Belief is a funny thing. There are many who would say that over the last few years my beliefs have changed. And I think they have. But what I’m beginning to realize is that it has been less about change and more about discovering what I truly believed all along.
I grew up feeling very strongly about what I believed. And there were things that I truly did believe. But there were many doubts that I could never fully shake my entire childhood. Even though my parents created a safe environment for asking questions and never told me to stop asking those questions, I always felt guilty about it. My assumption was that if I truly believed, then I would have no doubt.
In order to be free to doubt, I had to face and let go of one of the strongest beliefs I held, and that was that my salvation depended on my faith. My tradition, my family, and my culture taught me that in order to be saved from hell, I had to believe. Even if it wasn’t always clear exactly what I was supposed to believe, the focus was always on this vague idea of belief. Perhaps my truest belief was this idea that my salvation depended on my faith. It is definitely what fueled all my internal angst. When I doubted I was truly afraid that I was in danger of losing my way. When my actions didn’t match what I said I believed, I was frustrated, because I recognized somewhere subconsciously that this didn’t make sense. Dallas Willard talks to this in his book The Divine Conspiracy:
“In a setting where a social premium has been placed upon believing certain things for the sake of group solidarity, we must face the fact that human beings can honestly profess to believe what they do not believe. They may do this for so long that even they no longer know that they do not believe what they profess. But their actions will, of course, be in terms of what they actually believe. This will be so even though they do not recognize it, and they will lose themselves in bewilderment about the weakness of their ‘faith.’”
Some people live in fear that others will see what they truly believe. I was afraid that I would see what I truly believed. I hid parts of myself from myself. It was too hard to open those doors to see what was truly there because it would mean admitting that I wasn’t who I said I was, who I wanted to be. I prayed and hoped that the desire would be enough.
But still, I lived in fear. Fear that my God would somehow be shaken by my doubts. Oddly I couldn’t think clearly about it enough to realize that if my God was weak enough to fall apart under my barrage of questions, than he wasn’t a God worth believing in. Of course, the truth was that my God was in danger of being shaken by my doubts, because my God was just a picture I had made of a larger truth that stood behind it. And if what I believed most in was a picture I had constructed, than it is good to release that, even if it means having to spend a life searching for the truth that stood behind it.
I am no longer living with the same level of fear that I dealt with before. I feel freedom to ask questions that were always too hard for me to ask before. I am now willing to take the risk of being wrong, because I hope in a God who is right, and because I no longer believe it depends on me. I am joyful to be on a pilgrimage searching for truth, rather than sitting still pretending I have found it.
*Art by Seth. A visual representation of fear.
And Then There Was Joy 
I understand where you’re coming from. I didn’t experience the fear/anxiety in the same way (mine was more shame), but I also have doubt as a regular companion on this journey of faith. I think somehow we’ve made doubt something to hide and be ashamed of in the Christian sub-culture… at least in my experience. And yet, whenever I’ve voiced my doubts, I’ve found that I’m not the only one. So now I try to talk about it, bring it out in the open, in hopes that others will know that they aren’t alone.
Doubt isn’t something I make go away with my willpower. I like how John Ortberg talks about this. We ask people to have more faith, and what we really mean is to have more certainty. The problem is that certainty is a feeling. I can’t make myself feeI certain by a sheer act of will. The only way to more certainty is more knowledge. I can study and gain more knowledge and this will result in a greater feeling of certainty. Another way to look at faith would be to see it as a commitment. I can commit myself to a person without feeling certain.
These days I am trying to grow in knowledge and let myself face my doubts squarely, head-on. I have enlisted the support of my husband and a trusted friend. Better to go through things in community. And I am continuing to commit myself to God in my everyday actions. Some days I feel more certain than others. But the uncertainty doesn’t bother me quite as much as it used to. I know that gaining knowledge sometimes requires discomfort and disequilibration.
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