Have you ever looked at your faith, everything that you believe and have believed since you can remember and thought..."What if this is all Bullshit?"
Cause I gotta be honest...I do.
As a matter of fact, I'm having that thought right now.
And it's hard, you know, cause you never actually want to admit that a thought like that can cross your mind, but sometimes, if you are really honest with yourself, you'll feel it creep in. Or maybe its never left your mind and it manages to show its face every now and then. But you constantly remind yourself that its OK because it only happens sometimes...
Until "sometimes" becomes "often" and "often" becomes "normal" and the next thing you know you doubt everything.
But hey, that can never happen to me...I'm a Christian.
So even if I do doubt "sometimes" I will never let it get that far...I will always believe.
Yeah, I think that way too...
Now, many of you may be gasping right now thinking, "yep, that's it, Tamisha has officially jumped off the deep end." Please be assured that that hasn't happened. I still believe. I still have faith.
But "sometimes..."
Sometimes I wonder if it is all Bullshit.
So what keeps me grounded then? What keeps me from jumping?
Honestly (and this is where my Charismatic roots come in), I remember the times I experienced God. Times that I know without a shadow of a doubt that God was with me. Present in a situation, or gave me a word that I couldn't have known for someone else or did something so mind blowing that there could simply be no other explanation.
But as I even begin to think about that and about how learning so many things here at Fuller have a way of challenging what you believe I wonder if there will come a time when there are so many holes in my "theology" that even those experiences begin to slip through the cracks.
So where does that leave me? Holding on to anchors until they're blown to bits by some ideology or praying that I still love Jesus when I graduate?
That's not enough for me.
My faith has to go deeper...
Believing the way I've always believed cannot be the end for me. I have to get to a point where my faith is strong and unmovable.
And I have a feeling that to get there I'm going to have to doubt everything.
I'm going to have to let it go, and trust that after everything has been shaken that the truth will emerge and stand.
I don't want to be the person who fears doubt so much that their belief becomes their truth.
But I don't want to be the person that becomes so disillusioned that doubt becomes their god.
But sometimes...
Sometimes I look at all of this and wonder...
What if it is all Bullshit?
Once again, my friend, true words spoken. I have that thought quite often and I suspect that it'll happen even more now that I'm here at Fuller. I'm doing a little better at being "comfortable" in the doubt, meaning I don't let it shake me as much as I used to. I can now see it as part of the process of growing in faith and rest in it...whatever the hell that means! lol :-)
ReplyDeleteFirstly, I think most Christians have doubts, even if we think we're not supposed to. My doubts come and go, and force me to reconsider everything from the ground floor. The good thing is that I have developed a sort of faith "muscle-memory" in which the process of gathering myself before God (Augustine) and remembering my life, experiences, thought experiments, deep thought sessions, etc...gets more efficient over the years. In other words, I can run through all the alternatives more quickly and with less drama. Also, reading atheists and others has allowed me a more nuanced picture of what the most brilliant of them have believed (Nietzsche, Bertrand Russel), which helps frame the question not in terms of "Is what I believe bullshit?" but in terms of 'What is a better/truer alternative?" The vast majority of the time, I can't find that better or more true alternative. Doubt is also essential, in my view, in deconstructing and then reconstructing one's theology in order to make it better, faster, stronger, and more suited to actually living out. One more way of putting this and I'll leave you alone: Allow yourself to fully commit to the bullshit proposition (following the thought that Christianity is indeed not true) and play it out to the very end, let all the consequences unfold, and you may find your doubts greeted by a new set of doubts more powerful than your first set, only these doubts are about the conclusions you were forced to come to as a result of letting your original doubts unfold. Everyone must answer the same questions, not just Christians. I have yet to encounter a better set of answers than Jesus gave. Blaise Pascal felt similarly.
ReplyDeleteI understand, Tamisha.
ReplyDeleteGood grief, I am taking Creeds this quarter and you talk about questioning and then needing to find the words to express what I believe when I am in the midst of even trying to figure that out. Yagh. Perhaps this is a part of the peeling away of the onion, as they say in Twelve Steps. In the removal of the "shtuff" there is something that is holy, that is God-embedded. I am trusting that the Holy Spirit is there, even when I can't understand, can't feel, and can't speak. Just for today, that is enough.
Amen my friend! In my short time here at Fuller I have found a lot of challenging thoughts and perspectives. At times, it hard to take it all in. I promise to partner with you in the journey and do all I can to be sure that we ALL leave Fuller MORE in love with Jesus. Just be sure to lift of my head when I'm doing a bad job of it myself!
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