a Way to inhabit the world.
I was grateful to recently finish Josh Chatraw's and Jack Carson's Surprised by Doubt: How Disillusionment Can Invite Us into a Deeper Faith, a perceptive, well-researched, and often compassionate walk through how people have considered, given up on faith, and also sometimes come to believe and trust in Jesus, following His Way of life (see also Searching for Enough by Tyler Staton and When Faith Fails by Dominic Done). To sense some of the tone, Josh provides these words in the preface:
Consider that God
might be using your doubts
to make you vulnerable
— rather than something you imagine
you can control or earn ...
I can't earn the grace I need ...
I've learned to receive it.
What might it mean if this grace-oriented trust in God is good and life-giving? After discussing the wisdom of wagering on the potential of Jesus being real and resurrected (i.e. good reasons to take the core claims of Christianity seriously), as well as considering how Jesus' interaction with humanity is a window to see through in relation to many things we want to be true (ex. justice, dignity, beauty, meaning), the authors of Surprised by Doubt pose the question of what life practices Christians have repeated throughout the millenia in order to flourish.
Recently, I was at Nu Kitchen in Worcester, receiving the honor of listening to someone who is beginning to explore spirituality and the unknown, with God revealed in Christ as a consideration. As we talked about the mystery of prayer, the potential historical and spiritual value of Jesus' life as read in the Gospels in the Bible, and more, he said,
I realize if I'm going to consider this faith,
I realize if I'm going to consider this faith,
I'm going to need to practice it
in order to really understand more.
I put this post together for him, and for myself, and for anyone else that might be on this journey of wondering if Jesus is real, even if He is often incognito in our lives (i.e. see the Emmaus story in Luke 24:13-34 as well as the story behind the painting included at the top of this post, Kitchen Maid with the Supper of Emmaus). After all, as one former atheist wrote:
We may ignore,
but we can nowhere evade,
the presence of God.
And the incognito
is not always hard to penetrate.
The real labour
is to remember, to attend.
+ C.S. Lewis
This adapted excerpt of practices from Surprised by Doubt is offered to potentially pierce through the noise of our modern world. My hope is that this brief list provided by the authors will help redirect your (and my) attention again to the joy we humans deeply desire potentially provided in putting faith in Jesus Christ.
| 1 | Enjoy Way(s) of Enchantment
The disenchantment of our modern world is not absolute. There are moments of enchantment when the sacred leaves us longing for more.
With respect to birth, death, and marriage,
the collective wisdom of Jesus' Church
has passed down to us communal practices
that signify the holiness of the events
and attend to their deeper significance.
the collective wisdom of Jesus' Church
has passed down to us communal practices
that signify the holiness of the events
and attend to their deeper significance.
Step into them with your eyes wide open.
Birth
Hold a newborn baby and take a moment to reflect. Marvel at the preciousness of new life. Ponder its wonder and frailty. Allow yourself to experience the existential weight of the moment. Where did this human life come from? What is the meaning of her existence? Do we have a duty to protect her? If so, who gave us that duty? What would it mean to ignore that duty? Does something inside you rebel at the very thought? The birth of a new human is a moment of profound meaning, and it seems natural and necessary to sacramentalize that moment.
Death
Just as the beginning of a life gestures toward a sacred reality, the end of life calls us to memorialize life as meaningful. For our loved ones "are so significant to us, they seem to demand eternity." This is why, as Charles Taylor observes, "even people who otherwise don't practice have recourse to religious funerals; perhaps because here at least is a language which fits the need for eternity, even if you're not sure you believe all that." Death breaks the illusion of this life's permanency, and it confronts us with questions that we by ourselves do not have answers for. It humbles us. If we allow it to, reflecting on the reality of death can focus our attention.
Lifelong Commitment
Attend a wedding. During the exchange of vows, it is easy to imagine that we live in a universe meant for love. While Richard Dawkins might tell you that our world is one of blind indifference, the beauty and "rightness" of weddings motion to a different story. People today still sense the sacredness of the ideal of marriages as a lifelong commitment of love. Christians have ancient ways of expressing these bonds, linking marriage to a divine logic of love and stamping this commitment with eternal meaning.
| 2 | Commit for a Bit to the Way
A local church, a community of believers covenanted together, is a means of grace by which a faith can grow and is nurtured.
Holy Scriptures
Even on days when we are having trouble believing, by submitting ourselves to exhortation from the Holy Scriptures and the proclamation of Christ, we are wagering on the promise that the Word will not return void. For thousands of years the Spirit has been calling people into the story that satisfies the paradoxes of life — weaving together goodness and justice, beauty and wretchedness, responsibility and grace — while redirecting our lives toward our deepest and truest love.
Holy Communion
Christianity has long maintained that when we participate in Communion, taking part in the Lord's body and blood, God is at work in a special way. God not only visually reminds us of the Gospel through the Lord's Supper but also mysteriously restores the eyes of our hearts.
Even when you cannot muster
a smile or the will to sing yourself,
still go.
Listen to the words.
Watch as the bread is broken
and the wine is poured.
Pay close attention to the Scriptures.
a smile or the will to sing yourself,
still go.
Listen to the words.
Watch as the bread is broken
and the wine is poured.
Pay close attention to the Scriptures.
Holy Psalms
Corporately learning the cadence of the Psalms, the church's prayer book, is also an important spiritual practice. Their serious worship expresses the range of human emotions and situates them within the big picture of redemption. In doing so, the Psalms both affirm the significance of our emotions and direct them forward to their proper ends.
Find a local church that praises God for the good gifts of creation, laments the evils of this world, confesses their sins, sings of God's steadfast faithfulness, and points forward with resolve to the hope of new creation.
| 3 | Slow Down, Pray Along the Way
The Ignatian Examen is an ancient prayer originally drawn from the writings of St. Ignatius of Loyola. This prayer is designed to slow you down and help you notice parts of your day where God was working. This practice will train your heart and mind to attend more carefully to the presence of God in your life.
Take Grateful Notice
of All the Gifts in Your Life
Ask God to Open Your Eyes
to Where He is at Work
in Your Life & Thru Your Life
Examine Your Day
w/ Your Actions and Feelings
Toward God,
Toward Yourself,
Toward Others
Ask for Forgiveness
for Any Selfishness,
Envy, Laziness, Rage
Look Forward to Tomorrow
Receive Grace and Forgiveness
from the God Who Is with You
and Loves You
| 4 | Meditate on the Way
Lectio divina is the ancient practice of contemplative Scripture reading. Lectio divina is not simply about learning. It is about interacting with God. Like the Ignatian Examen, lectio divina begins in a quiet and secluded moment.
Read (lectio) Scripture slowly,
paying attention to
the entirety of the passage.
Reflect (meditatio)
on what the passage means
for your daily life.
Respond (oratio) to God.
Talk to Him.
Disagree or complain;
thank Him or
question Him.
Tell Him how you will
implement His teaching
in your own life.
Rest (contemplatio).
After responding to God,
just be with Him.
Sit in His presence.
Observe and simply rest.
| 5 | Appreciate Life Daily in the Way
Our daily lives have too often been eroded by the acids of efficiency and productivity dripping from the machinery of meritocracy. In a society where we constantly feel the drive to hurry up and to instrumentalize the world around us, slowing down and taking a walk can open us up so we can see more.
and the greater reality
and the warmth of His embrace
will become more possible to see and feel.
Christianity has always held that the natural world cries out to us about God. So, take a walk, enjoy the fresh air, marvel at a waterfall, wonder as you gaze upon a starry night. These, too, are signs, working on us at a visceral level and pointing beyond ourselves.
| 6 | Challenge Fear of the Way
Our intellectual vision is connected to the habits we develop, the communities we inhabit, and things we choose to pay close attention to.
If there is a God and Christianity is true, these practices (above) are some of the means of experiencing His grace. Try them out and persevere in them for a while. Why wouldn't you?
If you say, "Because I fear being duped," at least admit you are allowing fear to control your decision. But more importantly, realize you are making a decision that will not protect you from what you are afraid of. Attending to the world, in religious or irreligious ways, can never be neutral, and it includes liturgies (i.e. communal practices and patterns of behavior that all societies, even secular ones, inevitably develop, such patterns forming the hearts and minds of the citizens) that are already shaping your rationality and judgments. None of us can escape the risk of being duped.
The theologian Sarah Coakley has detected beneath this ill-advised wager a fear of losing control and of the pain that such loss may bring. During an interview with an agnostic television host who inquires about how he might discover God, she explains why practicing the faith is so vital to cutting through the lie that has long placed scales over the eyes of the human race: our dogged confidence in our own autonomy:
I as a believer find that it is in
silent waiting on God
that ultimate transcendent reality
impinges on me.
And every time I do that,
I think of it as a kind of rehearsal
for the moment when I finally
have to give over control,
which will be the moment when I die.
is actually one of the most important
things we do as humans,
because once we're
no longer afraid of death,
then we're
no longer afraid of life.
(Are you) a person who is
very interested in controlling
what you believe in fear that ...
you would no longer be in charge,
the captain of your own soul (?)
But when you come to think of it,
there's going to come a day
when you're lying in bed,
about to die,
and that possibility
will no longer be a fantasy
that you can maintain.
Each of these practices are meant to unmask the fantasy of being in the captain's seat and somehow protecting yourself from pain, for in holding on to this fantasy you might just be shielding yourself from true happiness.
Wagering on Christianity means learning to let go of such illusions by adopting certain practices. By confessing through word and deed your own contingency each day — including your lack of control over the gifts you receive, the pain you've suffered, and the eventual death you cannot escape — you begin to see ... "(God) gives grace to the humble" (James 4:6 NRSV).
The pains of doubt might just be God's invitation to a posture that opens your life up to experience His presence. For the God who entered the world as a baby, died, on a cross to conquer death, rose from the grave, and mysteriously permits evil for an undecipherable good is surely able to use even your doubts for such a sacred purpose. If so, the surprise of doubt may turn out to be the means by which you receive a very different kind of surprise: joy.
+ Surprised by Doubt:
Practicing Your Way
Through Doubt,
pgs. 154-162
Bonus Read on Doubt:
Next Post:
Other Reading Recs:
With presence and peace in Christ,
Rev. Mike “Sully” Sullivan
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