long and painful one. As far as I can tell, the journey is entering a new stage as I've decided it's something that needs to be talked about, regardless of how frightening and uncomfortable it can be to do so.

Philip Yancey wrote a book called Disappointment With God. It addresses the disappointment people feel when God doesn't turn out to be what they expected. Yancey explains, "I found that for many people there is a large gap between what they expect from their Christian faith and what they actually experience. From a steady diet of books, sermons, and personal testimonies, all promising triumph and success, they learn to expect dramatic evidence of God working in their lives. If they do not see such evidence, they feel disappointment, betrayal, and often guilt. As one woman said, 'I kept hearing the phrase, "personal relationship with Jesus Christ." But I found to my dismay that it is unlike any other personal relationship. I never saw God, or heard him, or felt him, or experienced the most basic ingredients of a relationship. Either there's something wrong with what I was told, or there's something wrong with me.' " The first time I read that passage in Yancey's introduction, I wept. It was sadness and relief and recognition and confusion all wrapped up in one, because I had never heard someone else voice that particular doubt before. The language we so often hear describing how we're meant to relate to God make it seem, like the woman in Yancey's book said, that we should relate to Him like we do to our friends or our family. It's apparently not supposed to bother us that we can't see, touch, feel, or hear Him in any conventional sense. We've forgotten that the idea of a relationship with an invisible God is completely baffling and radically different from everything we're taught to expect in every other area of our lives.    

It's difficult to piece together what I'm really getting at here. I've struggled to formulate a clear idea of the problem, not to mention the solution. I do know, though, that in almost every Christian group setting I've ever been in, doubt has only ever been discussed in the past tense. "Sure," people say, "I've had doubts." It makes it sound so fleeting and trivial. Whether it was deep and terrifying doubt or not, the point is that it's past tense. It's conquered and done, and now that person's just fine. And someone in the group who's wrestling with God's absence keeps quiet and thinks, "There's something wrong with me." Granted, there is. There's something wrong with everyone. But that person, surrounded by apparent spiritual success stories, is convinced that he is broken. Not broken in the Christian sense (which is used to mean humility or vulnerability with God), but un-fixable.

We are deeply uncomfortable with doubt. In an individual sense, of course, but that's not what I'm talking about. As a body, the church is uncomfortable with present-tense discussion of doubt. The most common solution, whether in a group or one-on-one, is to meet it with Scripture, or throw apologetics at it, or suggest greater faith or more prayer. To try to counter doubt with answers. The problem is that like many who have been raised in the church, I have heard nearly every argument and answer that people can hand me. I think in the end it's a heart issue (which is a "Sunday School Answer" that happens to be deeply true) that can't be resolved with proof. Perhaps everyone's instinct upon reading this post will be to think about how they can help me fix it. I promise you, you can't. I've sought help with this so many times, thinking if I just talked to the right spiritual person I could figure things out. The fact is that if God is real, and if He still cares about me, then it's up to Him to deal with me. It has occurred to me that, in terms of His purpose, it's possible that talking about doubt is the best thing I can be doing right now. If it serves to bring about more honesty in people's lives, that's a good thing. At potlucks, I always step right up to the table in that awkward, "Who's going first?" moment, because I know it frees everybody else to just fall in line. Maybe that's what I'm doing here.

For the record, my house church group is comfortable with doubt. They're comfortable with my doubts. I don't think I'd be able to write about this if I hadn't first been able to come to them and say, "Hey, this is where I am." And to their eternal credit (seriously, if anything gets eternal credit, it's moments like these), they have not gone into "Fix-it" mode. They've loved me, prayed for me, and reached out a hand (often literally) to let me know I'm not alone. Their response has been what I'd consider the ideal for how the church should confront doubt. They're not obsessed with giving me answers. More often than not, they have questions for me. Sometimes after I share, they're just silent with me for a moment. Other times they point out ways they see God working in my life, even if I can't see it myself. They live their lives alongside mine so that I can see how God is real to them. Honestly, that may be the most important and useful thing they've done.

This is not a post designed to get anybody worried about me. What I'm going through is normal. I think if more people understood that, fewer people would be conflicted and guilty about how hard it is to know God. If what the Bible says is true, then that "I'm broken" feeling is completely accurate. We don't know how to reach God. The part that's a lie is thinking that no one else is broken. Everyone is. And I think the language Christians use perpetuates the belief that everyone else has it together. That doubt is just a minor hiccup in the victorious Christian life. The reality is that doubt is a part of every believer's walk; belief wouldn't mean much if there were no doubt to overcome ("blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed," John 20:29). The church's role, I believe, is not a simple one. It's a process, and results are not guaranteed. It means being faced with questions that may be unanswerable and letting other people into your life, whether you are struggling with doubt or seeking to help a doubting friend. In an attempt to give a summarized and applicable statement, I'd say this: the best thing you can offer a person struggling with doubt is community.