Making Peace with Doubt and Change: a Response to Out of Sorts by Sarah Bessey

Last updated on: June 29, 2016 at 6:13 am by Scot McKnight

Making Peace with Doubt and Change: a Response to Out of Sorts by Sarah Bessey 2016-06-29T06:13:01-05:00 Scot McKnight

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Lauren Ward-Reed holds a bachelor’s degree in Biblical Text from Abilene Christian University. Currently, she is pursuing her Master’s of Divinity at Brite Divinity School. She loves reading, hiking, coffee, and traveling. You can follow her blog at www.feministfaith.com

Have you ever felt uncertain? Of course you have, for we all have at one time or another. Some of us may handle our doubts well, embracing them full on. Other of us, myself included, are instantly terrified by life’s uncertainties. Personally, I would rather pull the covers up over my head and hide than confront my doubts head-on. I’m not worried, life is great, everything is fine, just fine.

And the Church said amen.

Most of us, when handed lemons, do not make lemonade. Likely, this is because we see doubt and change as bitter rather than sweet. Of course, shifting ground beneath your feet can be a jolting experience absolutely. What we fail to see is how the change can bring about good—how the lemons can transform into lemonade. In her most recent book, Out of Sorts, Sarah Bessey brings us this message exactly: life will change you, but the transformation doesn’t have to be a negative one. She makes room for all of life’s doubts and uncertainties, and she invites her readers to make room, too.

One of the aspects of my faith that has changed over time is how I experience God. For a good number of years in high school and even early college, I would grab my Bible, journal, and pen and curl up on my couch to have a designated “quiet time”. In those days I was convinced the presence of God was tangible, so palpable that I could reach out it and touch it, wrapping my fingers around it and holding it close. The whisperings of the Spirit were crystal clear, and in Sunday morning worship I would be the first one raising my hands. You might even catch me dancing, if you looked at just the right moment. For awhile that worked for me, encountering God in those ways. Over time, however, I became less and less sure, or maybe I was simply confused about what was really happening. Slowly but surely my faith evolved, and the day came where I could no longer raise my hands in worship or claim to hear an actual voice from God.

To be honest, I have a difficult time taking hard and sure stances these days. So, when it comes to other people’s stories, I cannot point my finger at another person in accusation of false claims or with intentions to invalidate their experiences. Is everything that every person believes absolutely true, all of the time? Probably not. However, as much as I believe in maintaining a healthy sense of skepticism, I also think there is beauty in acknowledging that some happenings are real to us, whether or not they appear real to other people.

Concerning my own religious experiences, I think many of them may have been actual, though I am of the mind now that many of them may have been more emotionally driven than anything. Regardless, at the time they were real to me, so perhaps that makes them still true. I believed that I was encountering a loving God, and it was good. Over time, my certainty in my experiences began to shift. I tried to have quiet times but could not bring myself to sit for more than twenty minutes. That still, small voice I could always hear so assuredly seemed to have gone silent, and God was not as tangible as before. My relationship with God wasn’t working like it used to. What was wrong? Was I broken? Was God broken?

Over time, what I discovered in my own life is exactly what Sarah Bessey discovered in hers: my faith had evolved. In Out of Sorts, she writes, “anyone who gets to the end of their life with the exact same beliefs and opinions as they had at the beginning is doing it wrong”, and I have found this to be absolutely true. The more I pay attention to the world around me—the more I learn about God and love and this thing called life—the more I change as a person. My faith is a part of my personhood, and so of course it changes right alongside the rest of my being. I cannot pretend that I am not changing, that my faith is not changing, every second of every day. At the end of the day, I think we are all just doing the best we can, and by the end of my life I have to hope that I did something right.

I talked about my faith shift with a variety of people—friends, family, professors—and eventually I learned new ways to experience God. Thomas Merton taught me the importance of silence in prayer—that when words fail, all that’s left is to sit and wait for God to find you. Henri Nouwen reminded me that I am beloved, that this simple title is primarily where my identity lie. No matter what else was changing about me, I was and would always be “beloved”. I read books upon books and asked questions upon questions, and at the end of it all I came away with a strong sense of relation to Jacob from the Bible: I had wrestled hard and fair, emerging from my battle limping but alive.

Living my way through such a big shift was scary and wobbly and every sort of difficult, but I believe it made me a better person. The experience taught me much: the power of questioning, the beauty in being honest, and the liberation that comes with seeking the complexities of God. I learned that there is room for doubt in the kingdom of God, and that we need to make space for people wherever they are at in their faith. We are all experiencing the same God in different ways. Isn’t that beautiful?

Out of Sorts is a book I wish I had been in possession of when my faith began to first evolve. Bessey manages to affirm her changing faith journey without discrediting her roots, a lesson that Christians everywhere can take much from. It’s okay to move forward while still appreciating where you came from. Our roots grow us, molding us into the people we grow up to be. Sometimes we find that we ironically come full circle. Either we return to that denomination or that practice or those people. Some places always call you home.

What Bessey most accomplishes in her novel is the normalizing of the human condition. I don’t know a single person, anywhere who hasn’t doubted some part of their life. Yet, for all of the doubting that goes on, it seems as if hardly anyone actually owns up to it—especially in church contexts.

We are too afraid of what others might think, what it means if we let our doubts grow, and what it means to exist in spaces of unbelief. We are afraid of judgement, of condemnation, and of being seen as “lost” or no longer “saved”. We are afraid of much, and so we keep our doubts to ourselves. We hold them close, clenching our fists tight around them. Shoving them under our beds. Sweeping them under the rug.

Is this the way of Christ? I think not. We are not commanded to live by fear; rather, we are commanded to live confidently in love, for “perfect love casts out fear”. This command is not conditional or circumstantial. We are meant to live confidently in love regardless of the situation. Through our doubts or certainties, come hell or high water, we are supposed to be like Christ, casting out fear by walking in love.

Doubts are normal. Change is normal. All of this makes up what it means to be human, and this is what Bessey is communicating to her readers. We are human, therefore we are loved. As humans, we will experience a variety of emotions, thoughts, and feelings. At times, life will seem certain. We will think that we have everything figured out, and all will seem right with the world. Other times, quite the opposite will be true. We will think the entire world is crumbling down around us, and we will feel completely out of sorts. Still—no matter what, we are loved. We need not be afraid, for the Lord our God is with us.

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