When Our Faith Is Sideways

Pastor's Life, Personal Development, Perspectives

Understanding Faith and Doubt in Difficult Seasons

There are doubters in every religious community. Some doubt because they were raised in a world thoroughly immersed in the Holy Spirit and aren’t sure now that the Spirit can be either credited or blamed for all their faith experiences. Some doubt because they are the children of doubters or because their faith community focused more on outward rituals than on inward transformation or because no one in their childhood home ever expressed a word of faith. Some doubt because of the books they’ve read or the teachers who influenced them. Some doubt because they have faced difficult life circumstances—the onset of a devastating illness, the death of a loved one, the inability to have children desperately desired, the crumbling of a marriage, or the many ways in which faithful people can pray, urgently and earnestly, and feel their prayers were unheard, rejected, or ignored. In many ways, if we’re honest, all of us are doubters about some things. Doubt has many parents. Its causes and consequences are myriad, not just in general but in each of us. What do we do when the path isn’t straightforward, when the answers don’t make sense? What do we do with a sideways sort of faith?

When Grief Challenges Our Certainty

I sat at the back of the sanctuary, packed and overflowing, for the funeral of a girl who died in a car accident. I knew of her but didn’t really know her. However, like almost everyone else in the room, my eyes welled with tears. The occasion was terribly sad. The music started, and the family began the procession toward their designated seats. But the father did not sit. When he got to the front, he turned around and stood facing the congregation, waiting for the large family to file in. When everyone was seated, he began to walk back up the aisle, chastening the large gathering of mourners. Why is everyone so sad, he asked. My daughter is with Jesus. Don’t cry. Rejoice. This is a time for celebration.

The room was quiet, unsure, supportive of the father and the family but a little confused. I had certainly never seen anything like it. Not too long afterward, the father cratered. His hospitalization was not brief. His certainty had collapsed, and no medication or surgery could fix it.

Finding Faith Amid Loss and Unanswered Prayers

In another hospital on another occasion, I held the hand of a brilliant young woman who had given birth to a beautiful child, but the new mother had a damaged heart, and things didn’t look good. Her devoted husband clung to their new baby as his wife fought for her life. And he prayed and prayed. But his young wife didn’t make it. Do you blame him for being angry at God, for finding prayer difficult? Does doubting not make at least a little sense after such a loss?

I was a young pastor at the time of her death. My church family was reeling from loss. A respected congregational leader had cancer. He was getting better. A new treatment was promising. But then he died. A beloved teacher of the church’s children got an infection. One thing led to another, and she died. And then one of the young children, the same age as one of my own, was tragically killed.

In my own grief, magnified over months, I had lost my words. I had no idea how to help these families whose grief was unbearable. I had no idea what to say to the young husband holding his newborn. I lacked the spiritual resources I needed. A friend encouraged me to read Martin Marty’s book A Cry of Absence: Reflections for the Winter of the Heart. The book grew out of circumstances in Dr. Marty’s own life, the death of his wife, which had drawn him to the Psalter. Marty borrows and expands the powerful imagery from one of the twentieth century’s most influential theologians, Karl Rahner, who used the metaphors of “summer” and “winter” to address two divergent and often competing expressions of spirituality.

Summer and Winter Spirituality: Making Room for Faith and Doubt

The Psalter is loaded with songs of praise, psalms that Marty refers to as “summery spirituality.” These psalms and that sort of spirituality reflect a life of summer warmth and abundant joy, rich in thanksgiving, acclaiming God’s gracious and unending presence among us. These hymns of praise are wonderful, powerful, important, and needed. But they do not resonate with the souls of everyone and do not speak to every situation. Some believers express a faith that is murkier, permeated with doubt, whose experiences with God are not straightforward or chock-full of blessings. There are other psalms that capture those questions and that grief.

Why the Psalms of Lament Matter

It was the texts for the wintry way, the laments, that Marty needed most. I had no idea how much I needed them as well. To my surprise, I discovered that the lament psalms in the Psalter outnumber the praise psalms. In our congregation, we sang a hundred praise songs to every, well, zero lament songs. I can think of none during those years. These laments were in my Bible, of course, but I wasn’t reading them. As a result of this self-inflicted absence of lament, my feelings of grief and doubt had no grammar, no vocabulary. No wonder I felt inadequate for the task before me.

Offering Compassionate Pastoral Care During Grief

It became clear that I was ministering above my weight and was being pummeled by the blows. Too many of my parishioners were hurting, bruised by tragic loss and the sort of doubts that often arise in the wake of it. And more than a few of their fellow church members were trying to pep them up. Don’t be so sad, they were saying. It’s going to be okay. This is God’s plan. All things work together for good.

My task in response was not just to address the well-intentioned but ill-conceived theology that often resulted in corrosive pastoral care; it was to choose helpful words or, better yet, to find a compassionate presence and constructive silence. These sufferers, at least most of them, were not having a crisis of faith. They believed in God and trusted in God’s future. But their faith didn’t look like that of their summery friends. About them, Marty says, “It may be that those who pursue the Spirit in unconventional ways, or who receive the Spirit’s gift in ways that depart from those the group cherishes, receive no support. They are left to their own devices and, after frustration, choose to be alone again. Honesty is their premium, aloneness their price, absence their destiny.”

Why Churches Need Both Faith and Doubt

Communities of faith need both winter and summer. One is not superior to the other. Neither sort of spirituality is pure; there’s always a comingling of doubt and trust. Faith, by its nature, is dappled, both for individuals and for the community of faith.

Walking Together Through Seasons of Faith and Doubt

The souls among us who are naturally inclined toward a summer-like existence—for whom God is an “ever-present help,” in the words of Psalm 46, even “in times of trouble”—are crucial voices of faith. Those of us who often walk the wintry way still find ourselves aching for summer. We need the warmth of the sun. We need you, even when we don’t seek the sunshine. We may have questions about our pilgrimage of faith, a lot of them, and we may come across to others as a little out of sorts—off-centered, you might say—in our faith, but we’re not ready to withdraw from the journey.

Giving Grace to Those Struggling with Faith

Be gentle with us. Don’t cringe if we wintry sorts need to put on spiritual sunglasses. The glare of summer’s spirituality can be awfully bright. Allow us to occasionally find respite from heated faith so that we can pray, reimagine, and, in time, reenergize. Grant us our tears as Christ himself wept, even though he knew his friend Lazarus would soon rise again.

Making Room for Questions and Spiritual Doubt

Give wintry faith room. Don’t fear it. Allow it a place at the table. Such faith can provide the sort of depth perception that only two eyes can bring, summer and winter together, looking jointly toward the journey’s end. Winter travelers provide a needed perspective, reminding their companions that summer succumbs to fall even as winter gives way to spring.

Finding Hope in the Midst of Doubt

Above all, let the winter Christians speak, but only when they’re ready. Let them question. Let them challenge God. Let them ask the if questions: If God is present . . . If God hears . . . If God desires . . . If God cares . . . Because in God’s good time, the anguish of the IF makes the promise of the THEN more sweet.