Following the doubt
I'm a doubter. My whole life I've wrestled with the unknown, seeking to understand the unknowable, believe the unbelievable.
In my teenage years, and even younger, I waffled between uncertainty about everything that I couldn't understand and following any suggested theory. That path, at least for me, led to little happiness and much anxiety.
Looking back, I can see that my fervent grasping of the unknown, dashing after every conspiracy, believing every notion that someone threw at me—was an attempt to add surety.
If I believed in black helicopters and flying saucers, crowded beside yeti and underground civilizations (not real examples, but you can fill these with your own, I'm sure), well, of course I could believe in a higher power. It's all a conspiracy, after all; the government is just trying to hide it from you.
Therein lies madness.
Now, I still have my doubts, my wrestling with what I can't see, not knowing for sure if the things around me—just out of sight—are real.
That all feeds into this life we walk as Christians. What is the point? Why are we here? What is the reason for our existence? Now, I can't even begin to answer any of that, but I can tell you how I'm dealing with my doubt.
First, I acknowledge it's there. I don't know if God exists with certainty. I can't know, emphatically, without reserve. It's my nearly 40 years I haven't experienced incontrovertible proof. As long as I've walked this earth, I've not seen anything that I couldn't say, without some reasoning or mathematical calculation, isn't possible purely through chance.
Now, before you stop reading, accuse me of heresy, and wonder why you're even looking at these words, I want to couch this by saying these are truly my honest wrestlings. I've spent years agonizing over the reality and possibility of the unseen, of a God above, of a walk with faith, of a creation by a creator in a time long before I was ever here. And, to the best of my ability, that wrestling, that doubt, that struggle, has been sincere.
I've wanted to believe, oh so many times, through so many obstacles, and desperately clung to the concept and idea that we have a Saviour out there looking after us, waiting for us.
When I was five, my dad died. It was pretty sudden. In one memory, we're camping and having a great time; in the next, he's sick and on the couch, and finally I'm seeing him carried away to the hospital. When the news came back that our life would have to continue without him—well, it was the moment my world became real, the moment I woke up. There are times I can barely remember from before, little snippets, vignettes of life, mostly good, mostly delightful, with a whole family. Then there's the after. Broken, detailed, long, relentless. Agony, sadness, despair, couched with kindness, caring, friendship, family.
And through that grief, through that despair, I had the same recurring dream, imagining my father alive again, being near him, spending time with him, feeling the warm glow of wholeness. Then, inevitably, morning would come, and he'd slip away. My sleeping happiness, which had been strung together by memories, would fade, and I'd come back to the gray, broken world. Yes, I still had much to love and be thankful for, but it had a gap now, a hole, something that could never be filled.
And to this day it hasn't been filled. It's not the same. You can't go through life, after living through some tragedy, and come away unscathed. You can scar over and find healing, but you're not whole. At least not yet.
I found comfort in the belief that my father was resting, that I could see him again. It buoyed me, held me together, gave me something to cling to. But it wasn't easy.
So how does that fit in with doubt? I often wonder whether there's anything past this. I want there to be, and especially over the last decade I've focused on asking myself the question: What would I live like if I was wrong—if there wasn't some golden treat at the end, some cookie of reward, but instead calm and emptiness, quiet and rest, endless time without life, but also without pain?
This has been my walk, and my journey, and my struggle, and my doubt. Trying to figure out how to mesh together the greatest of joys of loved ones, of friends, of community, with the deep anguish and pain of loss, brokenness, suffering, hurt. They don't mix, cannot mix, and yet we mire through all the same.
And so I continue. I choose each day that the life I want to follow is one guided by grace, instructed by a loving God, beckoned by a shepherd who cares for his flock. It's a choice, and it's one backed up by experience, by belief, by spending time with the words of others who have followed before me, and by living a life surrounded by others. All those, along with my own prayer life and wrestlings, fits into a messy whole that I carry with me.
Does that mean I really doubt? Truly? Well yes, some days it does. Other days I feel the presence of a God. But each day is still that choice to give, to love, to care, and that choice is one I don't regret, even if I'm wrong.