Faith and Reason: Their Roles in Religious and Secular Life

SEVEN. CRISES OF FAITH

SEVEN CRISES OF FAITH The problem of suffering has haunted me for a very long time. It was what made me think about religion when I was young, and it was what led me to question my faith when I was older. Ultimately, it was the reason I lost my faith. —Bart D. Ehrman1 As seen in Chapter 2, doubt is one of the six facets of a healthy and enduring faith. It keeps faith responsive, alert, and alive, saving it from stultification and atrophy. The doubt facet of existential faith is what spurs a faith to grow and mature throughout one’s life, and it is what helps to impart an aspect of continuing and developing reasonableness to it. Doubt is a necessary part of a person’s responsiveness to changing circumstances in the world and in his or her own life. Faith should not stand still any more than the world stands still or any more than people can avoid changing over time, changing not just physically as they grow older but mentally as well, as they continue critically to assess the consistency and adequacy of their beliefs, attitudes, emotional responses, decisions, and consequent behaviors—and of the faith that underlies them. However, doubt does not always have positive results as far as faith is concerned. Doubts can become so basic, persistent, and gnawing as finally to undermine a particular form of faith and lead to a loss of that faith. A person is then left, at least temporarily, without a sustaining faith. What was once a ground and center of one’s being, a source of ongoing confidence and hope, the focus of ultimate trust and devotion, is now only a gaping emptiness of meaning. The collapse of faith may be experienced as something like tumbling into an animal trap fashioned of brushes laid over a deep pit, and there may be little assurance of being able to find the wisdom or strength to claw one’s way up to firm new ground. Or, to use a 107 108 FAITH AND REASON different metaphor, the transition from one form of faith to another one, as yet unknown or only dimly perceived, that may lie in the future can be compared to venturing to cross in a wildly swaying boatswain’s chair from one pitching ship to another in a dark and tossing sea, with no assurance that a successful crossing will be made. This can be a deeply disturbing and terrifying experience. It can even destroy a person’s will to live. In this chapter I first consider some of the factors that may lead to the weakening and final loss of a faith. Then I discuss how individuals may work their way through to an alternative faith that they now perceive to be more honest, consistent, and realistic than the faith that came before. For some, active doubt and persistent inquiry may lead through an anxious dark night of the soul to the warmth and radiance of a bright new day—a newfound sustaining faith. For others, out of that darkness a less brilliant but yet kindly light may dawn, a more somber but also more realistic and still satisfying faith. For still others, a collapse of faith may leave in its wake an aching sense of nostalgia and disappointment that is replaced only by resigned acquiescence in something far less splendid and moving than the faith that possessed them earlier. In this case, there is a new faith that informs these persons’ lives, giving their lives structure and meaning. It has rescued them from the darkness resulting from the snuffing out of an older faith, but it is a faith haunted by feelings of profound loss and regret, a faith with greatly attenuated promise and hope. Few, if any, are able to live for long without faith of some kind. Animal faith and various kinds of elemental trust and orientation will remain in a crisis of faith to sustain the transition to a more adequate form of faith. But weathering a crisis of faith may mean for some the landfall of a new form of faith that is in some significant ways less deeply inspiring, satisfying, and expansive than the older form of faith they left behind, whereas for others the process may have an exactly opposite effect. I discuss examples of different modes of experiencing and working through crises of faith as the chapter unfolds. FACTORS THAT CAN LEAD TO A COLLAPSE OF FAITH...