As the Conclave gathers to choose the next pope, Cardinal Thomas Lawrence, Dean of the College of Cardinals, addresses the group with these words: “May God grant us a Pope who doubts, sins, confesses, and gets on with the work.” (Conclave, the movie, 2024)
Somewhere in the Christian tradition, the focus on perfection shifted from perfect love to perfect behavior. This focus on perfect behavior spun a dissidence and incoherence powerful enough to develop into mental compartmentalization.
This compartmentalization allows for the coexistence of perfect and imperfect behaviors within the same person, to the point of deniability. This has created a culture of incohesive behavior as a norm. Too often, Christians live one way through the week and then act as if everything is perfect as they gather on Sunday for worship. Unable to seek forgiveness because admitting to imperfection in their behavior would call into question the theological position that drives them to compartmentalize their behaviors.
Another by-product of the theological shift from perfect love to the perfection of behavior is the removal of the possibility of doubt. If holiness is possessing perfection, then there is no space for doubt. Perfection implies knowing everything, which removes all space for questions, doubt, and growth.
Enter education into the mix. Christianity places a high value on the education of clergy and laity. Young people are encouraged to seek higher education degrees, expand their minds, and become leaders for the church and society. The unexpected outcome of higher education is that students are intentionally taught to think for themselves, not just receive prescribed information and regurgitate it back to professors for grades, and go into the world as robots. The ability to think is one of the most valuable outcomes of education, and the church is not prepared for how this will impact their graduating students entering the ministry and society.
The ability to think for oneself requires a level of comfort with the unknown, unsettling questions, and, yes, even doubt. Students learn to be curious, ask questions, research, and come to surprising conclusions. When they leave school and return home and to their local churches, they are unaware of how their willingness to question and even doubt disturbs those around them—those who have become comfortable in their certainty.
I’ve never considered myself a person of either comfort or certainty. However, in the past several years, things outside of my control have unsettled me at levels I’ve never imagined. At first, it was just uncomfortable. I figured things would settle down—as the kids grew, as I adjusted to my new life, as my job responsibilities changed—but things didn’t settle down. This has been a year of complete unsettling. The loss of my job, which I admit held far too much of my identity, broke me. Becoming an empty nester caused me to wonder about my own value in this world, because, of course, too much of my identity was wrapped up in parenting my kids. My health made me keenly aware of my mortality. All of these seemed to separate me from the church. Without an intimate faith community, my uncertainty dipped to new levels of doubt.
At first, I worried. How would it look for a church leader to doubt? How would I ever stand in a pulpit and preach the Good News of Christ if I did not possess absolute certainty? Could I lead if I were standing in a spiritual and intellectual mud pit? Suddenly, the reality that I had lost certainty was overwhelmed by the fact that I had lost myself. I had so deeply connected my worth and identity to certainty that without it, I didn’t know who I was or how I fit in the world.
For weeks, I wrestled, trying to reclaim certainty. I read and prayed and did every spiritual discipline in hopes of repositioning myself in the center of certainty. I felt my life spiraling—who was I? Who was God? Was there a God? Did I even exist? I was shattered to the core. Shut down from uncertainty and unbelief, I lay with my soul spread out before the God I hoped still existed and prayed, “Lord, help my unbelief.”
I was reminded I didn’t have to have it all figured out. I just needed enough faith—faith as small as a mustard seed. I had just about a mustard seed of faith and certainty of God’s existence. When I gathered it up and held it up to God, I experienced God wrapping all of God’s being around me and my tiny faith, holding me even as my doubt continued. In the process, I stopped wiggling under the weight of doubt and uncertainty. In that moment, my unbelief was made holy – a doubting that led me toward God’s holiness.
God did NOT remove my doubt. Nor did God condemn me for doubting. Strangely, I felt as if God congratulated me for being willing to let go of certainty and free-fall to a new level of faith. Over the last few months, God has shown how I tied my worth and identity to all the things that, when lost, unsettled my certainty. God did not need me to be confident in the provisions of my job or the behaviors and choices of my kids. God did not need me to be certain of every teaching, theological idea, or even scripture that I had ever studied. God calls us only to be certain in God.
What have you tied your comfort and certainty to in this season? If that thing, person, or position were removed from your life, would your faith collapse? Are you able to hold lightly to the things in your life, remembering that God is enough?
Friends, I fear far too many of us are living in a state of doubt and are convinced we are unsalvageable. In fact, it is in our willingness to doubt that God speaks that we can hear and learn. These days, as the world around us seems uncertain at every turn, it would be hard not to doubt.
I compel you to sit in doubt. Don’t hide it away in the closet. Don’t let it create shame that cuts you off from a community of faith. If your current church is too fragile to handle your doubt, find or create a new one. You have permission—go gather with a group of people who are willing to wiggle and squirm under the weight of uncertainty and doubt. Trust God to turn your doubt into a holy journey toward God. Trust God; take your little mustard seed of faith to reveal truth in new ways, to rebuild your faith at a deeper level, and to settle you on the thin wire of faith in God as the only certainty you require.
At the end of the movie Conclave (2024), the election of the new pope is muddled with a different kind of confusion. After explaining his situation to the Cardinal, the new Pope calmly proclaims, “I think again of your sermon. I know what it is to exist between the world’s certainties.”
For far too long, the church has taught us that perfection and comfort are the goals. The reality is that the only way we will know our worth and find certainty again is to first allow God to completely unsettle us. Then and only then, God can and will honor our doubt with confidence in God alone.
If you need help on this journey of doubt, reach out. I’ve walked ahead, and I see hope.
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