Brian McLaren has written a book for everyone who has doubts about doctrine, teachings, or the whole God thing.
Doubt is easy these days. As a friend told McLaren: "I feel like I've lost faith. Faith in God, Faith in humanity, faith in government, faith in markets.... It's all gone." Even Mother Teresa confesses that there were times in her life—literally years—when "God felt neither present nor real to her." [26]
Doubt can produce terror and crisis, but it is also a doorway and an opportunity to growth, McLaren writes. "It's hard to know, hard to choose, hard to live in the tension between a desperate desire for certainty and an equal and separate desire for honesty and charity." [36] Leaving the fortress of simplicity is exquisitely agonizing, a "10" on that pain scale that doctors ask you about but ministers seldom have to courage to.
““I felt utterly alone. Almost nobody talked about doubt; it was like confessing to a crime.””
He provides a pathway, although not a speedway, from dualism of simplicity in which things are either good or bad, black or white, no gray. The second stage, Complexity is harder because it demands that one figure out God's meaning for themselves rather relying on religious doctrine, teachers and coaches more than authority. Ultimately, though, complexity fails to yield solutions and is replaced with perplexity: life is mysterious, "reality is not only stranger than we imagine, but stranger than we can imagine." Understanding the holy is a deep tunnel, an ongoing task, an unfinished journey. Ultimately, some find harmony, calm and integration.
Like all stage theories, this one overgeneralizes. Not everyone starts with simplicity; not everyone finds harmony. My wish for us is that there be joy in the journey, wonder every day, beauty in the midst of chaos, harmony in the vortex of strife.
Brian McLaren presents the theme and argument of Faith after Doubt.
CTK Photo: Santorini, Greece, 2007