Recently while searching for something online I stumbled upon an article by a George Fox graduate posted in the New York Times of all places. The article addresses the often taboo topic of doubt. People in the church avoid this one for fear that others will think they are loosing their faith or worse yet had truly had faith Having experienced a fresh dose of doubt these days I found what this guy said refreshing.
What My Faith in God Looks Like
By DUSTIN JUNKERT
George Fox University
I grew up quietly and without thought. My mom was a secretary at the Baptist church, and I led the worship team senior year of high school. My youth pastor was one of my best friends. I believed in God and my parents, my friends, and the four walls of my house. All things were within reach, simple and inspiring. And I told my girlfriend I wanted to be a writer.
She told me I was very smart and of course I’d be a writer. I wrote a rhyming 12-line poem over the course of three days, a maze of abstraction. I read it over and over until I had it memorized. In high school English, I dazed off reciting my poem in my head, the poem that would soon be recited by everyone in 12th-grade English across the country, once I settled on a publisher. Soon after, I began work on my first novel, a period piece about a 17th-century Huguenot family fleeing the Inquisition.
Eager to continue my spiritual journey, I went to a private Christian college in Oregon complete with a lifestyle contract. Freshman year, I met Frank, a lifelong philosopher. He was a couple rooms down from me. He asked me all sorts of wild questions I had never thought about before, like, “Well, why do you believe that?” Everything I said that year, Frank would ask me that question. Then I started asking myself that question about every thought I had. It was a sort of game, which most of the time sounded like this:
Why shouldn’t I have sex before I marry?
Because the Bible says it’s a sin.
Why?
Because it keeps you from Him.
Why doesn’t all sex keep you from Him?
Because premarital sex does not require any commitment.
Why do you need commitment?
Because sex is special.
Why do you think that?
Because it says so in the Bible.
Why do you believe the Bible?
Because it’s God’s word.
How do you know that?
Because it says it in there.
Well, I am speaking the words of God right now, do you believe me?
No.
Why not?
Because. . . .
The game generally started with a question, cycled through my beliefs, and ended with “because. . . .” Soon it was ending in just “. . . .”
I took a class called “The Problem of Religious Diversity” that quickly had me believing that just about any belief system could be true and that no one could prove anything. It never occurred to me until then that people who believed something other than Christianity had the same reason for believing their faith as I did for believing mine.
How about that?
I ran into an old Sunday school teacher sophomore year and told him I’d been thinking that maybe it’s not true that everyone who’s not a Baptist will go to Hell. He looked me straight in the eye with saintly gravity and said: “The Bible is very clear: if you believe that, you aren’t a Christian. In fact, if we were in the 17th century right now, you’d be burned at the stake.” I, of course, knew this from all the research I’d done for my novel. But the way he said it put me in a state of fear at first, then repentance, then confusion, and lastly anger. I rebelled from the religion that contained all the smallness of my childhood. I cursed my Baptist teacher, God and the novel, and fled to Russia for a study-abroad semester sponsored by a coalition of Christian colleges.
The first person I talked to there was Dan, a student at Grace College in Michigan. He immediately asked the last question I wanted to hear: “So what’s your faith look like?” I went cold. I wanted to bleat my usual Jesus-story and be done with it, but the ice on my ribs wouldn’t let me lie. I reluctantly collapsed and told him that honestly, I didn’t know anything anymore and nothing was real. Turns out, Dan was in the same place I was.
Together we raved and doubted and yelled and trembled all semester long. We felt the black blood of Dostoevsky and descended the dark stairs of Derrida and Sartre. Some nights, we would just sit across from each other and stare, estranged by the cold of a new, uncertain world. After one of these nights of existential fog, as I got up to go, I turned to Dan and said, “The only meaningful thing left to do in this world, it seems, is to sit quietly with a friend until dark and then say goodnight.”
Then, on a snow-gray Russian day, riding a packed bus, a song came on my iPod that froze me in time. In a sense, I’m still there on that bus listening to that song with watering eyes. It was a song called “Clouds” by As Cities Burn that said: “Is your god really God? / Is my god really God? / I think our god isn’t God / If he fits inside our heads.”
With the terrifying pull of rubber bands, I expanded beyond the length of the bus, grew from the street to the sky. Then I snapped and everything came undone. I resigned entirely. God won’t fit inside our heads, and if He does, we’re missing something. And I knew all I’d been waiting for was to know that to admit doubt was not to lose faith. A few simple lines of an Indie rock song pushed me to see hope amid uncertainty.
It snowed continually my last two weeks in Russia. I met Dan one morning at a small cafe, Biblioteca, where we drank bottomless black tea and watched the snow pile up on the street. He said he had prayed the night before. I said I was ready to step back into a church.
Our last Sunday in Moscow, we attended Mass, an Orthodox church, then a mosque. Dan said we were a Protestant service away from a monotheistic grand slam. At Mass, I wrote in my journal, “God, see that I’m trying.”
It was the first time I had prayed in more than a year.
-Dustin Junkert, George Fox University, class of 2009, writing/literature major (you can find the original article HERE)
For some reason the image of a lion has captured my attention this year. It’s a powerful image. The Bible often uses imagery to illustrate various things and with Christ He is often illustrated by two animals. First He is called numerous times the “Lamb of God”…illustrating His sacrificial death which echos of lambs who were slaughtered to cover the sins of the people. This highlights the immense humility and kindness of Christ. The second animal tells of another dimension of Jesus character…of His strength, His leadership and ultimate triumph over evil…the image of a Lion.
opportunities that come our way even the ones that seem like bad circumstances. Here are some of my favorite quotes so far:
