This is my story of the light within and the illusionary shadows keeping the true land out of view. Maybe parts of my story intersect with yours.
"The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it." -John 1:5
The Revelation of an Unseen Darkness
A quiet, unnamed and unseen presence lurked in the recesses of my conscious thoughts and gave stark definition to my life’s journey.
All is not as it has seemed. Not even close. The stories I have told myself, the ones that have shaped and defined me are full of shadows. My small light cast long shadows into the darkness. One blinding light revealed a land I had never before seen – a land where nothing looked familiar.
My home, but different.
One blinding flash of light, then utter darkness. For one small moment, I peered into the window of my soul and saw the familiar land soaked in grace.
For one small moment.
Then the land returned to a state even darker than before. Like being in the blaring sun before going into a dimly lit room, the dimly lit space seemed to contain no light at all.
Memory quickly deceives me, and the grace-soaked land is gone. My eyes slowly adjust and soon the image is as it was before. Long shadows. Dim light. Grace filled truths hidden in the shadows and I cannot recall their shape. The feeling of light becomes a distant memory, one I can only view from a great distance and with little distinct remembrance.
The darkness feels so much darker with knowledge of a land I can no longer see.
The Prayer That Did Not Work
My cognitive faith journey began in uncertainty. I remember laying in bed as a young child, terrified of dying in my sleep, uncertain what would happen to me if I passed in the night. The anxiety of the unknowing gripped me so fiercely that I set out to find assurance. I sought assurance from loved ones who told me all would be well. Such assurance did not still my young heart.
Along the way, I found myself in a church pew where a pastor was preaching to a room full of children about how to avoid the realities of eternal flames reserved for all but those who held and followed the correct formula. He then spelled out the formula for us all and gave us the space to dutifully recite our structured salvation prayer.
I tried the prayer, but I was not sure it took. I felt no flowing rush of peace, no sense of certainty about my eternal dwelling place, no refuge from my deepest fear.
Figuring I must have performed my part incorrectly, I set out on a mission to pray this prayer in such a way as to usher in those feelings of peace and certainty. Believing my eternity unsettled until I found such assurance, I went from church experience to church experience, altar call to altar call, and spent many nights, afraid in my bed, repeating my salvation prayer over and over again.
I do not remember ever finding the peace I desired, and eventually I stopped trying.
At the time and for most of my life, I have felt a deep assurance that God is real, and that He holds all the answers. My early doubts were mostly on my end. I feared and deeply believed myself incapable of meeting the requirements for grace, requirements everyone else must have met as so many people told story after story of finding the peace and assurance of their eternal resting place which I so longed to hold in my own hands but never found.
Certainty is Not the Foundation of Faith
The problem has always been me. It has never been God, so in many ways it makes sense that my life’s quest has been to make myself good enough, and that quest was centered (or so I believed) in my certainty of God’s existence and His goodness.
I am beginning to understand that certainty is not a strong rock. It is a mere illusion. Yes, perhaps truth undergirds many of our beliefs, but they are truths which cannot be fully known. We regularly talk of what we know to be true, but do we really mean to say that “all we have experienced has led us to the conclusion that…?”
Nothing is certain for us. We have been given no absolute guarantees. Our experiences are based on interpreting stimuli. And while we may feel a sense of certainty, it is just that – a feeling.
And yes, our feelings of certainty may be based on a genuine truth. If God either exists or does not, and many people feel certain that He exists, then those who felt assurance of His reality will perhaps in the end discover Him to be real, but this does not mean their feeling of confident assurance was not in fact a feeling but was proof of concrete reality. It was a feeling which turned out to be undergirded by a concrete truth, but the feeling (beyond the reality that feelings really do exist in and people actually feel them) should not be mistaken for the truth or even for proof that the belief is true.
The Path to an Authentic Life with Anxiety
Therefore, to live an authentic life – a life where we do not hide ugly uncertainties in the shadows by erecting towers of illusions, we must accept that all of life is uncertainty.
(Even this statement “all of life is uncertainty” may itself turn out to be untrue.)
Uncertainty, rather than false hope, turns out to be the key to freedom. Hope itself is only hope when it stands in uncertainty.
Hope and certainty are not the same.
Faith and certainty are not the same.
Certainty and strength are not the same.
I do not believe we as a Christian people have done a very good job helping one another live in reality. Our empty platitudes are building blocks we have given one another to create our city of illusion filled with towers of illusion where we have convinced ourselves we feel safe.
We begin to feel that anything threatening our city is the enemy and we become paranoid and dangerous.
We think we are surrounded by a mighty city, but the city is blocking the light. Rather than a mighty warrior clothed in protective garments, we are starved, thirsty, rocking ourselves in the fetal position, unable to see the sun.
We have become so good at building towers, that we have no idea how to live in the land of freedom, where no towers or walls are necessary.
My own towers still block the light, even though I know they are not real. I am not sure I am capable of tearing them down.
Without the certainty of God, all that remains is the uncertainty of me. Most of my life I stood certain of God and uncertain of me. Now I have neither. Now I can live, but where are those who will show me the way?
Beginning in uncertainty is raw, honest work. Our impulse in uncertainty is to cling to what we know, clawing for certainty and reassurance for our troubled hearts. This impulse is natural, but it is not the way out. It is the way to a small, increasingly restricted life. This way feels safe, but its promises are empty.
Living in uncertainty is the path to freedom and life that is fully life. It is not easy, and on the faith journey, guides can be hard to come by, but ultimately it is worth the risk, worth the effort, and worth the struggle. I hope you will join me on the journey.
Until next time, may God hold us close both in darkness and in light,
Jen
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