Christian doubt

Spritual traditions tonight was about the place of doubt and failure in the normal Christian spiritual journey. Funny, I never thought of doubt and failure as being common to the Christian experience – I guess I thought it was just me! It is certainly true that doubt and failure are not often talked about in church, I suppose because of the fear that it might spread, or that it might look bad in front of others. To be fair, doubt can be pretty threatening, both our own and others’ but I think (hope?) that we can face the doubt, give it to God and let the truth (His truth) make us free. What kind of people are we if the truth does not serve us?

I remember when I was at Uni and really struggling with some aspects of my newfound faith (and dumping it all on my leader who was only a year older) someone advised me to take it to God on the grounds that “He knows anyway, and He can deal with it”. That was such a freeing, wonderful thing – not to have to pretend to understand and agree and accept. To be able to acknowledge the disappointment, fear, doubt and even anger. To be angry at God, and to be able to tell Him about it is so much better than to try to hide it (and myself) away and pretend it isn’t there. Acknowledging doubt and failure is to acknowledge that something isn’t working and looking to change it – much healthier than doing the same thing over and over expecting a different result!

I have also discovered the Jesuits – really clever people, especially Ignatius! He formulated a way of examining “the best of the day, the worst of the day” (sounds a bit Dickensian) and through the naming and exploration of those, to see God in both. The Jesuits have their own form of the simplicity/complexity idea which I so love, only they call it orientation/disorientation. Similarly, by exploring the disorientation we find orientation again. CS Lewis also speaks to this when he talks about the difficult knotty parts of the Bible being like a lump under the bedcovers – we can try to smooth it over and pretend it isn’t there, or we can peel back the covers and take a really good look at what is really going on! In his experience, and in mine, there are often the greatest lessons lurking under those covers!