A measure of doubt and despair is normal in a healthy faith. After all, the opposite of faith is not doubt, but certainty. If we’re going to live on the ledge of faith, it’s not surprising periodically to look down and experience a wave of “what am I doing here?” This can come in times of personal crisis, or when it seems evil is still winning, or just because we read something that challenges our ideas.
It can even come because of something we hear Jesus said or did. So it was for his followers in the wake of his “Eat my flesh” comments, when he suggested that those who couldn’t accept this teaching had not been called by God:
“For this reason I have told you that no one can come to me unless it is granted by the Father.” Because of this many of his disciples turned back and no longer went about with him. So Jesus asked the twelve, “Do you also wish to go away?” Simon Peter answered him, “Lord, to whom can we go? You have the words of eternal life. We have come to believe and know that you are the Holy One of God.”
What a beautiful statement of faith Peter makes! “Lord, to whom can we go?” might contain an element of, “You’re the best of a range of bad options,” “but that is quickly eclipsed by the simple and profound declaration of belief: “You have the words of eternal life. We have come to believe and know that you are the Holy One of God.”
That is how faith in God grows; it is something we both come to believe and something we know, not all at once, yet fully even as it is still growing. Gradually, our heart knowledge comes to override other input of our senses and intellect that suggest God is not real or to be trusted. When hard things happen or we see the persistence of evil rampant in the world, it’s not that those things aren’t real. They are true, and we believe Jesus is the Holy One of God. We hold those truths in tension.
Spiritual maturity comes in our ability to live with that tension, not seeking the comforts of an either/or. The realm of God is a both/and place, and the more comfortable we become with nuance and shades of grey, the more room the Spirit has to move in and through us.
What things cause your faith to weaken? How do you deal with doubts or a desire to jump ship when they come up? We can always pray right then and there, as honestly as the psalmists do, being real with God about what we’re feeling and thinking. That’s how the relationship deepens.
I pray that, through our deepening relationship with God in Christ, living more and more in the Life of God, we can come to say with Peter about Jesus, “We have come to believe and know that you are the Holy One of God.”
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