SYMPTOMS OF A FAITH LOST - PART 4

I’ve had little doubts here and there all throughout my faith experience but it was through a few classes in college that I started to get a little deeper into the doubt.

In a psychology class I realized that some of the thoughts I was having were very similar to Freud’s idea of religion being nothing more than wishful thinking.  Maybe we have created this God out of our desire to feel protected, safe, loved, secure, and looked after. Having God on our side can give us strength and courage.  Maybe we created the idea of God so that we could finally have some answer to life’s basic questions such as:

Where did I come from?

Who created me?

Why am I here?

What happens to me after I die?

In another class we learned about the flood story in the Epic of Gilgamesh (which was supposedly written some 500 years earlier than the Bible’s version of Noah and the flood and had a number of similar characteristics). This is where my doubts about the Bible really began to flourish. If I couldn’t trust the flood to be an actual occurrence, how could I trust anything in the Bible to be accurate and true? And if I couldn't trust the Bible to be true, how could I trust the rest?

The next semester in a Systematic Theology class, I had this 10 page paper I had to write; we were to pick from a number of selected topics – none of which were of any interest to me, because I was dealing with so much doubt and disbelief at the time. My professor gave me special permission to write mine on the topic of Christian doubt. This was, I believe, simultaneously the worst and the best thing that could have happened at this time. It was great to finally find a professor who understood where I was and could sympathize with the thoughts going through my head and who could see my struggle. I certainly could have babbled on in a paper on some other theological topic…lying on every page and denying my true feelings, but he didn’t make me do that. For that I am very thankful to him. At the same time, I wonder if during the time of writing this paper (during which I could now justify hours of academic time spent in reading, studying, and writing about my own doubt) I dwelled a little too heavily on all the questions and inconsistencies I saw in the Christian faith. I wonder, if I hadn’t written that paper would I have been able to get out from under all the doubt and questions a little easier?? – And then I think…probably not.

Other Doubts/Thoughts of mine that led me away from faith:

Everyone has to “take somebody else’s word for it” I believe we learn by experience and things are made true to us through our experiences, however, we cannot experience everything. That is when we must “take somebody else’s word”. I wonder - when do we get ourselves in trouble because of that? How many times is that trust betrayed? How many times have I been misled or misinformed? How many false beliefs do I hold to now simply because of somebody else’s experience…because somebody else told me?

The way I saw it, EXPERIENCE was the only way we could know truth. EXPERIENCE was our only teacher. I talked to one of my pastors about this and he disagreed, citing this example: Experience can also lead us to believe untruths. Take, for example, the girl who is abused as a young child. She grows up to believe that that’s how things are supposed to be, that she deserves the abuse. Hmpf. I saw his point, but was still holding on to mine with both hands.

There’s a big body of evidence – we all draw from that same body and we twist and pull and stretch the same pieces of evidence to fit our agenda, our beliefs. How could I be sure that the “Christian” side had it right?

I do NOT speak Hebrew or Greek – how can I be sure I’m not misinterpreting the translations? How can I be sure that through the years, the Bible hasn’t been tampered with – it’s been touched by so many human hands that I’m not sure I can trust it to be “inspired”.

Christianity seems so manipulative. We turn the lights down low, play slow intimate worship music with moving pictures on the screen. The goal is to tug at the people’s emotions in order to get a desired response/reaction.

I no longer trusted in absolute truth. In my opinion it had to either be non-existent or unknowable. I now had trouble believing that there was only ONE WAY that was true for everybody, everywhere.

Christianity/religion is different everywhere you go. How much of this faith is just a product of where I grew up, what family I was born into, the current time period and cultural atmosphere? I wonder would I believe the same thing if I was born somewhere else, in some other time? – The fact that faith and organized religion has changed so much over time disturbs me. It makes me feel like the church today and its views are just a response to culture and if that’s true it takes away the credibility of it all.

Shortly after my conversion from Christian to doubter/agnostic, I noticed that when I was going through difficult times, I found that “God” was still the first person I wanted to run to.

Because of my doubt I felt like it was too contradictory and double minded to speak to God about certain things (like about my doubt about Him being real for instance) even though that’s what I wanted to do. That frustrated me and then I wondered why – why through all this doubt is my first instinct still to run to HIM? Is it because something in me still clings to HIM and still believes and knows HE is real – or is it simply because it’s been so ingrained in me and has become a habit. I felt so contradictory and double minded!

I came to the realization that…even though I was questioning God’s existence, it was HIM…whether real or imagined, that gave me comfort when I was troubled, peace when I was felt like a storm, and confidence when I felt unsteady. To lose that was devastating.