An open letter to my former students
experiencing a meltdown of their faith
I’ve been in email communication
with too many former students telling me about their faith meltdown. Most of them have gotten personal emails from
me including bits and pieces of the following advice and insights. I thought it was time to put them all together
in an open letter. If you are not
experiencing a meltdown of faith then this will mean nothing to you—click away
from here. But if you feel you’re losing
lots of the beliefs yu used to have, then stay and see what God uses here for
you.
An open
letter to former students on faith meltdown
1. How much of
this crisis is a result of realization of your limitations? I see this with many graduates. Their mother, father, pastor at home, and
their entire home church thought they were geniuses. So did many of their
professors. They got notes on papers saying, “God has gifted you
immensely!” and they believed it. They
spoke in college chapel and “held the congregation in their hand.” They got an A in homiletics. They assumed that they could handle a
thousand people in preaching. Then they
graduated and discovered the world yawned at their arrival. They felt like “a Freshman again.” They realized they weren’t able to totally
transform the church like they imagined they would. They preached and people nodded but nobody
cheered—they just went home for Sunday dinner.
They got no notes from their superiors saying they were wonderful—rather
their notes were more about correction than praise. They kept trying to believe they were
outstanding…they were still “a curve-breaker” but all the evidence around them
said they were just ordinary and inexperienced. Somewhere in the first few years beyond
graduation most of my students discover they weren’t as amazing as they
thought. Sometimes they conclude they
got a church or senior pastor “who just doesn’t recognize my talent” but often
they wake up to realize in the real world (and not the college world) they
aren’t as hot as they thought. Has this
happened to you? Maybe God gave you
visions in college. Maybe God was very
clear about amazing things God was going to do through you. He gave you places to travel, people to meet
with, numbers to reach for. You were so
sure of these plans. No, they weren’t plans, they were promises. And now you are three
years out of college—the promise is getting weaker. And now you feel…a little
foolish…manipulated…used. Everybody
faces this eventually. Have you faced it
recently and it is a factor in your crisis?
Now you have self-doubt? Or doubt
your call. Could it be that the doubt
you have is more about yourself than God?
2. Also, ask yourself how much of this crisis is
really the dying of youthful idealism? Have you discovered the church is not as nice as you hoped
for? Have you realized that the sweet “emerging church” ways of doing
church don’t really exist in the real world—anywhere, not even in the actual
emerging churches where the authors of the books serve? Have you
discovered people at church aren’t always nice and sometimes even they are
downright mean? Have you been fired at a church? Gotten ripped off emotionally? Been used? Mistreated? Have you
discovered the church is not as pretty as you thought? Is it like you woke up several weeks into a
marriage and looked over at your spouse and they no longer impress you. Have you done that yet? Your spouse looks
ordinary, unattractive, maybe even
repulsive at times? Has this happened to
you in the church as well? Have you
woken up and looked at the church you somehow got into bed with and she is not
all that pretty? You were willing to
have a life with the beauty you imagined—but the church has turned out to be
far more ordinary than you imagined or hoped.
Is this part of your crisis? You
were willing to serve the cool church of your dreams but not this homely
church. So what now? You already moved
in. What will you do? Move out and start over or decide to get
married/ordained for life? Will you
marry the real church… or were you only in love with the fold-out airbrushed
church of your imagination? How much of
your crisis is the death of idealism?
3. Could your “death of faith” actually be just a
“normal” desert of dryness and not actually a trial of faith? IWU is an
electric atmosphere gorged with pubescent religious experience. Students are always “feeling God” and
“connecting with God” and “sensing God.”
While this institution has grown wonderfully in academic ways the style
of religious experience is still pretty much at the level of youth camp or
youth conference. This sort of
religious experience cannot be sustained through all of life but many students
don’t know this. Eventually immature
religious experience runs out of steam and leaves the person dry. Every Christian experiences dryness of soul
from time to time. Every Christian
sometimes cannot pray and “feels like God is dead” (for all practical
purposes). What the rest of us do is
plod along and wait for feelings to return (and they often do, but seldom like
our pubescent religiosity). Some of us have committed to serve God even if
there are never any feelings. It is my observation that students who get
the highest spiritually when on campus often go the lowest after
graduation. Indeed especially the really “passionate” students who are always scolding
others for their lack of passion are often those to go down into the doldrums
the fastest and longest. This is part of
my work I hate. I am always trying to
cool off spiritual hotheads and persuade them to be warm for the long haul
instead of hot for a few years. I always
appear unspiritual and have even gotten on the prayer lists of many. They pray that “our professors would get more
spiritual passion.”
Well
now you can see why I try to moderate the hotheads. The hotter you are in college the drier you
often become later. But it is too late
to correct that now (for you). You’re
graduated and are wondering why everything is so dry and God is so distant. You
simply assume that what you felt in college was God and since you no longer
feel that way now you assume God is gone.
(you may one day decide that what you “felt” was actually the
reverberation of the bass through the giant speakers, the gestalt experience of
a singing group and collective emotion an not in fact God—but that is another
issue). You may think your faith is
melting but it actually may be simple and ordinary dryness. If so, so
what? We all get dry. I once could not sense God’s presence in my
life for three years straight. This was
actually “normal” I discovered when I read classic literature by Christians
through history. Could what you are
experiencing be merely normal “spiritual dryness” that occurs in the transition
from pubescent religion to adult religion?
You are not dead but merely dry.
Is this crisis less to do with your faith than your feelings? Perhaps you are dry and you miss the
immature religious rainstorms of
emotion. You yearn for the honeymoon as
if all your entire marriage to God could be one long honeymoon. How much of your crisis is about feelings and
not faith? Be honest.
4. Ask yourself what triggered your meltdown. It isn’t the
final solution but it is worth knowing.
I saw two students have a “faith meltdown” triggered by spending time in
another culture. One went to China and
after a semester (hoping to evangelize) the Buddhists but eventually concluded
“the Buddhists are better Christians than the Christians I know.” He headed into universalism for at least a
year before starting a journey back toward Christianity. I recall the first time he could pray “in
Jesus name” after long months of unfaith.
His view of “what a good Christian is” could not withstand someone from
another religion living better. He had
to walk through again what the gospel’s claims really were again and revise his
aberrant view of what a Christian is. In
America it is easy to say “The Christian way is the best way to live.” It was not so easy in China. Other students get royally harmed by a church
or a Christian leader and it triggers “faith issues” for them. Still others start a reading trail that leads
them into doubt or unbelief. Whatever,
it is worth at least confessing to yourselves what the factors were that may
have triggered your own searching/questioning/doubting/unbelieving. It is only honest to do. What triggered your
journey?
5. Is this the [good] “meltdown to the
core?” Most of us who are raised in the church go to
college with a thousand things we believe.
We did not believe them on purpose but came to hold them just the same. We inherited them mostly. We believed that people were sinners who
needed saved. We believed that people
should “get saved” and have devotions and only date Christians. We believed that good Christians should
attend church, and go to camp and witness and not smoke or drink or dance or
something else depending on where we were raised. We believed that unbelievers go to hell if
they didn’t accept Christ and we are supposed to tell them fast before they
die. We believed that Christians ought
to tithe and pray about who to date or marry and that we should generally vote
Republican and go to Prayer meeting, or at least Sunday school. We believed a thousand things by the time
our parents sent us off to college. And
we hold on to those beliefs through most of college. Some of these beliefs shake and quake in
college and we might moderate some of them to a softer position like, “there are Christians who think differently”
but we retain many of them for ourselves through most of college.
It
is in the 20’s when students makes their own life, have their own apartments,
are making their own decisions, and are no longer on “daddy’s dole” that they
often examine this inherited faith when something triggers it. Perhaps they read some emerging church book
telling them that “devotions” is a modern invention and that actually reading
the Bible alone is a dangerous practice—it should always be read in
community. Or they watch Discovery
channel and they realize their view of Science and the Bible is stuck in seventh
grade. They become convinced by the
views and they “X” out one of the things they have always “believed.” Then they read that the altar call and the
notion of “personal conversion” is really a post-enlightenment invention and
that it is more modern than Christian and they “X” off that one too. They read about the Bible and study it and
soon they are “Xing” off all kinds of things they “always believed” and they
decide that the Bible does not condemn alcohol at all, and smoking is a health
issue not a moral one. If they actually
had a map of their beliefs in front of them soon they have Xed off 80% of their
(inherited) beliefs. This is why a
former student of mine could honestly say, “I’ve tossed overboard 80% of
everything I used to believe.” She had!
But
this is not a strange thing. Such
graduates imagine they are the only person who has ever done this and assume
they are leaving the faith. But actually
most thinking Christians who ”grew up Christian” do something just like this.
(Those who don’t do sooner do it later—often when faced with death in their
70’s). What is happening? A person is in “faith meltdown.” They are trying to find the core of the faith—what has been believed
by all Christians at all times and everywhere—the things that last not he
beliefs of Michigan, the Nazarenes or Americans. This can actually be a wonderful thing—even
though at the time it seems awful and soul-threatening.
What
happens eventually is most Christians stop somewhere in their Xing out
beliefs. Some X out everything but the
Apostle’s creed. Others have larger
circles of core beliefs. But eventually
most Christians in the meltdown come up with a core of belief that they refuse
to X out. They usually don’t even have
enough evidence to be forced to believe the core but they come to the core and
they refuse to put their pen on it to X it out--- God as creator, Jesus as His
son, born of a virgin, suffered, died, resurrected, will come again and &
etc. They do not X out these core
beliefs for some reason. They choose to believe them. They do not so much believe them on their
evidence but believe them because they determine that is who they are. Then they breathe a sigh of
relief. They look about them and see
they’ve Xed out most everything they’ve been taught but they stopped at the
core. A Christian who goes through this
meltdown does not come to believe more things but comes to believe less things; But they believe them more deeply. This is why a meltdown could actually produce
a good result and not an evil one. (For
what’s its worth such a Christian often then adds back many beliefs to their
core, but these add-on beliefs are always held looser than the core, for they
now know the line they refuse to cross and the truth they’d refuse to deny even
if their life was threatened.) If what
you are going through is this meltdown it could even be a good
thing…eventually.
6. However, deconstructing personal faith is a dangerous
activity. Having said that the meltdown has positive
value I do not want to suggest that it is a casual activity. A faith meltdown is extremely dangerous
activity—like free climbing a thousand foot sheer cliff or milking rattlesnake
venom. Deconstructing belief systems has
a momentum that can take a person far beyond where they intended to go. Newton’s law of motion comes into play—once
you start moving the journey tends to continue in the same direction unless
acted on by an outside force. We can start
by doubting relatively inconsequential things like our church’s stance on dancing
or alcohol or even abortion and begin a momentum of unbelief that eventually
crosses right into the core. (Read the
story of “Clarence” in the first chapter of John Updike’s In the Beauty of the Lilies for a story-format of such a
journey) Unless some outside force stops
our journey of doubt we can become habitual doubters and unbelievers—whatever comes in our path we disbelieve it
out of habit. The end of a journey of unstopped doubt is unbelief and finally
despair. Doubt and the meltdown can be
used for good to boil off inherited beliefs that are not core. It can also be evil if it makes you an
habitual unbeliever of even the core truths.
Be careful—you are milking rattlesnakes.
7. Could your personal “death of God” be the [good] death of God? Could you be experiencing the death of
God—not the bad one but the necessary one?
Most students in college have an immature view of God. This God answers every prayer and provides
for us, helps us do well on tests, gives us boyfriends and sends checks for
$85.48—the exact amount you needed to pay for a new coat. This God—the immature view God—may have been
your view of God since you were a child.
He pays well—in fact he makes your life comfortable, makes you succeed,
gives you things, and “has a wonderful plan for your life.” This
God is all about you—this God places you at the center of the universe and
He revolves around you. His primary
purpose is to serve your needs. When
you skip devotions he is hurt for he “misses his time with you.” He is the boyfriend God, the administrative
assistant God. I am not saying that this God is false—I believe He is real and
in fact this is the way He reveals Himself to children and early
adolescents.
But
this God becomes a false God
eventually for most people. Most
thinking adults realize this God doesn’t work when their wife has cancer or
their child drowns in the neighbor’s pool.
This God does not work for people who have been “out and about” in the
rest of the world and seen tragedy, poverty and pain. Could what you are experiencing not be the
death of faith at all but the maturing
of your faith? Are you actually coming
to disbelieve in the childhood God-who-gives-bicycles and your faith is not
being lost in in the Sovereign True God of the Universe? Is it possible that you’ve been so close to
this childhood/ immature God that when
you lifted your eyes you never saw behind Him where a larger Revelation of God
was—the one you would need in adult life? Most thinking people go through a
“death of God” experience in transitioning from adolescence to adulthood could
this be your experience? If this is so,
you may not be “losing your faith” but only losing faith in the God of your
adolescence. And if that’s true than this is good, very good—for that God won’t
take you through a thinking adulthood.
8. Be careful of who you take along. Were
you a leader in college? Did people
follow you? If so, know that if you
publicly deconstruct your faith, people will follow you. And while you may have the skills to
reconstruct a new kind of faith, not everyone who followed you will be able to
do the same. You are in a dangerous
position. It’s one thing if you lose
your faith. It’s another if you lead
others to lose their faith. Does this
mean you need to keep this journey private?
No. But proceed with caution
until you know where you’ve landed. Be
selective whom you open up to. You are a
leader. Don’t take advantage of the
power you possess. If you’re not
careful, not only will you end up milking rattlesnakes, but you’ll be tossing
snakes into the pews as well.
9. Of course, all this is compounded by the
community we choose. Once a Christian starts to doubt they often seek
other doubters as their community.
Rather than force themselves to stay in a community of faith they
gravitate to a community of doubt. And the community of doubt together takes a
journey into unbelief. In the Western
world we do not recognize that both faith and doubt are not individual matters
but rather matters of community. We believe together and we doubt together. The
church is a community of faith because we as
a church believe the Christian story—not because the church is filled with
individuals who believe. It is the
“faith of the church.” But a community
of unfaith can also be established. And
either community will reinforce our journey—it will reinforce our faith or
reinforce our unbelief. In a sense we
chose our faith or unbelief when we choose our community. So my advice here is evident: be careful about increasingly excluding
people of faith from your life (or dismissing them as shallow) while you
increasingly associate with people who disbelieve. Your community will influence your
faith.
This
is why the church is so important in such a journey. “There is no salvation outside of the church”
partly because faith cannot sustain itself outside a community of faith. I do not have strong enough faith to
survive—it is our faith that enables
me to survive. I know that some of my former students despise the church and
have become disillusioned with it. But
one cannot be disillusioned without first being “illusioned.” Many students I know have such unrealistic
and idealistic views of church that it is simply an “illusion.” When they cannot find the church of their
illusion they become dis-illusioned.
Sure, the church is far from perfect. The head (Christ) is perfect—but
the body of Christ is quite imperfect.
Too many folk want to decapitate Christ and take the head while
rejecting His body, the church. It will
not work—there is no path to heaven that does not lead through the body of
Christ.
So
I advise you to get with a community of faith—perhaps a seminary. I don’t think it is an accident that every
single student I’ve been writing to about their “faith meltdown” chose to NOT
go to seminary. Every singe one! They went into the local church, or went
with a para-church organization, or went overseas, or “took a year off to think”
before entering ministry. Not one email or phone call I’ve gotten on the faith
meltdown is from seminary students. Why
is this? Don’t seminary students have a
similar meltdown? Yes, they do—but they
do it in a community of faith and thus they have a network of people to process
it with and don’t feel alone and that they have to reconnect with old college
professors in times of meltdown. They
have people right beside them. Even the
most liberal seminaries can still be communities of faith. There are people there who have done their
own personal meltdown. Yet even here
there is a residual faith in the core beliefs of Christian faith and there is a
safety net for your tightrope walk on faith matters. There are people who can belay you while you
are scaling these massive issues. In
fact I think that the biggest arguments for going to seminary have little to do
with “training ministers.” If you want
trained go to Bible school and then into the local church and learn to copy a
real minister’s work. Why seminary is
important if for people like you—people who don’t just do but also think.
Seminary is a place for helping young people sort out these kinds of
issues. After all, you can better learn
to make a hospital call or promote a “40 days of prayer” program better in the
local church. But the pace and mission
of a local church hardly ever provides a safe place for staff members to
meltdown their faith and then rebuild it.
Most local churches will simply get rid of you and get somebody “more
stable.” So I’d advise getting into a
community of faith as you meltdown and rebuild—and I especially think an idea
place to do that is a seminary
community.
10. Finally, I urge you to preserve the core. Please
listen to this one even if you ignore or dismiss all the rest of my
advice. Be extraordinarily careful about
taking your journey of doubt into the core of Christian beliefs. A person’s journey of doubt can gain momentum
and take you across the line into the core beliefs that make a person
Christian. This core includes (at least)
the Apostle’s Creed—beware of doubting these things. Faith in core issues, once abandoned is hard
to recover—maybe impossible. You might
say it is not honest to avoid doubting the core—you may say it is not honest to
draw a line and reserve places “where I won’t go.” But I encourage you to do it anyway, at least
do it for me and for a time.
It
can be like marriage—there are some lines of thought you should simply not
pursue. There will be days when the
thought comes into your mind, “Maybe I got the wrong woman.” Or, “I wonder if I divorced her I could get
someone cuter?” Or “I wonder what it would have been like if I’d married that
other guy?” Or, “Would I be better off
single than with this brute?” These are
honest thoughts and you could choose to pursue them following your doubts about
marriage right into divorce. But I think it is better to draw a line and not
even “honestly face” these thoughts.
Tell you mind: “I don’t go there” when the notion emerges.
I
think this is similar to the core of faith.
Be very careful about practicing your unbelief on core matters. Be careful about carrying your doubting habit
into the core circle. For, once you
disbelieve them you can no longer honestly call yourself a Christian. And the willful choice to unbelieve the core
truths of the Christian faith can be near irreversible. At least withhold judgment on these things
for a decade? Let loose of what you have
to in order to stay afloat. A person
drowning in the ocean has no need to clutch tightly to his computer. This is a struggle for survive, so don’t get dragged under by things that aren’t central to the Christian
Faith. Stick with the Creed.
So you are in meltdown. Welcome
to the club. Yes it can be dangerous for
you. But if you let the Lord work through
His community it can turn out to be a good thing. God
sometimes uses the “meltdown” to get you to believe fewer things more deeply. Just as a reference point on one way of
identifying “the core” I’m adding my own credo
below. Well, as you know it is not my
own, but I have made it mine. Here’s my
challenge to you: memorize it and recite
it every day. I’m serious. If you can’t do that, or you won’t do it—then
get real alarmed at the state of your soul already. However, if you will do it, watch what
happens to faith I your life. One of two
things will happen: You will come to reject it and refuse to recite it leading
to apostasy, or you will see your faith start to rebuild slowly and steadily
and that will lead to a life of faith.
It is a high-risk challenge but I give it to you. I challenge you! I’m calling you out. If you are really serious about these faith
matters memorize the Apostle’s Creed and recite it daily—see if you can. Can you?
Credo
1. I believe in God the Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth;
2. And in Jesus Christ his only Son our Lord:
3. who was conceived by the Holy Spirit,
4. born of the Virgin Mary,
5. suffered under Pontius Pilate,
6. was crucified, dead, and buried;
7. he descended into hell;
8. the third day he rose from the dead;
9. he ascended into heaven,
10. and sits at the right hand of God the Father Almighty;
11. from whence he shall come to judge
12. the living and the dead.
13. I believe in the Holy Spirit,
14. the holy catholic Church,
15. the communion of saints,
16. the forgiveness of sins,
17. the resurrection of the body,
18. and the life everlasting. (Amen)
Keith Drury April 6, 2005
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