I read Mason Slater’s post this morning in which he explained that for the last 12 week days of 2011, he’s going to repost older posts from earlier in the year. I think it’s a wonderful idea as many of you are relatively new to my blog. It gives me a chance to step back and look over the past year with you, and provides me time to think about the next year without the pressure of trying to write new posts at the same time.
This post originally went up on January 4, and as I reread it, I am struck by how true it still is of me today. It’s a rather unsettling discovery. I have updated it slightly, but the content is essentially the same.
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I have a split personality.
I know, I know. All the experts say that if you have a split personality, neither persona knows the other exists.
In my case, I can see it because I’m talking about my spiritual person. My faith. Or lack thereof.
Some days, God is near and I can easily turn to him in praise, in prayer, in the Bible, and in the challenges of that day. He is easy to trust, to believe, to hope in. I want to please him.
Other days, God feels far away. The stories of Jesus sound like exactly that — stories. I struggle to believe and trust. I cannot praise. I read the Bible with eyebrows raised and questions on my lips, if I read it at all. It’s like looking at my faith from across the room.
And on really bad days, usually triggered by hearing or reading manipulative and twisted interpretations or applications of Christian faith, panic crashed over me like surf. I fight the urge to escape, to run as far and fast as I can from this thing. I think of quitting the church, leaving the faith, separating myself as far as possible from the grotesque disfigurations of Christianity that alternately terrify and disgust me.
I often wonder if there’s something wrong with me.
But I’ve been reading different Psalms during the last month, and I’ve noticed something. They include both confident hopeful expectant faith and desperate pleas for God to come near.
Psalm 57 starts out “Have mercy on me, my God” and then at the end, it reads “I will praise you, Lord, among the nations; I will sing of you among the peoples. For great is your love, reaching to the heavens; your faithfulness reaches to the skies.”
Psalm 42 (one of my favorites right now) swings from “When can I go and meet with God? My tears have been my food day and night, while people say to me all day long, ‘Where is your God?’” to “Put your hope in God, for I will yet praise him, my Savior and my God.”
David and the other Psalmists don’t talk about leaving God or His people. But they do swing from faith that flows easy to faith they must eke out one word, one breath at a time.
Maybe I’m not as crazy as I thought.
How about you? Do you experience spiritual split personality? How do you handle it?
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Me, too, Joy! Some days God is so real to me that I wonder why I would ever have doubts. Other days God is a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma.
Travis Mamone recently posted..Let Faith Fill In The Gaps
I strongly believe this is the experience of all genuinely authentic believers, so much so that I wrote a book about it called “Losers Club” where I interact with the stories of Scriptures Doubters, Failures and “Nobodies”. People may be surprised at the depth of doubt and despair our greatest “heroes of the faith” experienced. Packaged for teenagers and young adults, the content is eye-level with adults as well. It’s available in print, e-book and audio at Amazon.
One step. One act of faith at a time,
Jeff Kinley
Jeff, thank you so much for sharing this. It is comforting to hear that genuine believers have this experience.
Joy recently posted..Do You Need a New Why? | #lifeunmasked
Yes. Oh yes. I often go back to the Psalms also. Reminding myself that there is a difference in a lament and a lack of faith. I think God expects us to wrestle with our faith and the aspects that we don’t understand. You are not alone my friend.
Amy Nabors recently posted..Finding God in Unexpected Places
I think it’s hard for Christians to be honest about doubt and I think that we’re the ones who make it hard on them. If we could give each other more grace in their journey they could search for their own relationship with God in a more authentic way.
I have had doubt about God’s provision lately..we’re in the middle of moving and it’s a tough time for us. I think we need to go on experience …once we have experience of God working in our lives, it helps build our faith in Him.
Sisterlisa recently posted..So I Was Hacked
All the way through scripture we can find the wrestlers, the ones with questions, the ones who walk the faithful highway one day and fall off in a ditch the next. You are most definitely NOT alone, Joy. I will say that practicing some of the quieter spiritual disciplines (like contemplative prayer, silence, solitude, the Jesus prayer, ‘praying backwards’) has helped to anchor me like nothing else ever has. These small, sometimes repetitive acts help to keep the swings in a narrower arc somehow. And the laments? They are my bread and butter, go to resource and a very great comfort. I thank God regularly for the presence of the psalter in our book – those words give voice to the full range of human emotions and experiences. They give us permission to be all of who we are in the presence of God, warts – and doubts and questions! – included. Merry Christmas to you, Joy – I am grateful to have gotten to know you a little this past year. Keep up the good work out here, friend.
Diana Trautwein recently posted..Five Minute Friday: Connected
you are not alone.
I experience the split personality very differently: God only exists within me (and any others who choose to see God as someone who they can have a relationship with), so I have basically taught myself to have a split personality by believing in him/her. I am forming an emotional relationship with a part of myself, one that I have come to recognize as a safe relationship, one that will do no harm to me, and so I feel more comfortable in expressing dopamine in that relationship, as opposed to the aversion I’ve developed in forming emotional attachments towards others.
Recognizing that my relationship with God is only a trick I do inside my head, to bring my brain-chemistry better in-line with our genetic directives, allows cultural perspective that is transcendental.