John Pavolitz: Faith and Doubt

I found a marvelous blog article written by a pastor that addresses the fine line between faith and doubt and the interweaving of the two into the chaotic masterpiece of life that each of us lives.

This article also details, in very frank language, a very real problem in the Christian church today.  We pretend.  We act.  A lot more than we are called to.

God calls us to BE holy, NOT pretend to be holy.  Will we fail?  Absolutely.  That is where grace comes in, to forgive us of our failings and to empower us to change for the better.  How much can you fail before you are not considered a Christian?  Ten times?  One hundred?  Thousands?   How grievous of a sin can we commit repetitively and still be forgiven?  If the Bible is to be believed, an infinite number.  As Spurgeon has said:

Would not this be a great slur cast upon the grace of God? Suppose I could find out a sinner so vile that Jesus Christ could not reach him; why then the devils in hell would take him through their streets as a trophy; they would say, "This man was more than a match for God; his sin was too great for God's grace." What says the Apostle? "Where sin abounded"—that is you, poor sinner;—"where sin abounded"—what sins you plunged into last night, and on other black occasions,—"where sin abounded"—what? Condemnation? Hopeless despair? No, "Where sin abounded grace did much more abound." I think I see the conflict in the great arena of the universe. Man piles a mountain of sin, but God will match it, and he upheaves a loftier mountain of grace; man heaps up a still huger hill of sin, but the Lord overtops it with ten times more grace; and so the contest continues till at last the mighty God plucks up the mountains by the roots and buries man's sin beneath them as a fly might be buried beneath an Alp. Abundant sin is no barrier to the superabundant grace of God.

All of these threads interweave with one another to form the tapestry, not only for our own lives, but of the entire body of Christ throughout the ages.  Faith, doubt, righteousness, sanctification, all of these pieces form the core of each of our understanding, not only of our faith, but also of our understanding of the entire world.

So, the great question that stands before me now, in my own life, how much can I let someone hurt me and still forgive them?  Is my faith strong enough to give me infinite resilience, such that no depth of sin, hatred, carelessness, vileness or harm will hurt me permanently?  Can I trust God to repair the damage? To heal the wounds?  Can I trust him to heal the wounds that I inflict on others?

My mind says yes, but my heart does not always agree.  This is the greatest struggle in the life of a Christian.  We are resistant to a lot of the nonsense that this world throws at us and gifted with insight far beyond what our mortal eyes can see, but the struggle between faith and doubt, righteousness and self-righteousness, is ours alone and can only be decided on the battlefield of this life, in the choices that we make on a daily basis.

As it says in Joshua, "Choose you this day whom you will serve, but as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord."  If only my heart would agree more readily, and my faith be strong enough to avoid sin...

Original link to article: http://johnpavlovitz.com/2014/09/02/the-great-unraveling-faith-doubt-and-the-thread-we-all-hang-by/

The Great Unraveling: Faith, Doubt, And The Thread We All Hang By

By John Pavlovitz
I do believe. Help me overcome my unbelief.  Mark 9:24  - A father with a dying son, to Jesus of Nazareth

(Man, now that guy I get).

We often live in two very different worlds, almost simultaneously.

There are days when faith comes easy; when the reality of God so fully saturates everything; every corner, every cell, every crevice of life, that not believing is all but impossible.
To choose anything other than belief in those times feels like a reckless act of rebellion; an exercise in colossal stupidity. Our worship in those moments, is an almost involuntary response to the beauty and poetry around us.
There are other days, though; days when rhyme and reason, and justice, and sense, and love, and kindness, and any kind of peace seem completely absent from the world; days when things are random and ugly, and the silence from a Divine voice is a deafening sound to the listening soul.
In those days, faith seems the last act of a hopeless, desperate fool. In those days, it takes every bit of strength you have just to hold on to the thinnest, most fragile, most precarious remnant of hope; a thread of trust in God and His goodness.
So many times, (many more than I like to admit), my faith seems to be hanging by this narrowest of threads.
This is the place where Doubt lives and breathes.
Doubt is often many Christian’s dirty little secret. In church world, it’s seen as a moral character flaw; one of those “don’t ask, don’t tell” deals that’s better kept to oneself, and so that’s often what happens.
Make no mistake: In people of faith and in communities of faith, Doubt happens all the time, but it largely happens in the shadows.
As a pastor, you’re not supposed to talk about a personal crisis of faith, at least not in the here and now.
Oh, you can talk about the doubts of others. You can preach about doubters in the Bible. You can even testify to your own doubt in the past, but presently you’re expected to be well through that dark wilderness of disbelief; standing sure and unwavering.
I don’t mind telling you that right now, in these days, in these moments; I waver.
It’s not that I doubt God, but there’s a massive sifting of all the stuff around God that’s happening in my heart and mind; a testing the sturdiness of everything my faith has been standing on and surrounded by for the past thirty years; theology, tradition, dogma, history.
With each question, with every new conclusion, and with every question behind it, a little bit of the big rope unravels.
This doesn’t alarm me anymore though, and it doesn’t dishearten me. In fact, this unraveling comes with great relief and peace, because I know that whatever of faith is real and true, won’t break under the weight of the deepest questions.

I’m a Christian and a pastor, and I’m OK with my doubt.
I’m learning to make peace with those times of questioning and those seasons of uncertainty, and I’m taking comfort in trusting that God is present and working in them; fully willing to let me come open-handed like a persistent, curious child, to get answers I don’t yet have.
Doubt for me, isn’t the sign of a dead faith, not necessarily even of a sickly one.
It’s often the sign of a faith that is allowing itself to be tested; one that is brave enough to see if it can hold-up under tension.
Be encouraged when your faith wavers, friend. The worst thing you can do in those times, is to pile upon your already burdened shoulders, guilt for the mere fact that the wavering exists.
A God who is worthy of worship, is big enough to withstand the weight of your vacillating faith and your part-time skepticism. He can handle it, even if those around you can’t.
If your faith community doesn’t welcome your questions and welcome you as you ask those questions, it’s not the right one. Find a place where you can be you; not just when belief comes easy, but when it is elusive and fleeting.
And if your God and your religion can’t stand up to scrutiny, they aren’t worth holding onto. There is Truth that is stronger than a religious house of cards; one that isn’t able to be shaken.

So, don’t be afraid of your doubts.
Don’t bury the questions.
Don’t hide the struggle
Don’t hesitate to let it all unravel.
Because there, on the other side of the doubts, at the end of all that unraveling, in that thinnest of threads that remains; that’s where God is.