Why I am not a cynic

I sometimes wonder if people think I'm a cynic. At times I struggle to engage with Church like others do. I find singing sometimes awkward and frustrating. I find the certainty and glossiness of Church annoying and false. I find the lack of honesty and doubt troubling. I see the deep need to challenge people. But I'm not a cynic.

There is a risk of labeling anyone who questions or comments on 'Church' with this title. The fear, I think, is that people like this (people like me) are in danger of filling the Church with negativity, with breeding an unhelpful culture. After all- questioning leads to doubt. Guess we better not question then.

The thing is, I can identify more with the outsider than the insider. Even though I have done it all my life; I think that Church is a pretty strange thing, and at times I don't get it. Sometimes I don't really sing very enthusiastically, sometimes I look distracted in the talks, sometimes I leave without complimenting the preacher on his message. Sometimes I don't really enjoy myself.

I overheard a conversation the other day between two of my friends. A comment from a non-Church going guy was that he found that Church lacked doubt- that it was a place of people coming together and declaring and worshiping with utter conviction. But for someone exploring with uncertainty and doubt, it might seem difficult to ever 'become' like them, to join in fully. And, at times I find this too. I find it difficult to join in. I find it difficult to declare with as much certainty as others seem to have. I find myself asking questions, thinking, and not always agreeing with everything I hear.

But this doesn't mean that I don't want to see people discovering Christ. It doesn't mean that I don't long to see the Church renewed. It doesn't mean that I don't think faith in Jesus is infinitely valuable. Just because I don't like your method, doesn't mean I'm not after the same thing that you are. It might mean that people like this, people that question, slow the process down, it might mean that Church is not always as encouraging. It even might mean that you don't enjoy it quite as much. But if we don't give space to the thinkers, to the doubters, to the questioners then we are in danger of producing a Church which is more about making people that all think the same rather than people that follow Christ. The question is, which of these two things is truly more important?

If the Church is a body composed of different parts we need people like this in our Church. We cannot run the risk of breeding a Church of like minded people. There has to be room to question, to doubt, to challenge. There has to be scope to allow people like this to shape the future of the Church without being squashed and ignored or cast aside as 'cynics'. And equally it is unhelpful to just become a Church of 'cynics'; to ignore the mainstream, to cut ourselves off from the enthusiastic. We need to learn the value of these words:

The eye cannot say to the hand, “I don’t need you!” And the head cannot say to the feet, “I don’t need you!” ...God has put the body together, giving greater honor to the parts that lacked it, so that there should be no division in the body, but that its parts should have equal concern for each other. If one part suffers, every part suffers with it; if one part is honored, every part rejoices with it.

No Doubt?

Sometimes I wonder if I’m the only Christian that ever doubts. Either, most Christians go along in life believing everything they say and never doubt, or they just don’t talk about it; they have their doubts but instead of voicing them, they just go on pretending. I felt very guilty for doubting my faith for a long time; I knew what I was supposed to believe, what words I was supposed to be singing, what the Bible teaches, but often I just didn’t believe it deep down. Don’t get me wrong, I do believe in God and his plans for this earth, but this doesn’t mean I never doubt. Maybe I’m the only person that feels like this, or maybe there are people all around me struggling in doubt and feeling like they just can’t talk about it. I reckon doubt is something which is pretty important for our faith, but at the same time something which people are being very damaged by, because there doesn’t seem to be much room for it in ‘Christianity’. I just wish we talked about it more.

I’ve got a mate who lost his finger in an incident featuring a year eight music class and a very heavy door. When I first met him, I never really noticed he was a digit down but after getting to know the guy he became one of my close friends and eventually I noticed. We had a lot of late night chats about Jesus in our first year at university and one night we both agreed that we wanted to see more miracles happen. We found it really hard to believe the crazy stories about eyes growing back and blind people getting their sight back. So we decided if we could just see a few more miracles it would build our faith and we would doubt a lot less. So we started to pray for his finger. I remember a few times putting my hand over his slightly deformed stump and praying “in the name of Jesus, grow back finger!” For a while I would plead with God- “if you could just grow that finger back, I won’t ever be able to doubt you’re real”. But what do you know, it never happened; to this day I have a mate with a missing finger. After a few weeks, we stopped praying. I often wonder whether his finger growing back would really have made that much difference to my doubt.

I can see a lot of myself in the disciple Thomas. Thomas was one of Jesus’ best mates- a guy who watched him perform countless miracles; he had seen blind men healed, lame men walk, seen men come back from the dead. He might have even seen a mangled finger stump grow back. Thomas got to see more miracles in a few years than I could ever imagine seeing- I like to think that I would never doubt Jesus again if I was in Thomas’ position, but I’m not so sure.

After Jesus had been crucified, three days later he appeared risen from the dead to a woman called Mary, then later he visited some of the disciples. Thomas found out by word of mouth that Jesus had come back from the dead. I suspect that like me, Thomas really wanted to believe that this was true but he just couldn’t believe it- Thomas says in John 20:15 “unless I see the nail marks in his hands and put my finger where the nails were...I will not believe it”.

The philosopher in me really sympathises with Thomas; what he wants is reasonable evidence. He can’t force himself to believe something is true, without actually seeing it. I reckon I would have acted pretty similarly in the situation. Thomas’ request is a reasonable one, despite all the miracles he’s seen, he can’t make himself believe this remarkable thing, he can’t just ignore his doubts. It makes me wonder if seeing my mate’s finger grow back would really have kept doubt away for very long.

What I find interesting about this story is not so much Thomas’ doubt, but more Jesus’ response. I think often people see being a Christian as having blind faith- believing without really having much evidence. At least that’s the way the ‘new breed of atheism’ paints faith. But Jesus doesn’t refuse to meet Thomas until he believes, he doesn’t wait until Thomas’ doubt is fulfilled; he meets him where he’s at. He fulfils his desire for evidence. Jesus comes to see Thomas, scars and all and tells him to “stop doubting and believe”. Jesus really wants Thomas to believe but crucially he shows him the evidence first then he tells him to believe after.

I think that doubt is a really important part of believing. Jesus doesn’t want Thomas to have blind faith and I don’t think he wants us to have blind faith. If we don’t question what we believe, how do we ever know that we have the truth? If we aren’t open minded enough to doubt things then we end up believing things because we’ve been told them, rather than because there are any good reasons for believing them. That’s not the sort of faith I want to have, and I don’t think it’s the sort of faith that God asks of us.

It is only because I have doubted that God exists that I can really say that he exists, it is only because I doubted Jesus rose from the dead that I can honestly stand up and say that I believe he did. Doubt is shaping what I believe, for me doubt is what makes my faith active and it is what makes it real and if I couldn’t question what I believed I would just be pretending. I really believe that Jesus doesn’t want us to ignore our doubts- he wants us to engage with them, he wants to meet us where we’re at. Doubt is a healthy part of a living faith. But how can we ever do this if we never talk about doubt?

Even though Jesus satisfies Thomas’ doubt he also tells him to stop doubting and start believing. Ultimately, we can never have certainty in anything- not that the world we live in exists, that our friends actually have minds like ours, not that God exists. No amount of questioning or doubting will get us to certainty. If we end up just wrestling with doubt forever, and never accepting anything we can end up in a really difficult place. It’s pretty lonely, it feels miles away from God and it’s not very healthy. The best piece of advice I ever got about this was from an awesome German guy on a Church men’s weekend away. I was struggling to really experience God like I used to, my mind was just on overdrive being sceptical about other people meeting with God and at the same time longing for God to convince me to believe in him. So, during the worship time I just sat there pretty annoyed with God when this guy came up to me and told me quite abruptly: “don’t let your mind **** you”. You might have issues with that, and it might not have been the best way of wording it, but honestly it was exactly what I needed to hear, and I honestly think that God used his words to speak to me. He was right, I was at a place where my mind was destroying me, and doubt was destructive. Even though I know doubt can be healthy, it can equally be incredibly destroying. We really need to find this balance.

The real question is- why don’t we talk about doubt more? Why do we pretend we all believe with certainty all the time, when we don’t? Jesus doesn’t want us to hide our doubt away, to let it destroy us, he wants to meet us, he wants to satisfy our doubt and then he wants us to believe. I really think that he can do this if we let him. But then again maybe it’s just me; maybe I’m the only Christian that ever doubts anything.