\n<\/p>\n
My week doesn\u2019t go by without receiving several emails or private messages like the one below. Does this strike a chord with any of you? (Content slightly altered to assure anonymity.)<\/p>\n
After being active and very strong in my evangelical faith for most of my 60\u00a0years of life, about three years ago my husband and I stopped attending church. We had grown incredibly weary and exhausted with the apologetic acrobatics necessary to reconcile the truths of God and Jesus of the Bible\u00a0with the what we were hearing and seeing all around us in a 21st century world and church. <\/em><\/p>\n Some would say we lost our faith, but the reality is we still desperately seek God and long for the ability to believe in his existence without having to bury our heads in the sand. God seems largely absent, indifferent, or simply on vacation to us anymore. I am currently reading Inspiration and Incarnation<\/a>, but I\u2019m wondering if you have written anything specifically on prayer and why most of the time it seems a fruitless exercise? <\/em><\/p>\n We have been as sincere and honest before God as we can possible be at this point, and have poured out our deep crisis of faith. Like Thomas, we have also asked God to provide a tangible sign of his reality that cannot be disputed or manipulated. So far, all we\u2019ve heard is a deafening silence. We are hanging on by a thread from becoming full agnostics if not atheists. . . .\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n It is indeed a very lonely journey and we feel like lepers in a colony of old friends. We no longer fit into the \u201cchurch\u201d camp or the \u201csecular\u201d camp. We are in \u201cno man\u2019s\u201d land. Our friends and family within the church wring their hands with a combination of concern, pity, withdrawal and (what feels like) concealed judgment. <\/em><\/p>\n Not wanting to be argumentative, combative, or insulting we have simply learned how to remain quiet and pretend around them. Thus, the reason for our slow withdrawal. It has felt like grieving the death of multiple loved ones. We live in a tiny community and all of the churches preach a conservative and traditional message. It has been hard to find anyone out there struggling as we are. <\/em><\/p>\n I can\u2019t help but notice how much this message from a contemporary pilgrim of faith looks like one of the biblical lament psalms written nearly 3000\u00a0years ago by ancient Israelites talking about the same God.<\/p>\n Maybe Qohelet<\/a> was right:<\/p>\n What has been is what will be,<\/span><\/em> The journey of faith is now as it was then, and those\u00a0who claim some superior steady state of\u00a0bold\u00a0confidence and calm certitude are either naive, sheltered, or false. At the very least they are not \u201cbiblical.\u201d<\/p>\n Many are \u201cdesperately seeking God,\u201d\u00a0searching for\u00a0compelling ways of bridging an ancient faith and text with contemporary life, of finding ways to accept and even embrace that we know far less than we think we do, that certainty is less common than we\u2019d like it to be, and recognizing the vital importance of finding communities of faith that get that.<\/p>\n I wonder, too, whether our sense of losing faith is really more of an invitation to move toward a faith of a different sort, where \u201cholding on\u201d to what you \u201cknow\u201d is decentered and exposed as an idol rather than a sign of \u201cstrong faith.\u201d<\/p>\n These honest voices\u2014that echo the biblical witness of lament psalms, Job, and Ecclesiastes\u2014are not heard as often as they should. With permission from those who write me, I may make a blog series out of it.<\/p>\n This blog was first posted in February 2016.<\/em><\/p>\n
\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/span>and what has been done is what will be done;<\/span><\/span><\/em>
\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/span>there is nothing new under the sun.<\/span><\/span>\u00a0<\/em>(Ecclesiastes 1:9<\/a>)<\/p>\n