Questions for God

I spent the evening with my middle school youth group talking about doubts.  We discussed the pros to doubting, to wrestling with God.  I told them a faith that has honest questions for God is the best kind of faith; God can handle those questions, invites them even.  Breaking up into groups, the students brainstormed some doubts and questions they have for God.  We wrote them down on yellow poster boards and put them on the wall of the youth room under a sign that says “Questions for God.”  Their questions ran the gamut from “did Adam and Eve have belly buttons” to “why did you make me so ugly” to “why do you allow some people to hurt so much and others to live without the hurt.”

I have been a long time doubter and wrestler with God.  I find myself constantly staring down a reality of life that seems to contradict the truths I’ve been taught about God.  On the day I finally get to sit down across the table from him I will have a million questions for God.  Why do you constantly allow your reputation to be tarnished by people who do evil things in your name?  Why weren’t you more clear in your word about all these topics that tear your believers apart?  How can you create someone with an attraction to members of their own sex and then leave them in a world that is so, so cruel to them?  Where are you?  Why didn’t you?  If you created us and loved us and wooed us during all the days of our lives why do we still hide in our gardens from you like Adam and Eve did?  How have I been so fortunate and blessed and sheltered from pain when others have received ten times the curses?

My heart can literally ache with the doubting.  It stops me short and leaves me dejected, despaired, faithless.  The doubting paralyzes me from the doing God has asked of me.

It would be so much easier without the doubts.

And yet as I told my students that night, and as I truly believe deep in my bones, doubting is good.  We must examine life and face our doubts.  Questioning God works a muscle in our faith.  This muscle must not lay dormant but rather needs to be worked, exercised, prepared.  Because this muscle will be our lifeline.  When that darkest of tragedies comes crashing into our world it is this muscle that will push us through it with our faith intact.  This muscle will allow us to face our grief and despair and still claim that God is good.  The doubt muscle is the only thing that will keep us running to the arms of a loving God.  But if we never worked it during the days of light we will find ourselves woefully unprepared for the deep dark.

And, as I told my students, doubts are best exercised among community.  We put our questions for God on the wall for all to see because it’s important to wrestle with God in the community of others.  When we are too tired and unable to believe in the goodness of God our community can tap it and take over.  When we are in the thick darkness of doubt our community can shine the light on truth.  When all we see is the bad and ugly and hard of life our community can remind us of the lovely and beautiful and true of God.

Without others our doubts threaten to overtake us like the avalanche tumbling faster and faster, scooping and burying all in its path.

But sharing your doubts is vulnerable. I fear the weakness my doubts convey.  I believe the lie that my doubts will taint my faith and leave me untrustworthy.  I fear the avalanche will scoop everyone around me up as well, burying them under its weight.  I believe the lie that my doubts are too great for another to bear.

So I must practice the discipline of doubting in community.  I must give name to the worry I hold that God isn’t bigger than this doubt.  I must work that muscle even though it would be so much easier to let it atrophy and hope I never need to use it.  I must invite others to witness wrestling match that leaves me exhausted, spent and pained.  I must now because I know it will be the lifeline later.

Like all true things of God, doubting is hard but so, so good.