the terrible gift of faithfulness

April 7, 2011 in reflections with 12 Comments

If we sacrifice the virgin, then the rain will come.

I’ve mentioned previously that I spent some time studying anthropology. Primitive societies often operated on if/then thinking, as above. The virgin is what the god requires before he will send the rain, so if we sacrifice her, then we can feed the people. This act is noble: she offers herself up in order to assure the prosperity of the people. Never mind if she is willing. (Often, they weren’t, except in the odd case of Iphigenia.)

Last night I sat in a field and told God off. I don’t think it would be right to lie to you, so I’m not mincing my words here. I wrestled with the Creator. It wasn’t a pretty conversation in which I came tearfully to God and He comforted me, but a moment of exceptional rage and hurt, thrown out into the insufferable silence that God occupied between that betwixt of sky and earth.

I am mad because I didn’t get an invite to the doubt party.

I have plenty of reasons to doubt. My mother suffers from a horrific illness, I feel as if I were created differently, and I have experienced exceptional pain and loss throughout my life.

But try as I might, again and again, I cannot bring myself to doubt. When I was younger, this was called having the spiritual gift of faith.

It’s a terrible gift, almost as bad as the terrible gift of free will.

Because if I could doubt, if I could bring myself to assert what every portion of my substance revolts again, that perhaps God isn’t there, then I could enjoy the advantage of doubt. I could have people come up beside me and tell me it will be alright. People would love me despite my doubt and try to carry me back to the faith. They would care about me deeply.

But since I don’t doubt, since I have this terrible gift of faithfulness, I’m expected to be able to see myself through.

I resent people who say that because I don’t doubt, I must not have thought through my faith enough. If there were a way to digitally reproduce a vulgar hand gesture, I’d be tempted to use it. That’s like me looking at you and saying, “You just haven’t prayed enough.” It hurts. It hurts more deeply than you might realized.

And it’s miserable. Because to have this kind of faith means that I know better than to believe that sacrificing the virgin brings the rain. I know better than to believe that any individual action I do will be what determines God’s faithfulness. But at least it would break the silence. If/then thinking assures a result. If I do this thing for God, then surely He will …

I hate that I know better.

Right now I’m hurting. I’m hurting because I want to doubt. Doubting seems so much more easy than this suffocating certainty. This heartbreaking assuredness that He really is in control. For if that is true, since I believe that it’s true, I am left feeling over and over again that if/then thinking is nonsense and doesn’t amount to anything.

Yet, it’s so appealing.

Sometimes I just need someone to look at me and say: I hear you, it’s hard. Sometimes I need someone to pray my prayers for me, because I can’t. Not because I think He’s not there, but because I know He is. And sometimes I just can’t bring myself to talk. (I owe a lot of thanks, a lot of my heart, to the person who prayed my prayers for me last night.)

The ability to suffer with someone is the most amazing of all human gifts. Too few people understand it. I’m very blessed with who I have.

But sometimes, oh sometimes, it just seems like sacrificing the virgin would be so much easier.

Jamie Neville

In a funny way, I totally get where you’re coming from with this one. I feel the same way about things, obviously completely different things. Sometimes I wish I had it as easy as those with faith, to pray and be comforted that things will be alright.

http://www.seeprestonblog.com Preston

Thank you for sharing, Jamie. I have found a lot of peace through prayer, but it’s not a peace that I think is often portrayed. It’s the peace that has let me be completely honest with God, to be upset and mad, to wrestle with that feeling and still feel a sense of comfort because of it. There’s a peace in the sense that He listens even to the anger.

http://www.ordinarilyextraordinary.com/ Amy Nabors

Even though you have the gift of faith doesn’t mean you don’t struggle. It is hard. Like you commented on one of my posts about feeling the pain and hurt of my closest friends, “A strange gift. A strange blessing.” The same could be said of this gift of yours. Praying for you Preston.

http://www.seeprestonblog.com Preston

I appreciate your prayers; thank you Amy.

http://felicemifa.wordpress.com felicemifa

I’m with you 100% – for whatever reason I was blessed with the virtues of faith. There are plenty of other virtues that God did not see fit to bestow upon me, but faith is one that I have. It is both how I process the traumas of my life and how I’ve learned to live in the ambiguous not-yet space that doesn’t offer answers.

Part of having faith is knowing that it’s not the same as a math problem. It’s a poem instead, one that sometimes has a million different meanings and sometimes has no meaning at all. Nothing you can do can alter the equation – which also means that nothing you can do can alter God’s love for you.

You are stuck with knowing God loves you, and knowing that life is hard, and struggling with how those things can be put together. When I think of all the people who have spent their lives wrestling with those questions, I feel confident telling you that you’re in good company.

http://www.seeprestonblog.com Preston

Thanks, my friend!

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http://isaacbvilla.blogspot.com/ Isaac

I read this, and am not sure what you mean by not having doubt—do you mean in a Creator’s existence exclusively, or are we also talking about His actions/reactions/seeming lack of attention or the opposite to the world and disharmony that we see around us?

I understand the notion of not having doubt in a Creator God, who is present and Omni-3 and amazing and saving and loving…but when it comes to “Why did this happen, or why did that have to be allowed?” there are always moments to doubt and question and struggle. It is in our nature to wrestle with that. Read “A Grief Observed” to see it up close and raw with one of our greatest thinkers.

http://www.seeprestonblog.com Preston

Isaac, thank you for your comments. For me, I’m afraid that I still don’t happen to be one of the people who feel compelled to ask “Why?” kinds of questions. My trust in Providence is so secure, in the deep magic that holds the world together in Him, that it isn’t in my immediate nature to ask questions like that. And I resent an implication that this is foolishness, because I have known significant suffering (I point again to previous posts in which I talk about the suffering of my mother: http://seeprestonblog.com/2010/08/things-we’ve-learned-in-the-fire/) So, I’m sorry, but I have actually suffered quite a lot and still do not have these questions of “Why?” And that’s not naiveness on my part, that’s a terrible gift of faithfulness that I can’t shake. I will myself to ask the “Why?” to struggle with it openly, but I can’t. I struggle with feeling like I can’t even ask. Not that I’m not allowed, but that every feeling within me revolts. It’s why I’m so sensitive to it. It’s why I resent people who assume that because I don’t doubt, I must not have wrestled with my faith enough, or read the right book, or have experienced the right tragedy. I have. I have many times over. And that is the pain that I have to wrestle with, the pain that God saw fit to keep me from asking that question. So I ask others.

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http://fromdullearstoadiscerningheart.blogspot.com/ Elise Bateman

A couple of days ago I came upon your blog through the reposted guest post on Ally Spotts’ blog. I have enjoyed reading through some of your highlighted blogs. I know this post was from awhile ago, but I thought I would comment anyway. I appreciate your honesty. What I find ironic, is that in a way you are asking “why”, but in the unique way of asking why you are entrusted with the gift of endurance I think it’s a purposeful asking rather than the “common” “why” of doubt. It’s a painfully blessed place to be to ask for the purpose of our pain, I can imagine that it’s frustrating when people assume a lack of depth because of a lack of doubt. Personally, I believe that by being entrusted with enduring faith you are equipped to encourage those who do doubt. Our sufferings are so much bigger than ourselves. I encourage you to continue to ask “why” you have this gifting. In the last four years I’ve really began to learn that suffering is so purposeful and is something entrusted to us, like Job, there is a purpose in it–to display God’s goodness and glory. Within my own pain (degenerative genetic hearing loss discovered when I was 20) I too have been given the “Christian band-aid” responses of books, what if/you’re blessed scenarios, etc. which have their place but are often a result of where the other person is, not necessarily a reflection of where you are/should be. I think you are in a wonderful position to have reciprocal encouragement with those who doubt because we need both types, as “iron sharpens iron”. Anyway, thanks for your honesty.
Elise