Posts Tagged: "doubt"

Advent Day 17: A Word About Doubt… The Struggle is a Sign of Life

Not long ago, a friend corresponded with meā€”asking some questions about faith and admitting that they, for a while, had been struggling with doubt. To the best of my ability, I tried answering the questions posed. Then I responded to the part about doubt… this is what I said:

Just a word concerning doubt and uncertainty… the struggle isn’t bad, the struggle is a sign of life. Faith without struggle, without resistance, without doubt isn’t really faith at all.

God can handle your doubts and your struggles.

Certainty isn’t the goal. God doesn’t fit neatly into our theological boxes (He never asked us to put him in there anyway). Those boxes leave no room for wonder or mystery or “I don’t know.” I’m happy to hear that you are alive, struggling, fighting… it’s… Read More

Hitting The Wall

Doubt, uncertainty, the “dark night of the soul,” finding yourself in unknown territory where the faith you’ve always known doesn’t seem to be working, hitting the wall…

Nobody wants to be there. And when we find ourselves there, we wish we could just cancel it, wipe it off the books entirely.

But hitting the wall is a necessary part of our growth and development.

In Brian Zahnd’s new book Water to Wine, he describes developmental psychologist James Fowler’s insights on the matter (I will paraphrase):

There are stages of spiritual development in… Read More