A Chapter From My Story

This past Sunday I shared a little bit of my story with my church family.  (If you’re interested you can listen to it at zoarchurch.com.)  It’s still on my mind.

I told our folks that as a six year old child I embraced the beautiful, expansive, overwhelming love of Jesus Christ.  I remember being enveloped in his forgiveness and grace as I made my public profession of faith and was plunged into the waters of baptism. 

But soon I was being baptized into other, strange, murky waters; waters of doubt, fear and confusion as I struggled to believe (or doubted if I really believed) everything I had been taught.  Unfortunately for me, there was no room for doubt in the faith tradition of my childhood (which I guess would best be described as Fundamentalism).  If you doubted, you were lost.  And so most of the time I felt lost.   

For me faith was complicated. 

Faith, for me, wasn’t really faith in Jesus Christ.  It was really faith in me.  I was actually believing in my ability to believe.  I was placing faith in my capacity to somehow produce faith.  I turned “having faith” into just another way to earn my salvation because “having faith” depended on me.    

I hope that makes sense.  Maybe, for you, it does.  Maybe you can relate.  Maybe it strikes a chord deep in your spiritual psyche.  Maybe the way I felt is the way you feel.

So just a couple thoughts for my fellow recovering fundamentalists.

v  In the Bible “to believe” is not really about intellectual agreement with a set of doctrinal statements; although there is nothing wrong with that.  “Believing” is more about entrusting yourself into the care of another. 

I think that’s what the six year old Rob did.  They don’t call it childlike faith for nothing!  It took years for me to reconnect with that kind of childlike faith.  And sometimes I find myself needing to reconnect again.

v  I think faith and doubt can coexist.  In fact, for me, they go together quite naturally.  John Ortberg has observed that if a person has no doubt then that person doesn’t have faith… he has certainty.  After Mother Teresa died, her journals revealed that she struggled with great doubt and fear. 

It’s somehow comforting to me to know that one of the greatest icons of faith also had doubt.  So I don’t feel too bad when I do too.  

v  I don’t think that God is waiting on us to somehow believe enough, or believe all the right stuff.  Wouldn’t that make God more dependent on us than we are on him?  I tend to believe that the heart of God is open to any trusting soul.