Creed

On believing and doubting - simultaneously - and being more than OK with it.

‘I do believe; help me overcome my unbelief!’
Mark 9:24

Doubtful and Faith-full. I do believe. But I also doubt. And it’s all good.

Not too long ago, I stood in church, silent as those around me passionately sung the lyrics to This I Believe (The Creed) by Hillsong Worship. At that point in time everything I had believed for the previous forty years felt up for debate. I was grappling with even the core tenets of faith. It just didn’t feel honest to sing along- and it certainly didn’t feel like worship. It was heart-breaking. It was confusing. It was grief and loss. It was lonely. It was scary. It was a lot. God was still there.

It had been a tough season of serial loss and grief that had me seriously questioning God’s goodness and love, and God’s powerfulness. And if God’s goodness, all-powerfulness and love are up for grabs, what’s left, really? I couldn’t understand- still don’t, likely never will- how a good and all-powerful God who loved me would leave me hurting and exhausted; would not answer my prayers and heal me as I saw fit; would allow any of the suffering and injustice I saw in the lives of those I loved and in the world around me.

It felt, somehow, like although everything blew up in the midst of this particular season, the fuse had actually been lit for quite some time. There was so much more waiting behind these doubts about the goodness, love and power of God: questions that had been backing up for twenty years, maybe. Questions about why Christians would write and say such judgmental things about other churches, other Christians; questions about why women leading or speaking at church was a deal-breaker; questions about why the church doesn’t seem to care about the destruction of the world God asked us to caretake; questions about why the church so often doesn’t seem to love much like Jesus did; why there is so much vitriol towards our brothers and sisters in the LGBTQIA+ community; why we Christians fight harder against issues like abortion and marriage equality than we do against poverty, racism, slavery and loneliness; why the bible says some really abhorrent things about war, slavery, women; why God didn’t answer Jesus’ anguished pleas to save him from execution and make another way for us to be reconciled... so. many. questions. It all felt so overwhelming, so exhausting, so uncertain, so lonely. Some days, if I’m honest, it still does.

It’s been a good eighteen months since doubt officially moved in and I’m now starting to feel like I’m finding my new normal. I still have a faith- something I wasn’t too sure I would be able to say at a few points along the way- and it’s a deep faith. I’m finding ways to repurpose the past so that this new build is not entirely new, but rather being built through a relearning and reimagining of what previously existed. I am still doubtful about a lot. But I am faith-full too. I am seeing that my doubt, far from heralding the death of my faith, is the harbinger of a deeper, more weathered but more whole and beautifully complex faith. Doubt, I am learning, is not something to be fought or feared; it is not a weapon of the enemy but a transformational tool of the Spirit as she does her deep work in me.

Doubt is God’s instrument, it will arrive in God’s time, and will come from unexpected places— places out of your control. And when it does, resist the fight-or-flight impulse. Pass through it—patiently, honestly, and courageously for however long it takes. True transformation takes time.

Pete Enns¹

It feels like the very questioning of God’s love for me has been an entry point into a faith where love itself is beginning to dominate everything else. There is more love, more freedom; less striving, less pressure; it’s less about knowing and doing the right things and more about simply being with God.

Doubt need not be the death of faith. It can be, instead, the birth of a new kind of faith, a faith beyond beliefs, a faith that expresses itself in love, a deepening and expanding faith that can save your life and save the world.

Brian McLaren²

Here’s where I am at currently…

And the beauty for me lies in the freedom I feel around this not being “right” but simply being “what is” for the moment, for this part of the journey, as the Spirit leads me. This list is personal. For the present time. It’s not a blueprint for anyone else. And I expect it to change. And I am OK with that. It’s not black and white, us and them, in or out, right and wrong, truth and heresy for me anymore. Here, outside the box, it is wild and free and expansive and mysterious and ever-evolving and, always, loving. Out here, in the openness, I can more easily hear the gentle whisper of the One who is Truth. And so:

I do believe

I do believe that God IS.

I do believe that God is love; that God loves me; that God loves everyone.

I do believe that God is good.

I do believe that God is Creator, Saviour and Spirit, even if this will always be mind-blowing mystery beyond understanding.

I do believe that God is powerful.

I do believe that God is eternal and outside of time as we understand it.

I do believe that God made me; that God made everyone and everything.

I do believe that we are all created in God’s image, for a purpose all God’s own; that every person holds incredible, indelible, intrinsic worth that is everything to do with the Imago Dei in them.

I do believe that we were all created in Love and for Love and that the point of life, if it is anything, is, quite simply, Love, learning to love.

I do believe that Jesus lived a life of love as Emmanuel; that His death and resurrection was sacrificial and redemptive in a way that makes me so very uncomfortable and yet draws me closer, loves me completely and deeply, sets me free, blows my mind, and fills me with a victorious hope.

I do believe God is present in me, and speaks to me as Spirit, in a way that makes me believe more than anything else. This was, in itself, a tipping point in keeping faith- a tangible touch of the supernatural that cannot be denied or explained away; that is more real and relentless than all the theology and doubt and church and disappointment and disillusionment.

I do believe in a God who sees me, knows me; sees and knows each of us uniquely and individually.

I do believe in a God who is all about freedom and wholeness.

I do believe in a God who will never leave me or forsake me.

I do believe that in the past I have believed in ways that have been arrogant, wrong, small-minded and bigoted, unjust and unloving. I do believe that I might well do so again. I do believe that God can and will continue to lead me on into ways of believing and being that are more marked by Love.

I believe that doubt can be a Spirit-led process of unlearning and relearning in order to reach new and deeper levels of love and relationship with God.

I want to believe

I want to believe that God IS love.
(Getting comfortable with this paradoxical place of both/and!)

I want to believe that God loves me.
(both/and!)

I want to believe that God is good.
(both/and!)

I want to believe that those who love God also love others; that by their love the world will know that God is true, God is Love.

I want to believe that God cares deeply about the destruction of our planet and it’s people, in spite of Their apparent inaction or slowness to act as I feel would be appropriate!

I no longer believe

I no longer believe that doubt is sinful or an enemy to be rebuked and fought off.

I no longer believe that God is male or should be referred to as male. God is genderless to me hence I’ve settled on the gender-neutral they/them when referring to God. I understand that this seems a small matter to some but freeing God from gender, frees me and opens me up to all the nuances of God’s character and love.

I no longer believe that evolution is wrong; I’m not sure that I ever really did in spite of knowing exactly how to argue toward this end. I see no reason why certain aspects of what constitutes evolution could not in fact be compatible with a belief in creation. I certainly don’t see this as needing to be the hot point of contention it all too often ends up being. I no longer believe I need to defend a literal six-day creation.

I no longer believe that being LGBTQIA+ is sinful, or that lifelong celibacy is God’s requirement for those who identify as LGBTQIA+.

I no longer believe that other faith traditions have nothing of value to offer me or will lead me astray.

I no longer believe that I have all The Truth, nor that I will ever be the holder of all The Truth.

I don’t understand

I don’t understand why some are healed and others are not.

I don’t understand why some die young and there are lovers, mothers, fathers, children lost too soon, so unfairly.

I don’t understand why some people seem to endure more than their ‘fair share’ of suffering, pain, loss, tragedy; don’t see how this can possibly align with a just God.

I don’t understand all the death and decay and disease and brokenness and pain and apathy. I don’t understand how God can stay still in the face of this onslaught that has me screaming, “DO SOMETHING!!!”

I don’t understand why Christians and the church seem to be known more for the things they stand against, than for the things they stand for; don’t understand why Christians and the church, on the balance of things, don’t seem to love like Jesus did, don’t seem to love the ones on the margins like Jesus did; don’t seem to offer the safe place of love, grace and acceptance that Jesus did.

I don’t understand how to do life the way I used to: full of solid, airtight belief and faith.

I don’t know

I don’t know that I need to do life the way I used to: full of solid, airtight belief and faith.

I don’t know about Christianese and the metaphors the church uses to explain God and a life of faith in God; I can’t seem to find meaning in some of the terminology I have been immersed in for so long.

I don’t know what I believe about heaven and hell anymore.
But I want to believe that there is something more than this. And I want to believe in perfect justice.
And I don’t want to believe in a God who would create some people, and love them, only to then send them to an eternity of torment. Especially if those people have lived lives full of well-intentioned faith, love, peace and generosity.
But I also find it so very difficult to believe in a God so loving, grace-filled and forgiving that They would give Hitler, Idi Amin and paedophiles a second chance.
It’s complicated. And I’m OK to sit with that for now.

“My thoughts are nothing like your thoughts,” says the Lord.
    “And my ways are far beyond anything you could imagine.
For just as the heavens are higher than the earth,
    so my ways are higher than your ways
    and my thoughts higher than your thoughts.”

Isaiah 55: 8-9

As far as not knowing and not understanding goes, I am finding a certain, new comfort in following a God who defies explanation, who doesn’t operate on human terms, who is mystery and majesty. If there is a God in control, working to some overarching plan, then I want- need- that God to be something more than my human mind can understand, articulate or even imagine. I no longer have a God that fits in the box of my human explanation and while that felt overwhelming initially (especially for a girl brought up on correct theology and with a mind that leans towards the desire to explain and understand everything), it now feels correct and comforting. It is freeing me from the need to explain, understand and control everything. And that is so very restful.

This quote from Flannery O’Connor echoes so much of how I feel about my faith (and my doubt) these days… the rising and falling constancy of my faith, the mystery and magic, the expansiveness, the freedom of moving beyond intellect and reason into something bigger than oneself, the letting go into Love.

Even in the life of a Christian, faith rises and falls like the tides of an invisible sea. It's there, even when he can't see it or feel it, if he wants it to be there. You realize, I think, that it is more valuable, more mysterious, altogether more immense than anything you can learn or decide upon. It will keep you free - not free to do anything you please, but free to be formed by something larger than your own intellect or the intellects around you.

Flannery O’Connor

I want to stay humble, stay open; to remember that what I currently believe is likely not the whole truth but that the Spirit is constantly, patiently, carefully, wisely revealing new and more truth as I become ready for it. I want to always be willing to walk into new revelation, mystery and deeper connection with God. I know now that this way of being requires that I invite and embrace doubt, uncertainty and upheaval. It is not a comfortable relationship but it is very, very real. And, as the Skin Horse so wisely tells us, Real involves significant wear-and-tear, pain (but you don’t mind it too much), and misunderstanding from others, but it is ultimately about being so, so very loved.³

“We live by revelation, as Christians… which means we must be careful never to get set into rigid molds. The minute we begin to think we know all the answers, we forget the questions, and we become smug like the Pharisee who listed all his considerable virtues, and thanked God that he was not like other men…
"Those who believe they believe in God, but without passion in the heart, without anguish of mind, without uncertainty, without doubt, and even at times without despair, believe only in the idea of God, and not in God himself.”

Madeleine L’Engle⁴

I want to believe in God Themself, not an idea and, especially, not an idea of human-construction (mine or anyone else’s). And so, I am working to embrace this dynamic creed of that which I believe, that which I want to believe, that which I can no longer believe. I am working to embrace the anguish, discomfort and untidiness of doubt, uncertainty, mystery, paradox and a God-beyond-me. I am learning to lean into these spaces because I now understand just how much wholeness can actually be found there.

And at the end of the day, I resonate with the words of Rachel Held Evans and the apostle Peter… it’s all about the compelling story of Jesus’ love: who else could give us anything like what Jesus gives us?

I am a Christian,” I concluded, “because the story of Jesus is still the story I'm willing to risk being wrong about. The church is not a group of people who believe all the same things; the church is a group of people caught up in the same story, with Jesus at the center.

Rachel Held Evans⁵

Lord, to whom would we go? You have the words that give eternal life.

John 6: 68

Do you live with doubt and contention?
Do you have unanswered and maybe unanswerable questions?
What do you still believe?
What have you let go of?
Is there anything that you will always hold to be true, no matter what?
How are you making peace with doubt and walking forward into faith and relationship?
Let’s meet together here and share our stories in community; listening to each other, encouraging each other, and knowing that we are not alone in these wild places. X

Let’s grant one another permission to doubt. And let’s see the doubt in ourselves and each other not as a fault or failure to be ashamed of, but as an inescapable dimension of having faith and being human, and more: as an opportunity for honesty, courage, virtue and growth, including growth in faith itself.

Brian McLaren⁶

Kate Bowler with the final word/benediction for us today.

If you thought of someone else whilst reading this post, and know it would resonate with them, I would be so grateful if you shared it or restacked it. It helps other people find the Hera community! Thank you x

If you’re a reader, I super highly recommend the books in the reading list below: there is just so much comfort, yes-ness, encouragement and wisdom in each of them. Gold. Absolute gold.

1. Enns, P. (2019) The Sin of Certainty, Hodder and Stoughton, London.

2. McLaren, B. (2021) Faith After Doubt: Why your beliefs stopped working and what to do about it, Hodder and Stoughton, London.

3. Williams, M (1922) The Velveteen Rabbit, Scotprint Ltd, Musselburgh.

4. L’Engle, M. (1980) Walking on Water: Reflections on Faith and Art, Convergent, New York.

5. Held Evans, R. (2018) Inspired: Slaying Giants, Walking on Water, and Loving the Bible Again, Thomas Nelson, Nashville, Tennessee.

6. McLaren, B. (2021) Faith After Doubt: Why your beliefs stopped working and what to do about it, Hodder and Stoughton, London.