If you had told me when I was a young man that I had a story of God’s grace to tell, I would have looked at you like you were from a different planet. I was comparing myself with those charismatic speakers at youth conventions who spoke of being set free from drugs and gangs. Like Nicky Cruz. Or evangelists who God was using to set them free. Like David Wilkerson.
Not that I wanted the darkness that came with those stories, but what did I have to say as a boy who grew up in a Christian home, the envy of onlookers? As it turned out, more than I realized. But my story wasn’t finished yet. I had yet to take my toughest questions to God.
People would say to me and others like me, “Ah, but yours is a story of how God’s grace has kept you from all that darkness.” Not nearly as exciting, though certainly noteworthy, I admit. If only all that were true.
Little did they know of the darkness in my life or how much I struggled with it. Struggling with a childhood trauma I still couldn’t comprehend. Struggling with doubts and fears I knew far too intimately. Struggling with the very faith that was supposed to have preserved me from all those doubts and fears. Or so I thought.
I grew up in a world where faith was a sure thing. By that I mean, I was immersed in a childhood faith that encompassed all of life. It had all the bases covered.
But as a teenager, I grew aware of nagging concerns. Not full-blown doubts at that point so much as struggles and pain that I had nowhere to go with. We used to sing the old gospel song, “Where could I go but to the Lord?” Sometimes, though, you needed someone less divine, more flesh and blood to confide in. And someone outside of your own very public-facing family and tight-knit community. Such a someone was hard to find. Impossible, really.
So, I went off to college with a handful of belongings, including my baggage of ill-acknowledged trauma and ill-defined questions – childhood questions that were transforming into adult questions. Not that I was anywhere near ready to give up on my faith. On the contrary, my faith was still a very real, very precious anchor.
Just an anchor that no longer felt all that secure. I could sense the tug of the currents trying to rip up that anchor and set me adrift.
That excess baggage I’d brought with me to college? That baggage of trauma and questions? It was quickly morphing into a sail unfurling and pulling against that anchor in hurricane-force winds. Either the anchor would give way, or the boat of my life would tear apart. The sail of old baggage, meanwhile, seemed made of untearable fabric.
I listened to Christian leaders and friends who didn’t know about my excess baggage. Their pat answer to others who admitted to doubts, fears, and pain was too often just a dismissive “let it go.” So, I took note. Don’t admit your doubts, fears, and pain. Just keep your head down and plow forward.
Looking back now, I think it was good for me to get outside of my community when I went to college. I needed that childhood faith stretched. More importantly, I needed a space where hard questions were welcomed. I’m not sure this is advice for others. We all have our own paths to trod. But I think I needed to understand my faith and face my questions where I could be honest with myself and with God, where my faith could be stretched in ways it hadn’t been before.
It was surprising to discover that my childhood faith didn’t provide all the answers I needed after all. Its belief scaffolding was designed for a 6th grader, maybe a 10th grader. What I needed was a faith structure built for a young adult. I needed a faith that could wrestle with the hard questions.
Hard questions about life and faith are what adulthood is made of, because life is hard. Sure, we are called to come to Jesus as little children, but the biblical writers (Paul, for example) also call us to grow up on spiritual protein to an adult level of belief that can engage the hard questions. Which means asking those hard questions.
Just off to college, I discovered I didn’t understand all the questions I needed to ask. And if not, how was I supposed to know what answers to look for?
You don’t grasp hard questions by posing them to a speaker who pummels back fast answers. You grasp those questions by listening to the conversations you are already having and are afraid to admit, pondering the questions that arise, understanding why you have them in the first place, and giving yourself time to sit with them.
Which is what Black evangelist Tom Skinner was asking back in 1974. A preacher’s kid like me, only from New York City, he was one of those with a testimony. How he got involved with street gangs as a youth and then came to faith, eventually serving as an NFL football chaplain, a faith leader, and a champion of civil rights. While I was in college, he wrote the book, If Christ is the answer, what are the questions?
In the faith-saturated world of my childhood, it had been natural for me to give my life to Jesus at the tender age of 6. It had been natural to spend so much of my waking hours, at least the ones outside of school, in the church next door.
And it had been natural for everyone else to assume I’d become a preacher like my parents. Except I didn’t have the confirmation I thought I needed. I’d never heard that still small voice I thought I should have heard telling me to be a minister. So, I went off to college knowing I wanted to serve God, but not necessarily sure what that meant.
There I faced questions beyond my ability to answer. And a pain from trauma that had no cure. It would take years for me to resolve the PTSD for which I did not yet have a label. I’ll leave that for another telling. But I did begin to get a handle on the questions behind my doubts and fears. To paraphrase Skinner, it’s hard to find the answers if you’re not even sure of the questions. And you don’t know the questions until you stop and listen to your pain.
When I was honest with myself, I realized I already had questions. But they were questions I thought no one else was asking. Thus, they felt overwhelming, embarrassing, something to stuff away and ignore. I felt very alone with my imponderables. But in college, I discovered I was not so alone. Others were asking similar questions, questions my childhood faith wasn’t equipped to answer adequately.
The handle on those questions didn’t come to me overnight. Gradually my doubts and fears took on words. As did the realization that I didn’t have to have all the answers I craved. Not that the questions weren’t important. They were. People who told me to forget the doubts and ignore the questions didn’t understand how important they were to the author and finisher of my faith, Jesus Christ himself.
I heard it in the most penetrating question ever uttered, the one Jesus asked up there on the cross: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” To have been there at the foot of that cross and hear him ask that question, that must have shaken his followers to the core of their being. You can’t get more intense and dark than wondering why God has abandoned you when you are supposed to be His beloved son on a mission your Father has sent you.
To discover that Jesus asked such a question is to realize that all other questions are fair game. If Jesus himself could ask that of his own Father, then all my questions are chill in comparison.
I wrote some months ago of how one of my college profs became an embodied answer to some of my questions. Whereas the professors in the religion department were only good at coming up with questions, my journalism prof, Hal Waters, showed me how to hold on to my core beliefs as I encountered adult challenges.
The start for me was not in giving up on my questions nor in letting go of my faith, but in discovering that the anchor of my faith held, in spite of unanswered questions, that I didn’t have to have all the answers to move forward. Some of those questions might not even be answered this side of eternity. And with that I am now okay – as long as I can ask my questions and know God listens to me.
The word “fundamentalist” has taken on pejorative meaning. It’s usually linked with religious fanatics, Christian or otherwise, combative in their defense of their faith, people so sure of their answers they are dismissive of any questions confronting their beliefs.
I submit that this definition of fundamentalist applies equally to people who are anti-faith. They too are so sure of their answers they are dismissive of any questions confronting their anti-belief, which oddly is itself a type of faith. Even if it seems based on science or logic, if it presents itself as a sure-fire way of thinking that mocks the questions and the challenges of others, it is anything but scientific or logical. Just like Christian fundamentalism, it is a system closed to inquiry.
That certainly is not how Jesus entertained questions when he was here on earth. And it is not how he engages us today. Jesus does not mock our questions, our doubts, our fears, our pains. He doesn’t set us up as a fall guy to drive home his point. Instead, he embraces us and our concerns. The same Jesus who cried, “Why have you forsaken me?” is the one who comes to us in our darkest moments and beckons, “Bring your questions, doubts, fears, and pains to me.”
I’d like to tell you of a specific moment when all my questions were resolved. I can’t. I still have unanswered questions. But I can tell you that over time, I’ve learned to trust Jesus with all my concerns. And I’ve discovered kindred spirits along the way, people like Tom Skinner who aren’t afraid of my questions and people like Hal Waters who embody the fully anchored life in dark and stormy spaces.
What I discovered in my 20s is that the grownup faith of my childhood can handle the ambiguities of adult life. The difference between my childhood faith and my adult faith? The ability to ask tough questions. I don’t have to have all the answers. But I am free to ask any and every question I can muster, and the God of the universe will not be shaken.
Not that the God of the universe has answered none of my questions – many have been sorted out. But none of these answers has ever been “pat.” A pat answer is an easy, evasive, even condescending response. Some people resign themselves to living with pat answers. But they won’t get them from God.
I need to know that the God I serve embraces my questions – all of them – and that God takes every one of them seriously. That is the God I responded to as a 6-year-old and again as a 20-something and I still respond to today. That God calls me to follow Jesus who asked the hardest question of all.
Like to wrestle with hard questions or hang out with someone not afraid of them? Follow me weekly for my blog on journeying in the borderlands. Interested in my earlier blog where I talked about this tough chapter in my life and referenced my mentor, Hal Waters. Check out “How to stay on track till you die: Part II“.
Image credit: from Christ on the Cross, by Rembrandt