At the darkest night of my faith crisis, not a single speck of light shone around the edges of the blackout curtain. Sleep evaded me. The fabric of time unravelled and my body seemed to sink through reality.
It was me and the darkness. Not even prayer could illuminate this descent.
I was utterly alone with the darkness and the worst question I could imagine. “What if God does not exist?”
This was not the first question on my humbling, tumbling descent through a faith crisis. And gratefully, it was also not the last.
It was 2020 and a growing number of people were leaving churches, unable to bear the weight of cognitive dissonance while dealing with the growing turbulence in the world and their faith spaces. We took on terms such as “deconstruction” and “exvangelicals.” Podcasts, Reddit forms, and YouTube videos provided education and community while our worlds became increasingly lonely.
For me, the threads of the fabric of my belief first snagged on the exposed, raw edges of my deteriorating mental health. I don’t often talk about the severe depression I experienced, partly as a consequence of growing up in conservative evangelical spaces that asked me to believe I was a depraved person with nothing good in me.
My religious beliefs barred me from receiving mental health help since I thought anxiety was God’s loving punishment and depression a result of surrendering to despair instead of claiming the promises of Christ. I thought if I could finally just stop being a sinful person, then my personal hell of daily panic attacks would stop.
I still carry shame that perhaps I took everything too literally, too seriously. I don’t want people to doubt the sincerity of my faith then or now. I don’t often share because it’s uncomfortable to admit to people that I grew terrified of using knives, seeing guns, or driving over bridges.
Christianity was no longer liberating and saving. The faith I held as the deepest and most beloved identity of my being was actively killing me.
The second thread that began the full unraveling was examining the gendered expectations communicated in church about women under a patriarchal system, run by a patriarchal God. I recognized the deep psychological harm I had undergone in regards to my inherent worthiness and bodily autonomy as a woman. I could no longer believe my body was no longer mine, only belonging to my husband and a God who we only described in masculine terms.
I found the systematic theology I had been given as a child quickly fell apart under the scrutiny of questions. To reject any part of the theology left an unstable Jenga tower of beliefs and questions.
Quickly, I had more questions than answers: Could the nature of people be good instead of evil? Could being gay not actually be a sin? What was sin anyway? Was abortion a sin? Do I have to read the Bible literally? What does it mean to “take the Lord’s name in vain”? What was the point of attending church? Was hell real? Was heaven real? Why did Jesus die on the cross?
In pursuit of these answers, I encountered a diverse set of voices who confronted the intersection of Christianity with other issues such as racism, xenophobia, anti-semitism, Zionism, homophobia, colonialism, colonization and misogyny.
I learned from Bible scholars, exvangelicals, atheists and Catholics. I explored yoga, “woo woo” spirituality, Christian mysticism and progressive Christianity.
I went to therapy. I finally saw a psychiatrist. I began taking medicine for anxiety and depression.
I fell in love with being alive. And I dared to question the existence of God and lived to tell the tale.
Experiencing a faith crisis was terrifying, intellectually interesting, and the best possible gift on my faith journey.
The descent through doubt was flanked by fear and grief but illuminated by the presence of God. I had learned from religious spaces that the danger of questions and doubt danced on the edge of unforgivable sins. But when I stumbled out of their world of order, I discovered God also inhabited the wild, wilderness spaces of the unknown.
I was warned against being a “doubting Thomas.” Reward and praise were dolled out for blind belief and obedience. But when Thomas asked a valid question, Jesus showed up.
When I faced my questions, God showed up in ways I had never encountered or experienced before. I gave up certainty for presence. Answers for inner peace. Dogma for authentic embodied experience. Theology for love.
While questions can feel like a betrayal of our childhood faith, the journey into wilderness spaces is part of our spiritual inheritance. The scriptures bear witness to the Israelites repeatedly addressing and understanding their relationship with God against the backdrop of exile and political changes.
The Psalms record personal journeys into doubt, as the psalmists wonder where God and justice have gone. Jesus teaches by saying, “You have heard it said, but I say to you.”
Reevaluating theology when it no longer holds the expansive, messy experience of reality is not heretical. It is holy.
Jesus taught the Sabbath was made for people, not people for the Sabbath. Our religious practices and systematic theology were made for us, not us for them. Faith and the spiritual journey are meant to be liberating and transformative, not transactional or harmful.
If you find yourself at the precipice or in the middle of this journey through a spiritual wilderness, then I cannot promise where you will emerge on the other side. But I do know, you are on a holy journey.
I am not the poster child for the lost sheep who dared to question and came home. I came home because Christianity is my faith vocabulary. I came home because Christianity is my sociocultural setting. I came home because I believed that if other marginalized communities could find liberation in the gospel of Christ, I could too.
I came home because Jesus belongs to all of us: those of us who keep our world of order and those of us who hover on the margins of belief. I came home because there was something evocative and transformative about the gospel preached by Jesus.
And yet, in many ways, I still feel at home in spiritual wilderness. I haven’t reconciled the grief, anger, doubts, answers, betrayal, belief and theology.
I don’t know if I ever will. I don’t know if I need to anymore.
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Erin is a current student at Campbell Divinity School, attending night classes for the Master of Arts in Christian Ministry. During the day, she participates in the holy work of teaching public school teenagers how to cook as a Family and Consumer Science teacher (formally known as Home Economics). A self-proclaimed Jack of all trades, Erin dabbles in an array of hobbies when school allows, including knitting, crocheting, spinning yarn, sewing, gardening, reading, writing, and, of course, cooking.
