Faith transcending doubt
A simple thought
I’ve been on a reading kick the past month or so. The weather is getting warmer in Michigan, and I bought two plastic Adirondack chairs from a local hardware store that was going out of business. Something like $47 for them both. Not bad.
This past weekend I discovered Madeleine L’Engle’s set of four Crosswicks Journals for sale at a used bookstore in Napa Valley. They’ve been on my list for a while—L’Engle being that fascinating Episcopalian who wrote A Wrinkle in Time. All four for $20. Not bad.
Tonight, as the sun just began to dip in West Michigan, I came across a passage that stopped me. Here it is:
“Once, when I was very unhappy, Hugh and I had to go to a large cocktail party. There was nothing I wanted to do less than get dressed up and have to radiate charm to swarms of people. But we went, and I tried. There was a woman at the party who very quickly had too much to drink because she was lost; she had been widowed; she had not been able to find a new life which was valuable, or in which she felt she had any value. She talked to me and cried into her drink and suddenly she said, ‘You’re a very happy person, aren’t you?’
“I had, at that point, legitimate reason to be miserable. But her question stopped me in my tracks. I looked at her in surprise and gratitude and said, ‘Yes. I am.’”1
It stopped me because I had a very similar experience with someone the other day (the other day being yesterday). I requested a mentor through my church because I figure that’s what you do when you want to be an adult. Mentors coach you on how to live life well and how to be a Christian and a man and how to date and someday marry and all that jazz. I got set up with a guy named Mitch, and yesterday we got together for the first time. He had a decaf coffee and I had a half-caf coffee and a blueberry donut with lemon glaze.
Part way through getting to know each other, he just asked me, “Are you worried about falling away from the faith?”
I stared back at him, my donut half eaten, hovering an inch away from my mouth.
At the moment, my head was polluted with worry. What do the people back home think of my writing and my faith? Is God still guiding my life? Am I too liberal or too conservative? Do I hear God correctly, or am I just licking my finger, sticking it in the air, and hoping to feel the movement of the Spirit? Questions bombard my psyche, and all I can do is desperately attempt to field each one like a little kid in the outfield trying to catch a pop fly.
But suddenly I felt calm, as if that question were clarifying something deep inside me. I said, “No, I don’t think I’m worried about falling away. I can’t see myself going anywhere but Jesus. I mean, I’ve seen God move in really beautiful ways.” I almost got emotional at this point. “My life is just too centered on Jesus.”
That final line—My life is just too centered on Jesus—felt amazing coming out of my mouth. It felt natural, unforced. It felt like an act of grace.
In the midst of all my questions and doubts and daily struggles, it was beautiful to rise above them for a moment and realize that, at the heart of who I am, I have chosen to follow Jesus. And at the heart of who I am, I know a guy—Jesus—who loves me unconditionally, with all my questions intact.
L’Engle and many others write that joy is something other than happiness, that it goes much deeper. Maybe faith is the same thing. Perhaps faith has the power to encompass and subsume doubt and questions and fears and rise above them all to be something deeper, higher, broader, wider. Perhaps faith is not the absence of doubt but its transcendence.
I don’t know. Maybe.
L’Engle, Madeleine, A Circle of Quiet: The Crosswicks Journal, Book One, New York: HarperOne, 1972. 26.
I'm in a season where my writing feels frozen, but your words always resonate and warm. Thanks for showing up and sharing your process.
Also YES. Jesus.