I Believe, Lord Help My Unbelief
I long to be a pastor but I am not one at the moment.
I know all the right answers to my discontentment. I know that in this waiting season God is at work. I know to fight to be faithful where I am. I know to work to be thankful and to cherish the good that I have now. I know God is refining me.
I am not oblivious to them, but I also feel sad at times.
Dual emotions
Can all of this be true and I still feel sadness about my life? It’s not a pervasive sadness. I have so many good gifts and I often am overcome by thankfulness. But I believe there is a type of pain that only those who long for some “way of living” but are still on the path to that destination experience.
It is not any worse than other types of grief and pain, simply unique. You could long to be a mother, but be childless. You could desire a more fulfilling job, yet have one you hate or have no job. You could long for marriage, yet be single.
There is something about unmet desire that makes life feel mundane. Emptier. Within the heart of the one who longs is a whisper: “If you got what you wanted you would finally be happy and could enjoy life.”
Even writing that I feel a war within me though. Do I agree with that whisper? Is it theologically accurate?
Yes and no
In a sense, it is true that if we got what we longed for we would be happier and we would enjoy life more. God has a lot to say about the enjoyment of good gifts - He even delights to give them! (Matthew 7:11) I think many “pious” Christians would respond right now “Oh but you can’t put all your hope in what you long for. A child, a relationship, a fulfilling job won’t deeply satisfy you.”
That is true, we do want to be careful not to elevate the gift above the giver. But I think the more subtle lie is that life only begins when we get what we want. But life is ticking away now, day by day.
There is a sense that whatever good we long for will make us happier if we got it. But for those of us who carry a longing yet to be met, as we go without, a level of sadness is carried within.
One Track heart
What do we do with that reality? I often feel like I must squash my sadness or fear or frustration in exchange for faith and hope and trust.
Must we always rush to more “redeemed” feelings so quickly? What if the longing heart, once surrendered to God, can carry both faith and sadness? Can low emotions co-exist with spiritual ones? Or is that also an unfair question? Why would low emotions (anger, sadness, frustration, discontentment, ambivalence) always be at odds with spiritual ones?
Why is our assumption that the heart is one dimensional? That it either carries faith or it carries doubt? Hope or despair? Peace or anxiety? Gladness or grieving. To quote Ron Weasley and Hermione Granger:
then Ron said, "One person can't feel all that at once, they'd explode."
"Just because you've got the emotional range of a teaspoon doesn't mean we all have," said Hermione nastily, picking up her her quill again.”
Mixtures
Our hearts are not transactional, as if we hold onto hope it takes the place of all doubt. Within all of us is a mixture. We are complex creatures with swirling motives, desires, feelings, aspirations, thoughts. There is no such thing as one track hearts.
Does the Bible have anything to say of this complexity?
Immediately the father of the child cried out and said, “I believe; help my unbelief!” (Mark 9:24)
This man admits to Jesus both his belief and unbelief together. In the scriptures we have a blueprint for bringing our true selves to God in all of our duality of belief and unbelief. We modern Christians don’t like this though. It’s scary. Vulnerable. Sometimes it even seems unbiblical. We should have sanctified emotions and redeemed perspectives, we say. We forget that it is a process.
There is a great danger in this rush to get rid of all “negative” emotions. You will become crushed by the weight of always having to have “redeemed” responses in the face of difficulty. You will never live an authentic life before others and God. You will become exhausted.
Though it is scary, perhaps it is in the intersection of our dual emotions where a sacred place with God is formed. A place of honesty and intimacy with God. A place where God meets with the real us. If we all long to be truly known, maybe this sacred meeting place is actually one of life’s greatest blessings? Lamenting is the pathway to that meeting place.
The Lost Art of lamenting
To lament is to bring to God your full range of disappointment, grief, anger, and fear.
Ryane Williamson says in an excellent article on lamenting (https://www.thevillagechurch.net/resources/articles/the-lost-art-of-lament):
For those of you for which this feels totally new and possibly uncomfortable—I understand. In his book A Praying Life, Paul Miller addresses this in a way that I found profoundly helpful. He says:
We think laments are disrespectful. God says the opposite. Lamenting shows you are engaged with God in a vibrant, living faith. We live in a deeply broken world. If the pieces of our world aren’t breaking your heart and you aren’t in God’s face about them, then ...you’ve thrown in the towel.
In our attempts to meet the unspoken expectation of perfection within our Christian subculture, we so often simply refuse to lament. We refuse to acknowledge the dark and difficult realities of our lives and our world in a way that honestly demonstrates our dependency on the Lord. The reality, though, is that we have a deep need for this type of expression and a large catalog of examples throughout Scripture for how we can do it.
…
Here’s one more quote from Miller:
There is no such thing as a lament-free life...To love is to lament, to let your heart be broken by something. If you don’t lament over the broken things in your world, then your heart shuts down. Your living, vital relationship with God dies a slow death because you open the door to unseen doubt and become quietly cynical. Cynicism moves you away from God; laments push you into his presence. So, oddly enough, not lamenting leads to unbelief. Reality wins, and hope dies. Put another way, the reality of a broken world triumphs over the new reality of a redeemed world. You miss resurrection and get stuck in death.
I love that line. “To love is to lament, to let your heart be broken by something…Cynicism moves you away from God, laments push you into his presence”
My longing
So I return to where I began.
I long to be a pastor but I am not one at the moment. I am saddened by where I am, yet I am working to trust God’s perfect ways. I doubt, but I have faith. I have peace, but sometimes I carry anxiousness. There are days where sadness overtakes, like waves that come and go. I used to try to rush to “redeemed” responses.
“I cannot be sad about this, I must have more faith! I must trust more!”
Now?
I let myself feel the sadness. I speak with God about it. I lament, which is both an expression of how I currently feel and a concerted effort to cling to God. I believe I have found more of God’s presence within the mixture. Lamenting has taught me to find God where I am, not where I want to be. That God is just as much with me in the journey as the promised land.
We must not be afraid to speak honestly with God about where we are, lest we fail to love God with our minds, souls, and hearts.
Filled with doubt, yet holding onto faith,
Josh.