Faith Crisis

I almost left the church ten years ago.

I felt hoodwinked. Tricked. Like everything I had been taught was either a lie or, at best, only part of the story. Anyone who has been through a faith crisis knows it is not pretty. Losing a foundation you were certain about is terrifying.

In 2015 I was teaching adult scripture classes, which is a funny place to be standing when your own faith starts coming apart. The more I studied, the more questions I had. And they were not small ones.

In college I studied epistemology, which is the study of truth and knowledge. Fancy word, simple idea. How do you know what you know? Philosophers have been chewing on that for thousands of years, and there I was asking things I had never thought to ask before.

There is one philosopher in particular, René Descartes, who decided to strip away every assumption he had until he hit the one thing he could not possibly doubt.

“I think, therefore I am.”

That is what my faith crisis felt like. Taking the whole thing down to the studs and going through it piece by piece. What do I actually know? What have I just been assuming? What do I believe because I chose it, and what do I believe because somebody handed it to me when I was four?

It was lonely. For the first time in my life I did not feel certain about anything.

Rebuilding from scratch was awful. It was also one of the most important things that has ever happened to me.

I would not take that back, and I would not take it away from anyone else either. The answers mattered. But so did the looking. Things I had believed my whole life only became mine after I went digging for them myself.

Because here is the thing. Even when I did not feel secure in my religion, I still felt close to something bigger than me.

So I prayed. Constantly. Mostly I just wanted to know if He was actually there, and whether He knew it was me asking. I had been so sure once. How did that flip on me?

Eventually it came down to a decision. Am I in or am I out?

So I asked one last question.

“Is any of this actually true?”

The answer I got was not the one I was expecting.

“You have nothing to gain and everything to lose.”

That is not going to land the same way for everyone, and I understand that. But it was the exact answer I needed, and it changed everything.

I stayed.

Not because I was suddenly certain. Because I had one thin thread of hope, and it turned out that was enough to hold on to.

My faith looks different now than it did ten years ago. Honestly, it has looked different in every season of my life. I have spent years learning to hear God’s voice underneath all the noise.

That thread got sturdier over time. Not because I got one big dramatic answer, but because of a hundred small ones I could not have talked myself into.

So if you are the one asking hard questions right now, hear me. Nothing is wrong with you. You are not failing at this. You are doing it exactly right.

Questions are not a phase you get through and finish. They are part of the whole thing.

We are all works in progress and none of us have arrived yet. Okay, excluding Jesus.

I have come to believe that faith is not a destination where every question finally gets answered. It is being willing to keep looking for more light.

So do not be afraid of the questions. Do not be afraid to learn something new, or to change your mind when you do.

That is my plea today. Let yourself grow. Let yourself refine what you believe when new light comes. And give other people the same room while they find their own way there.

Keep searching. Keep praying. Keep going. Your path is yours, and there is not one single right way to come to know God.

I promise you that if you keep looking for truth and listening for His voice, you will find it.