I'm continuing my series of what I'd like my ideal church to feel like. This time, I'm addressing my own personal journey in Jesus and how that can be supported by a church when I'm in deep doubt. Do churches need to help with this at all? Do you believe personal doubt is a personal responsibility to resolve privately or with friends? I'd love to hear your thoughts. I will be looking at 2 more types of doubt in subsequent posts.
Doubt and wonder, never flounder...
While shame is extreme self-doubt, an existential habit of doubting can be a healthy one. I'd like to outline three types of doubt that I want a church to accommodate. The first is personal doubt. My own doubt in my God-dreams, and my personal abilities and progress, and in God himself.
Doubt, in its noun form is a technique. It's not all bad. I say doubt is the kooky long-lost aunt of wonder – which I know as that jolt of awe, surprise or sticky-honey marvel that can catch us unaware. Doubt and wonder protect against unbelief, which is a gettaway car for broken relationships.
Let's look at the happy emotions first. The zingers...
When I use my senses without prior judgement I can welcome these switched-on happy vibes that electrify me. They in turn prompt gratitude, which is all sorts of exclamation points. I write exclamation points and question marks together occasionally. That is possibly because I am an impatient person.
This sort of doubt, if indeed that's what it is, is triumphant. To doubt crass and hurtful experiences is the opposite of defensiveness – it's becoming open to the world again.
I see skies of blue, and clouds of white; the bright blessed day; the dark sacred night...
It's a beautiful day when a child waves at you from a tram car and you doubt all the unfriendliness you been juggernaughted by. When a long-lost friend seeks you out for a catch-up and you doubt all the times you believed you were no good. When a glorious day of sunshine presents a landscape that gives you new possibility to belong by walking into it and bringing friends to witness its beauty. The are tiny doubts that are welcome intruders into my cynicism and keep me hoping for shalom.
These little moments boost our energy and prime us to experience good emotions. Unbelief is what you want to avoid at all costs, because experiencing that suggests you will be pulled away from your core values and cease to operate in the sweet spot you once envisioned. Values change over time, but when we give up on them life can become a frustrating and negative slide into uncertain waters. I've been an unbeliever and I wasn't close to my ideal self, not by a long shot.
I thought love was only true in fairy tales; meant for someone else but not for me...
Once unbelief kicks in I find my attention has drifted some place else already. I have replaced inquiry with idols. This is a deft manoeuvrer that is difficult at first to notice: idols like money spent needlessly, the wrong food consumed too abundantly, hobbies pursued selfishly, work completed expensively-- these are tiny shifts in attention that reveal I don't fully trust and believe any more in the provision of God. I'm not pedalling fundamentalism as I write this, we all know ourselves when a coldness has developed in our hearts due to a lack of trust. It is something I have truly struggled with. I can be an ice-queen!
And when you trust your television, what you get is what you got...
I want a church that can deal with my personal doubts. The good doubts that push me to go and make disciples, and the less holy doubts that can appear at first to be negative, but are nonetheless essential to how my identity is formed in Christ.
These are doubts I tried to address by writing 15 minutes of questions a day, without thinking too hard before I began my work with the pen. I stopped when I realised this battery of questions could be simplified by asking: “Who are you?”
Yes, I would ideally be addressing this question to different subjects: God, Jesus, The Holy Spirit, my friends, my family, my Priest – myself (I took a songwriting course). What began as a litany of detailed 'why' questions ended as a 'who' question.
The benefit of doubt is it keeps us in relationships where needs are not being fulfilled. We can release our expectations by doubting, and find alternative routes to becoming satisfied in life.
Star Trekkin' across the universe, only going forward 'cause we can't find reverse...
Instead of writing questions I'm now trying activities. I volunteer, go to art workshops and walking festivals, and attend courses. These adventures haven't settled the doubts I had when I returned to church, and pangs of doubt grip me still, I am easily hurt and keenly feel that God didn't plan me for a life of loneliness.
However, I can accept that people at large, whom I meet at church or casually, do not have the answers I thought they did. I have to figure my life out for myself.
This is not an altogether joyful feeling because in my life there is great resistance to change for a number of significant reasons that partly have to do with my values and how I would chose to live given freedom.
Tears are gonna fall, rolling in the deep...
Occasionally the urge comes upon me to surrender everything and weep. I stalled a volunteer opportunity for Keswick Convention this year. I was troubled that as a leader I should be better at faking happiness. If I had gone there and expressed a doubt by a tear or by a thousand tears, I wonder what would have happened?
There's a fire starting in my heart...
I want to believe that people change. Usually, exactly when you believe you've got to know them, they go and surprise you. If nothing else, helpful, robust doubting should prepare us for this. It should allow us to move toward or move on in our race, lighter than before.