This Easter break, I have found myself with more questions than answers – I guess you could say I’m in the midst of a crisis of faith.
I’m not sure if this is something that a lot of middle aged people go through – is it a midlife crisis of sorts? It seems to be something most people encounter at a much younger age (according to Fowler’s stages of faith), and I am just a late bloomer.
For some time now I’ve been wrestling with some big issues. Like:
- Why do bad things happen to good people?
- Why do the wicked prosper?
- What would it look like if we lived our faith based purely on Christ’s teachings, and without the church telling us what to do? (Probably very different!)
- Would a loving God really turn his back on anyone who is genuine in wanting to know or please Him?
- Who are we (as Christians), to tell people what to do and how to live their lives?
- Why does the church follow some bits of the Old Testament (when it suits them) – and not others?
- Does prayer work? Because it really feels like we are on our own!
- Why, when we’ve prayed and earnestly sought God’s direction about something, and then followed it – does it all go pear-shaped?
- And – can I be bothered any more? Isn’t believing enough? (According to a lot of the Bible verses I’ve read, it should be – see Ephesians 2: 8 & 9).
A lot of these might sound like generalisations, but it is the specifics (which I won’t go into here) which have really caused us pain, suffering and doubt.
Perhaps we are just burned out, after so many years of “doing our best”, serving faithfully, and being very involved in church life.
I like to think that God understands what we are going through: our human-ness, our confusion, our flaws and imperfections, our weariness.
And if he doesn’t?
Then I’m not sure I want to know a God like that.
Have you ever had a crisis of faith?
Lots to think about. So much to say and not entirely sure where or if I should start.
That’s exactly how I feel too Raych! đ
I had a crisis of faith about 13 years ago. I questioned stuff. My dad just said, don’t question it mate … just feel what you’re feeling and go with it. He just suggested I go with how I was feeling rather than feel trapped in my previous beliefs or my up bringing. I’ll be forever grateful for him “releasing me”.
The great thing about beliefs is we can change them. As a result I feel confident about who I am in the universe and my kids can choose their path as well.
A very good friend of mine said much the same thing, and you’re right, it really helped me to feel it’s okay to have these thoughts and feelings đ
I had my crisis of faith in my late teens/early 20s. I was raised Catholic but the more I found out about the history of the faith, and the disconnect between what was preached and what was done, I could not in good conscience continue to believe and worship. I live by my own code and belief system now and I feel centred and content – I do not feel the need for anything more. I hope you can find a similar level of contentment soon x
Thanks Kirsty. Sounds like it happened for you at the usual time. Like I said, I’m a late bloomer đ
I read somewhere that “Faith requires doubt in order to be faith.”
Without questioning we would just be robotic sheep. x
I like that quote Pinky – thanks for sharing it. The fact that I’m doubting proves there is some type of faith there to even question! And doesn’t the good book say “if you have faith as small as a mustard seed … “
I must confess that I was not born or raised into any religious faith and struggle to get my head around it all, for many of the reasons and questions that you have raised…
It was a lot easier when I just went along with it Zita. Doubts and questioning aren’t a comfortable stage of the journey but that’s where I find myself now.
I am a spiritual person, I believe in a higher being, but my partner is not. I believe that faith, and a definition of God is something you feel, not something that should be forced or organised for you, or make you feel guilty. I don’t think the only way is through the church and think that acts of grace and kindness can and should happen everywhere. You could write a book on this!
Exactly! Even when I was all gung-ho and involved in church, I never felt it was right to push it on others. If they were interested, sure, happy to share. We brought our children up in the Christian faith and church life … now they’ve hit adulthood it’s up to them. One doesn’t go to church at all; the other pops in some times because she still has friends there.
I think of it as a personal re-formation. It’s healthy to reinvent, question and re-form our faith. I’ve been reading widely and questioning much of what has become traditional faith/church culture and felt disconnected and disillusioned at times.
I don’t think it’s a crisis of faith in God so much as a crisis of faith in how faith is ‘done’ in our culture.
I’ve come through the other side with a different perspective and still have questions, but that’s okay. Smart people ask questions. Smart people grow and develop. They don’t just accept everything and never change.
I’d read things like What We Talk About When We Talk About God by Rob Bell. Or A New Kind of Christianity by Brian McClaren. They just about did my head in, but made me realise that there are different ways of looking at things and that being different was okay.
Being honest sometimes gets you into trouble, but I think it’s valid to question.
I hope you find your way through and discover a fresh outlook that may look very different from where you started out, but that’s okay.
Thank you so much for sharing your experiences Elaine. I especially love this: “I donât think itâs a crisis of faith in God so much as a crisis of faith in how faith is âdoneâ in our culture.” You’ve hit the nail on the head!
Janet, I hear you.
To be honest, it really does sound like you are drained (and that can EVEN happen in church if you aren’t in one which is good for you).
Can I summarise your queries? It sounds to me like you are working from some unspoken assumptions about God and the Church, ie. when you believe in God, everything is supposed to be rosy, the Church is supposed to be perfect and prayer should be answered the way we want it, when we want it, dammit!
Can I offer a different perspective?
Our lives in the western world are pretty darn amazing – we have so much to be thankful for, even when things don’t go according to our plans. Assuming that our plans ARE actually better than God’s… not sure that is necessarily true… just saying đ
Yeah, the church has done a lot of bad things over the years. It has been responsible for a lot of harm. But it is also responsible for a LOT of good. It is still a conduit for God’s love to be shared to the world. Would you seriously consider forgoing the use of electricity because sometimes it harms people? To my mind, this is the same thing. The church is full of imperfect people trying to figure out this faith thing just like you are. They are going to make mistakes – that is part of life. Don’t be too hard on them, but also, don’t take everything they say as gospel. There are some dodgy theologies (which harm people) out there.
Does prayer work? Yes. You have seen it. But it is still poorly understood, and let’s face it, we all want our prayers to get “yes”(preferably instantly) all the time. We aren’t so good with “no” and “not yet”. Me included. I also don’t fully understand how we can get those “but I was sure of this direction” things wrong, but we are human. We are fallible. We do. I guess we need to trust that God is even sovereign over our mistakes (see story of Joseph).
And in response to this query â “can I be bothered any more? Isnât believing enough?” James 2:14 -15 – “Dear brothers, whatâs the use of saying that you have faith and are Christians if you arenât proving it by helping others? Will that kind of faith save anyone?” Because really, our faith is as much for others as for ourselves.
Finally, to quote Dallas Willard “You’re a soul made by God, made for God, and made to need God, which means you were not made to be self-sufficient.” Can I suggest that you put aside all the questions for now and just spend some time allowing your soul to be rejuvenated by Him? PS. Here is my fave scripture/version:
Matthew 11:28-30 – âAre you tired? Worn out? Burned out on religion? Come to me. Get away with me and youâll recover your life. Iâll show you how to take a real rest. Walk with me and work with meâwatch how I do it. Learn the unforced rhythms of grace. I wonât lay anything heavy or ill-fitting on you. Keep company with me and youâll learn to live freely and lightly.â
Love you lots! Praying for you!
I think Elaine (who commented above) hit the nail on the head with this sentence: “I donât think itâs a crisis of faith in God so much as a crisis of faith in how faith is âdoneâ in our culture.” One thing has become clear; I still believe in God. I think it’s how to live out that faith that is my challenge, esp in the context of church life.
Important questions. I’m actually suspicious of anyone that hasn’t had some kind of crisis of faith, because I hate blind belief. The thing is there are not answers to many of your questions. And I think most Christians feels as if they simply have to come up with answers. You don’t. I was abused as a child. I went through a major crisis of faith when healing from this over the last eight years. Yes, eight years. That’s eight years of counselling and pouring my heart out to God. I got angry at him. I even hated him at one point. But I never stopped believing that He was real and that He was listening. I felt a long way from him at times. I have come out the other side a committed Christian, AND I left the church. We now go to a home church group where I find the people to be real and living their messy life in truth and honesty without trying to shove superficial answers down my throat. Everyone’s journey is their own. I applaud you asking these questions. In my humble opinion you might have to get okay with no knowing the answers to many of them, but it is so good to ask. To be honest. And God is big enough to handle your every emotion and question. He is not put off by honesty. All the best xx
Thanks Tab for your encouragement. I can really relate to what you wrote here: “But I never stopped believing that He was real and that He was listening. I felt a long way from him at times”. I’m also not sure I see the point of how we “do” church. It’s a whole new world for me, and like anything new, that can be a bit scary!
Thanks for sharing your heart Janet. I had a crisis of faith a few years back. I felt we’d had a very clear direction from God about something and it was confirmed by others–one of those real “heart’s desires” things. Long story which I don’t really want to share on a public blog, but it ended up not being answered after all, or at least not in the way that I thought it would be. It really shook my faith in God’s character and I lost my confidence in praying and hearing from God. It took two or three years before I felt I was coming through on the other side of that. I still don’t have all the answers, but now five years on I can see how God has still worked things out for our good. Was a hard lesson though. Will pray for you as you grapple with these things. Not easy, but God is faithful. Take care xx
Exactly! Pretty much what has happened to us over the past ten or fifteen years. We hung on to God and our faith through most of it, but now we’re in the other side, where wondering what went wrong? And how did we end of here? Maybe one day I will see what God was up to but I sure as heck don’t at the moment! Thanks for your prayers, and sharing your experiences, it means a lot to know I’m not alone. I just can’t go to church at the moment and “pretend” everything is cool when it’s so not.
Lots of questions here Janet. Lots of advice in the comments too.
I’ve been studying theology as you know and the more I read the more I realise that we have to go back to the Bible constantly. What does God say? That’s more important than church.
The thing is, you’re not going to get your answers from the world. They will try to answer them but it’s not the answers you need even if it’s the ones you want.
It’s always about God. Without Him there’s no truth, no peace, and in my opinion, no point.
Yup I feel much the same – as you would have seen when I wondered, what would the Christian life look like if we ignored what the church tells us, and just went back to the Bible?
All these questions and more circle through my mind too. Having grown up Pentecostal all my life I’ve seen some pretty heavy stuff….
I no longer go to church. Burned out, questioning, damaged I guess you can say.
I believe in God. I believe he’s so much more than what we’ve been led to believe and yet so much simpler than we were led to believe too. I believe the faith that is so deep rooted within me is enough and always has been.
Snap! We have been in the pentecostal church most of our lives. We haven’t been to church since Christmas – as we have been at the same church for over 20 years, that’s a pretty big change for us.
PS I love this sentence you wrote: I believe heâs so much more than what weâve been led to believe and yet so much simpler than we were led to believe too. x
I am not religious, and frankly hated the times I was sent to church at school or at home. It always felt fake or like it was all about money to me, and it probably didnât help the fake feeling that we often went to services that werenât conducted in English, so I literally had no clue what was going on or why we were there.
I just assumed everyone faked being religious to get into a âgoodâ school, because to me thatâs what my family did. (Obviously youâd have to ask each person what their beliefs are but that was and is my view.)
In early high school my homeroom was in the computer rooms (cool kid score!) and back in the day when computers took a long time to turn on and log in it was always a challenge to try and get some âfreeâ computer time in during home room. This was at a Catholic high school, so part of home room was a prayer over the school loudspeaker system for two minutes. One morning I was trying really hard to sneak in some computer time and so I was trying to sneakily log in during prayer. When itâs silent in the room, you can hear keyboard sounds, you know? đ
Naturally a teacher heard and she started screaming at me that Jesus gave his life for me and I couldnât give him two minutes of my life. I started to laugh, thinking âoh but no one actually believes that!â and then I looked at her and her face told me she was serious and that was the first time I realised some people actually have religious beliefs.
These daysâŚwell I say believe what you want to but I am uncomfortable with religion being forced too much on others. I have a lot of the same questions you have above!
I wonder if itâs hard to think about your faith without thinking about the community of whichever specific subset of Christianity that you belong to because with the act of going to church comes friends and itâs hard to separate these things out because theyâre both things that are very personal to people.
AndâŚuh⌠thus ends this mini essay đ
I had to leave a comment after you sent me the link to this Janet. I guess I’ve asked a lot of the same questions – midlife tends to do that to you! I also regularly wonder why I go to church every Sunday when it seems to be the “same-old, same-old” stuff.
In the end, for me, it comes down to God not being there to fix everything like a genie in a bottle, I see him as a comfort in times of trouble and he helps me keep a “big picture” perspective on life. If there is no God then why would we bother with all the stuff we go through? Why wouldn’t we just screw everyone over and be self serving? I hope you persevere through this and find he’s still the rock we cling to – and I pray the same thing for my kids every day đ
I really appreciate you stopping by and sharing your thoughts Leanne, I like what you have said here. You seem to have a really balanced approach to faith. A big part of us being turned off at the end was a pastor seemingly more intent on building his kingdom than God’s … seriously, God must weep sometimes when he sees what is happening in his church …