Entering into Faith Slowly, Through a Process of Doubt

      My life is not my own, not really.  It belongs to God.  It always has.  His love—this furious longing that He has for His entire creation—is pursuing, prodigal, purifying.

     There is nowhere I can go to flee from His presence.  Not in the pursuit of money.  Not in relationships based solely on lust, where our pursuit of pleasure ultimately, and simply, reveals that we are searching for the highest Pleasure of all.  Not in alcohol, or whatever it is that we use to numb our inner yearning.  None of these things—none of the demons that have pursued me in life, or, rather, that I have pursued—kept Him from finding me.  Where shall I flee?  In the loftiest abode, or in the lowest hells, His Presence fills all.

     No, my life is not my own.  It is His who fashioned me from nothingness.

     But it wasn’t always like this.

     I came to faith slowly, through a process of doubt.[1]  It is in my nature, I think—it is how God made me.  My faith was never one swayed or persuaded by revivals or fiery sermons.  When I was young and my family attended a Baptist church, I probably “accepted Christ” after some such revivalistic rally, but I doubt that had much to do with my real conversion.  Or, perhaps, I should say conversions—here I am reminded of the old Benedictine saying: “pray for my conversion, and I will pray for yours.”  Faith and conversion—they are both part of an ever on-going, ever deepening process.  As we enter into the depths—for God is not found in the shallows—of a relationship with Christ, with this Personal God that is the Truth of all things—He that fills all things—we are changed, molded, transformed, converted.

     Don’t get me wrong.  I am grateful that my parents took me to church every week when I was young.[2]  Perhaps I would not be Orthodox without it, for I did find Christ there, just not in revivals or sermons.  (I doubt I ever actually listened to a sermon, to be honest—I primarily tried not to sleep through them.)  I found Him in stories from a sweet Sunday school teacher, in friends who doubted like me, in parables from Scripture, and in my inner heart.  Christ did find me there—it just took me many years to realize it—and perhaps that is why He has pursued me ever since.

     He has pursued me through doubt.

     My doubt will always be there—I believe this to be a healthy thing—but now it is tinged with something greater: the presence of Christ.  His presence—a presence of love—is an all pervading Reality indwelling in all, and somehow indwelling in what, to me, at least, seems like the oddest thing of all: myself.

     My wall of doubt was first invaded with an understanding of the meaning of faith.  I had always thought of faith as something akin to belief—growing up, I heard the two words used almost interchangeably.  But one day I read what seemed like the weirdest thing at the time: belief is what you have when you lack faith.[3]  Slowly—ever so slowly—faith began to take on a new meaning.  It took on the aspects that it always should have.  Faith as trust.  Faith as surrender.  Faith as hope.   Faith as love.

     Love.

     That word has lost its meaning in our society, a society in which I say that I love the Dallas Cowboys, good craft beer, caramel macchiatos, and the music of Coldplay.  Perhaps it, somehow, goes hand in hand with our religious replacing of faith with belief, and, thus, our replacing the God of love, with the god of a religion that hinges on making sure we believe all the “right” things.

     But God is love, and faith must be forever infused with it.  The Christian God is unlike any other God, for He is love, and love alone is credible.  Religion before Christ came into the world, before He gave himself for the life of the world, was filled with gods that were petty, cruel, harsh, and vengeful.  If we turn our God into any of these things—and many people do—then we have blasphemed God, and created an idol of our own making.  Christ is the only way to salvation, which means that love (and Love) is the only way to salvation.

     Christ’s love must fills us, infuse us, and transport us to that place our souls yearn for.  And if we are to reach that Place of repose that holds the comfort of our soul’s yearning, then the process of doubt must include communion with That in which all of our doubt ultimately points toward.

     We must pray.

     We must pray to a God who often doesn’t answer—or doesn’t seem to in any sense that we can comprehend.  We must pray to a God who is silent, but not just one who is silent—the One who answers us in silence, and so we yearn for Him all the more, this hidden God.

     Perhaps it is His very hiddenness that reveals Him.

     He is hidden in the suffering of the sick, the downtrodden, the dying.  (On a personal note, I have always felt the closest to God—sensed a very real, palpable Presence—when going through difficult times, and I don’t think this is any trite sentimentality on my part.)  He is hidden in the touch of a lover’s caress, and in the kindness of a stranger’s generosity.  He is hidden in the depths of prayer, where words and thoughts cannot reach.  He is hidden in tears and laughter.  He is hidden in sunsets and sunrises, and in the cracks of daily life between the two.

     Perhaps He is simply hidden in plain sight.

     For now—for the sake of this essay—what I have written on faith, love, the hiddenness of God, and how they are intrinsically tied to doubt will have to suffice.  But one other thing I must speak of: belief.

     A few paragraphs ago, maybe I made belief seem as if it’s almost a non-factor.  It’s not.  But I don’t think it has to be—or even should be—the starting point of faith.  As faith unfolds, slowly, patiently, through a process of doubt, belief enters and begins to take root.  Faith becomes bound in love, in mystery (that is Mystery), in silence, in God’s painful hiddenness, in doubt, and, yes, in belief.  It is at this point that we can say: “I believe in one God, the Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth, and of all things visible and invisible…”

---

[1] I first encountered this phrase in the writings of the Czech Catholic priest Tomas Halik.  It rang with such truth to my ears that I knew it described my personal journey.  I am not saying that this is the only way to come through faith, but I do believe it is one of the best ways to ensure that faith is deep, and that it rings with the truth of classical theism.

[2] My parents are Baptists, and let me make this perfectly clear: they are two of the sweetest, most loving parents that a son could ever ask for.  Without them, I would not be the man that I am today—their goodness has forever affected me for the better.

[3] I can’t remember where I read this, but it has struck a chord with me ever since.

Being Church in the Snow

     The following is unlike anything else that I have put on this blog, or on my other blogs.  It is a personal essay written as much for myself as anyone else, but something I thought may be of interest to some.  I have long wanted to write a book of such essays.  I will try to write more similar essays if there is interest.

Being Church in the Snow

     These twelve Jesus sent out, charging them, “Go nowhere among the Gentiles, and enter no town of the Samaritans, but go rather to the lost sheep of Israel.  And preach as you go, saying ‘The kingdom of heaven is at hand.’  Heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse lepers, cast out demons.”

Matthew 10:5-8

     “Truly I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these my brethren, you did it to me.”

Matthew 25:40

     I left work yesterday when the snow started to fall quite hard, then began to stick to the ground.  At first it fell slowly, then a little faster.   But it didn’t matter the amount.  It was so cold that many roads became impassible.  It took me about three hours to get home, give or take a few minutes one-way or the other.  I was lucky.  It took some of my co-workers who live close to me 4, 5, or even 6 hours before they made it home.  Others didn’t make it home.  They slept in hotels, or, worse, in their cars on the side of the road, trying their best to stay warm before help could arrive.

     I only got home faster because I drive a GMC truck, a large one, the type that goes where few others can who don’t drive something similar.  I took back roads, where pavement often ends, but where the snow and the ice had accumulated much quicker than in other places.  At first, I thought it was a good idea, but wasn’t so sure once I had traveled a few miles in a little less than an hour.  There were very few people—a few trucks about the same size as mine passed me, a house scattered here or there.  I knew roughly where I was going and my plan for getting to my house.  But I became quite nervous at one point.

     I have at varying time throughout my life suffered from an almost neurotic anxiety.  I still suffer, and it was acute yesterday, crossing over steep, icy hills where my truck—large and powerful as it may be—slid this way and that, but, thank God, still managed to make it over each one.

     I practice the Jesus Prayer as much as possible.  One of my prayer ropes typically resides in my left hand, or when I’m not using it, on my right wrist.  I always fancy that it makes me more still, more calm, more loving, but then I get in situations like yesterday, and I wonder if that’s the case.  I prayed to God, begged God, to get me home safely; I prayed for my co-workers and others, ones who I didn’t know to make it home safely, for God to give them peace, to comfort them.  But I didn’t feel comfortable.  I was anxious and tense.  I kept thinking that maybe it was better if I had taken a more conventional route home, the interstate or one of the large highways.  I feared my truck was going to get stuck in a ditch or cease making it up snow-covered hills.  My cell phone was only working intermittently, and I had a brief vision of freezing to death—or coming damn close—in the Alabama backwoods, where no one knew where I was, and where no state safety crews would be able to reach me.

     The thoughts came to me: I shouldn’t feel this way.  I should trust in the loving care of God, ever-present and filling all things, even mud-drenched and ice-clad pick-up trucks.  But I did feel that way.  Nervous.  Anxious beyond what should be reasonable.  Frightened.

     But then another thought came to me for some reason: Christ’s twelve disciples.  They’ve gotten, it seems to me at least, quite a bit of bad press over the centuries.  But they also seem to deserve it.  Rarely do they seem to get the message that Jesus is giving them.  And when they actually do get it, they either seem incapable of living out its teachings, or they just forget about it altogether in a relatively brief amount of time.  Here I have in mind Peter, who in one breath, when Jesus asks him, “Who do you say that I am?” replies, without thinking but with utter certainty, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.”  But then, within moments, Jesus tells him, “Get thee behind me, Satan!”

     Which makes Peter, makes the other disciples, amazingly like us, amazingly like me.  We know, but we forget.  We have peace, but we have anxiety.  And, yet, these are the people that Jesus calls, not just to be his disciples, but to be his Church.

     I crossed to the top of another hill.  Now the snow was coming down with more ferocity.  The road was little more than a sheet of ice.  A car was in front of me.  It was stopped.  The hill in front of the car, in front of me, was of a very steep decline, followed by another steep incline.

     After about 5 minutes of waiting on the car in front—another truck had pulled up behind me—I stepped out of my truck, and walked up to the car.  A young girl was driving, 17 or 18 years old, another girl in the passenger seat.  They were crying.  They needed to turn their car around, knowing they weren’t going to make it up the next hill, but were too afraid to attempt to do so.  They didn’t want to end up in one of the ditches to either side of the road.

     The man in the truck behind me got out of it and approached.  He was amicable, even seemed to be in a good mood, though concerned for the upset girls.  He and I helped the girls get their car turned around.  They were thankful, wiped their tears, smiled a little, then slowly drove away.

     He asked me where I was trying to go.  I told him.  He gave me some general directions and a few tips for navigating the roads ahead.  I thanked him, but he followed me just to make sure I made it down and up the next set of hills, then he turned into what I guess was his driveway.

     The twelve that were chosen—broken men in many ways before coming to Jesus—continued to be broken men after becoming disciples.  They knew Christ as their friend who they dearly loved, and certainly dearly loved them.  They ate with him.  They sat next to him while he spoke all that he speaks in the Gospels (and more).  They walked the length and breadth of the vast countryside with him.  Yet they continued to be broken human beings.

     As we continue to be broken human beings.  Their primary calling seemed to be that they were to heal.  It seems as if that is still their primary calling, for we are now them, healing in whatever ways are possible, however large, however small.  On roads.  In the snow.