My spirituality and faith have shifted significantly in recent years. Because of seminary. Because of the spiritual abuse I experienced before seminary. Because of the startling world events of the last few years. Because of how my bubble has expanded to incorporate more types of people and experiences and points of view. I still have faith. But faith after spiritual crisis looks different.

When I look back at old posts on this blog, a lot of what I’ve written still resonates––and it’s all a part of my story and evolution as a person––but there is a lot that I would say differently now (and there are some posts I’ve removed). At times, I was so certain of the things I believed. I have lost a lot of that certainty. In some ways, I mourn that loss. Sometimes my confidence in God’s goodness, or in my own discernment, falters in a way that causes me to grieve. But in many ways, I celebrate that loss of certainty. It has given way to more nuance, more humility, and more freedom.

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“Can you discover the depths of God?
Can you discover the limits of the Almighty?”
Job 11:1

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Losing My Faith?

During seminary orientation, I was told that my seminary classes might cause me to question some of my beliefs and that this might be a disorienting experience. I wasn’t exactly scared by this warning––I felt secure in my personal relationship with God––but it did put me on my guard. What lies and distortions might I be confronted by? I should gird my loins to be ready to refute those falsehoods with the sword of truth (which I clearly already had a solid handle on!).

Indeed, my first quarter of seminary was slightly disturbing. I had never had fellow Christians confront me with contradictions in the Bible that actually seemed valid. I had never been presented with compelling historical, cultural, and literary reasons to read the Bible differently than I had been raised to. It was exciting to have professors articulate nuances and tensions in Scripture that resonated with me, but I also found myself asking disorienting questions like: Why do I feel compelled to read certain parts of the Bible as literal? (Why did the idea of the book of Job being a long parable, for example, perturb me?) What does the Bible actually say about hell, and what difference does it make what we believe about the afterlife? What if the term “biblical” is not only simplistic, but actually dangerous? How can I reconcile Jesus’ command to spread his teachings with all the damage colonialist missionaries have done in the world?

I still haven’t come to definite conclusions about many of my questions, even a year out from seminary graduation. And to many Christians, my in-between, in-process faith might seem like the equivalent of not having faith.

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“Now faith is being sure of what we hope for
and certain of what we do not see.”
Hebrews 11:1

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The Allure of Certainty

In the evangelical world in which I was raised, there is a lot of pressure to be a “strong” Christian. You can’t just warm pews, you have to live out your faith and––even more important––you have to be strong in your convictions. In other words, you have to be confident that a long list of “correct” beliefs are true. What you believe saves you. What you believe determines how happy God is with you. What you believe determines your eternal destiny (paradise or torment, nothing in between). You have to be “sure,” as Hebrews 11:1 says. You have to be “certain,” even about things we can’t see or verify. Despite what logic, experience, or other people might tell you, you need to “have faith” in these beliefs in order to please God.

Recently, I had a conversation with God about this. I suddenly felt overwhelmed by feelings of shame and fear as I asked God,

“Do you love me less than before, when I was certain?”

As the emotions crashed over me (my amygdala cutting off all logical thought), I felt God gripping my hand.

I know everything you’ve been through, God said, and your questions are valid. You may think your faith is small, but to Me, it’s impressive.

And then God added,

And isn’t faith the same thing as trust? Don’t you know that trust has to be earned?

In that moment, something clicked. A weight lifted. God was shifting the responsibility from me to God.

I realized that somewhere along the way, I had internalized this idea that I needed to believe certain things in spite of what my experience, intuition, and logic told me. I needed to believe them in order to be acceptable to God (and to other Christians). I had been taught in Christian communities that doubt about particular doctrines or Christian practices was unacceptable.

Doubt was not healthy wrestling. At best, doubt was deep, shameful struggle. At worst, it was rebellion. Intellectual assent to certain ideas was paramount.

But that was not what God was asking of me. God wasn’t asking me to have faith in a bunch of beliefs that didn’t sit right with me. God wasn’t asking me to have faith in beliefs at all! God was inviting me to trust Him. Based on our history, based on what God had done and how God had loved me all these years was I simply willing to continue holding God’s hand?

My answer was yes.

What is it that you don’t think you believe anymore? God asked.

Well . . . I realized that I still believe in God and Jesus and the power of the cross––I still find the sacrificial love of Jesus the most compelling idea I’ve encountered and even more than before, I find the ingenious, bold way Jesus challenged the power structures and religious assumptions of his time inspiring and reassuring. I may not read the Bible that often these days, but I still rely on God daily as my greatest source of reassurance, sanity, inspiration, and love.

I still believed in God. I was still “walking” with God in relationship. So why did I feel so guilty and afraid?

Loyalty, Belonging, and Betrayal

Sometimes I am unrecognizable to myself spiritually. Or perhaps what I really fear is that I’m unrecognizable to others. I still believe in God. But not in all the things I have been taught at church I need to believe. The guilt I sometimes feel about that shift away from evangelical doctrine can be surprisingly intense.

Despite the fact that I still attend church nearly every week and even serve on the praise team at my current church (a small miracle to me), I sometimes feel like a traitor. Because inside, I don’t feel the loyalty I once did to the church. I don’t defend the church the way I used to. In fact, I often openly criticize the church. I question ideas that I was raised to see as basic tenets of the Christian faith (like the existence of hell) and other ideas that were implicitly communicated as requirements of belonging (like having certain sexual ethics). To question, to criticize, to even just step away, feels like disloyalty. It feels like a disorienting loss of identity.

But it also feels like growth.

The more I have stepped out of my old religious bounds, the more I have realized how much of my worldview used to be grounded in an “us versus them” mentality. Christians versus the world. The truth versus falsehood. God’s elect versus those in darkness. It’s a simplistic, polarizing mentality that I deeply dislike. And yet, as I step away from it, fear arises about where I’ll belong.

The more I have dared to step out of my old religious bounds, the more I’ve become aware of the enormous pressure I have carried from my youth to represent God in everything I do. If I do something wrong, if I offend someone, if I espouse bad theology, I might hurt God’s reputation, I might keep someone from understanding the truth, I might become a stumbling block to someone knowing God or being saved from eternal damnation. (Interesting that Jesus freely proclaimed that he was the rock on which many would trip and stumble. He didn’t seem to carry around much anxiety about this, so why should I?)

The more I step out of my old religious bounds, the more I realize how bound I was. Not free to question or wrestle. Not free to voice doubt or confusion. Not free to experiment, explore, make mistakes, and learn from it all. It has been more difficult than I ever imagined to not just leave the abusive church I was a part of for seven years, but to step away from evangelicalism in general. To distance myself from a worldview I held for so long. And yet, I feel compelled. To continue to question and criticize Christian norms, to openly champion nuance and mystery in the life of faith, to prioritize my own well-being over serving the church. Because my loyalty is not to the church or to a set of beliefs or even to the Bible, but to God. And they are not the same thing.

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“It is for freedom that Christ has set us free.
Stand firm then, and do not let yourselves
be burdened again by a yoke of slavery.”
Galatians 5:1

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Freedom

Four-and-a-half years ago when I left my spiritually abusive church, the most pressing topic on my mind freedom. What is freedom? I kept asking God. I felt like I really didn’t know. I had thought I was living in freedom at my old church when I had actually been enslaved. Perhaps, for my whole Christian life, I’d been living in the matrix.

I didn’t develop a clear definition of freedom right away. I still can’t necessarily articulate a great one. Instead, I’ve been learning to live in freedom.

Step by step, stepping beyond where I was told I could go. Step by step, stepping differently than I was told was acceptable. Step by faltering step, I have been learning to explore with God more freely than before. Recently I looked around and realized: This is it. This is freedom. I’m living it right now. Sometimes I have to fight not to be taken in by the guilt of stepping out of the bounds I was taught were acceptable, but the fight is worth it.

Because the truth is, I don’t want to have the same kind of faith I had before. I don’t want to be black-and-white in my thinking. I don’t want to prioritize God out of fear––of hell, of abandonment, of exclusion, of punishment. I don’t want to go back to the kind of self-dismissal that literally led me into abuse.

I want to lean fully into the freedom God offers us.

The freedom to wrestle and question. The freedom to feel the full range of emotions (even anger!) and be honest with God about them. The freedom to disagree, to question tradition, to not be certain, to make mistakes, to experiment. Without true freedom, how can you have real connection? Without space for disagreement in the church, how can we have real community?

I understand the allure of certainty. It makes us feel more secure. It’s simpler. But certainty––especially presumptuous certainty––doesn’t make space for the kind of truth that is nuanced and infinitely complex. It doesn’t make space for the kind of God who is beyond what we can actually fathom. It doesn’t make space for wonder, learning, and grace.

My faith looks different now. Faith after spiritual crisis turns out to be less certain, but more free. More porous and flexible. There is a place for confidence in the life of faith, but there is just as much place for uncertainty. And for that, I am deeply grateful.