At some point most of us encounter life circumstances that force us to reevaluate our lives. Sometimes our struggles involve ending certain relationships, or starting new ones. Sometimes our struggles reveal who our true friends are -- and aren't -- so changes need to be made. During these times, as Lisa Ingrassia writes, "grief changes your address
book."
Other times, the struggles in our lives force us to reevaluate ourselves. If we are religious, this might involve reevaluating our assumptions and beliefs. In my own life, and in the lives of many people I've worked with as a pastor and recovery counselor, struggles with addiction and the process of recovery force many of us to come to terms with childish and dysfunctional beliefs and practices.
This reevaluation
can also happen when people experience trauma or tragedy. Christine Valters Paintner has written a great book about life as a spiritual journey called
The Soul of a Pilgrim. In one chapter, she talks about how tragedy and suffering
frequently raise spiritual questions and doubts ...
and that this can be a catalyst of important growth and change in one's spiritual life. But this process is often painful and scary.
I've come to believe that spiritual growth often involves letting go of ideas about the spiritual life and concepts of God that no longer seem true or valid. It's not just adding more knowledge and strengthening beliefs we hold, it is also a matter of questioning and letting
go. For Paintner, this happened when her mother died suddenly and painfully. In the year following this loss, she found that her grief became more intense rather than less, and carried with it deep spiritual doubts. She writes:
"I was thrust on a pilgrimage I did not want
but I couldn't avoid. The theological framework
that sustained me unraveled before my eyes."
For whatever reason, many of the people I know and work with have found -- or are currently finding -- this to be true in their own lives too: their "theological framework" is unraveling.
- Maybe it's because of their experiences of tragedy and loss, like Paintner's.
- Maybe it arises from the experience of depression or addiction,
and finding the "answers" provided by their religion to be fallacious and inadequate to deal with the real life issues.
- Maybe it arises from disheartening and disillusioning experiences in one's church community.
- Maybe it arises from encounters with science or philosophy that challenge our assumptions.
Paintner writes:
"Often in our church communities there is a sense that if we don't 'believe' we are somehow deficient. In peoples' rush
to alleviate their own discomfort, they encourage others who are struggling to 'trust' or find 'faith.' I put all these words in quotes because they are notoriously hard to define. They often carry a lot of baggage with them."
The great turning point in my life
has been the realization that --
contrary to what I had been taught
these questions and
struggles are actually
signs of progress rather than regression.
They are moving me forward in my spiritual journey,
not pulling me away.
One of the ancient desert fathers, and founders of Christian monasticism was John Cassian. He describes three renunciations that he says are required
on the spiritual journey. The first is our former way of life as we move closer to spiritual maturity. The second is the inner practice of self control and letting go of mindless thoughts. The third renunciation is to let go of our images of God and to recognize that any image or pronouncement we can make about God is much too small to contain the divine. Even the word "God" can be problematic because it carries with it so many interpretations and assumptions based on our cultural
understandings.
Paintner goes on, in another section of her book, to diagnose why dealing with difficult spiritual questions and doubts has become such an important -- and difficult -- issue in our time:
"We live in an age when fundamentalism has emerged as an overwhelming force in religious consciousness. In times that are chaotic and uncertain our human minds grasp for a sense of control. One of the ways we try to
make sense of things is to engage in black and white thinking. When we try to establish clear rules of who God loves, it's a way of coping with this felt loss of shared cultural sense of meaning. ...
"Humility is required. We are so attached to our ideas of who God is and how God works in the world. Ultimately, what the desert journey [of the spiritual life] demands is that we let go of even this false idol
and open ourselves to the God who is far more expansive than we can imagine.
"Letting go of our images of God can be terrifying. Suffering in our lives exposes our previous understanding as no longer adequate to meaning to what is happening to us."
The Christian mystic Simone Weil writes: "There are two atheisms, of which one is a purification of the notion of God." I love that
phrase. What some people call "doubt" and "spiritual struggle," Weil would call "a purification of the notion of God."
Summary ... and a Qualifier
Difficult circumstances in our lives often challenge us to reevaluate our religious beliefs and spiritual practices. They force us to confront what isn't working and what doesn't make sense, given
the realities we are experiencing. In many religious circles, this kind of struggle is discouraged and avoided.
I believe -- along with many other spiritual teachers -- that this fear of doubt, questions, and spiritual struggles is misplaced and unhelpful. I believe that facing and working through these questions and doubts can take you to a better place, a more authentic and spiritually mature place.
But here's the qualifier:
This only works if you stay with it, and actually do the work of reflecting, questioning, and spiritual seeking, in the context of some kind of supportive community.
Where can we find a supportive community in which to do this work?
This is the work I see many people doing in recovery rooms around the country. Working
through the 12 steps creates a spiritual awakening for people ... even those who came into the room as deeply religious, but out of control addicts. Healthy recovery groups create space for the ongoing working through spiritual issues. It's a process that often takes time, and it's messy and confusing as it happens. It looks and feels like spiritual drift, maybe even falling away. But if a person stays with it, they wake up one day months or years down the road and realize that
they are joyful, serene, committed to, and in deep relationship with God. (And they probably understand and experience this "God of their understanding" quite differently than when they started.)
In contrast, too many churches and other spiritual communities -- including some Christian recovery groups -- discourage this process of spiritual unraveling and deconstruction. They view it as a loss of faith, and a threat to the person having the questions, as
well as a threat to the community when the questions are being raised. And so people are left with a binary way of thinking:
"This view of God and life that I've been taught doesn't seem to be true or working. So if that's what Christianity is ... then Christianity must not be true, and/or God must not exist, and this is all fiction and phony."
The lack of space for questions, doubt, and spiritual
deconstruction forces people into either / or thinking ... and they will either drop out of the community altogether, or push their questions and doubts away and soldier on. Thus they go on with a "don't go there" fear, and it's attendant arrested spiritual development.
But, as Weil says, there is an alternative. There is a second kind of "atheism," ... not the one where we assert God doesn't exist, but that God -- as we have been understanding God --
doesn't. This is where we let go of some of our [mistaken] notions about God.
Jungian psychologist Ann Bedford Ulanov writes, "The Holy refuses to stay put in a box. These meetings with God well beyond our images of God comprise great religious moments that smash us, or open us further to the transcendent or both. Mystics write of these moments."
Sometimes, in order for your cup to be filled with good, clean water, you have to first
dump out some of the old stuff.
