Befriending Doubt

Taking time to wrestle with questions of faith

“The opposite of faith is not doubt, but certainty. Certainty is missing the point entirely. Faith includes noticing the mess, the emptiness and discomfort, and letting it be there until some light returns.”     -Paul Tillich

Questions are a normal aspect of daily life.  I will admit having two, entirely too curious, seven year olds has driven this truth home, but questions, regardless of our age swirl around us and perhaps nowhere more accutely than in our faith life.

We have been separated from each other even as we have gone through one the most stressful and uncertain times of our lives.  This Lent, I am inviting our community to a time to sit together in our questions, doubts and wonderings about God and faith.  

Historically, Lent is a time for Christian communities to pause, pray, fast and repent.  A time of deep self-reflection and individual and communal growth.  This year, I hope this faith family, will share the questions we carry, or been asked by kids, or even just wondered about.  I hope we are able to share in open, honest discuss with other faithful followers of Jesus Christ.  To be clear, I will NOT be answering all the questions. I am 100% sure there will be some that have no answers, or at least no good ones.  I invite us to suspend our desire for certainty and dwell in the fog with doubt and uncertainty together.

Beginning Ash Wednesday, a bulletin board will be in the fellowship hall for you to share your questions and each Wednesday we will use those questions to guide our study and conversation.  Just to help you out, here are some examples:

• What happens during baptism?

• Why does the Pastor stand in that strange spot in the front?

• Is heaven real?

• Why does God let such bad things happen in the world?

-        Pr. Hannah