I'd say that most my family has strong faith. They are so incredibly gifted at taking God's word as is and receiving it. I love that about them. On occasion I have told my brother that when I'm struggling I "borrow" his faith because it’s steady and doesn't waver with his circumstances. I borrow in a sense that I trust him so I trust that if he believes it then I can trust it. Maybe it isn’t the healthiest thing, but I do it nonetheless. Things don't come easy to me. I generally have to struggle with things before I come to terms that I'll believe it or discard it.
One of my struggles in this battle for faith is I compare myself to others who seem to believe things so effortlessly. I beat myself up for not being stronger, not having more secure faith. After all I’ve been a Christian twenty plus years, you’d think I’d have a grip on it by now. But I don’t, I’m constantly battling things out in my brain, trying to match reason with miraculous.
In this journey to understand I came across this book called “Hard Questions, Real Answers” by William Lane Craig, a Research Professor of Philosophy atTalbot School of Theology in California. In his introduction he’s expressing the need for a deeper understanding of our faith and its origin because much of our Christian Heritage has been ignored and forgotten. He quotes Charles Malik,
“The mind in its greatest and deepest reaches is not cared for enough…People who are in a hurry to get out of university and start earning money or serving the church or preaching the gospel have no ideaof the infinite value of spending years of leisure conversing with the greatest minds and souls of the past, ripening and sharpening and enlarging their powers of thinking.”
Malik describes me here. Sometimes the questions I have are so scary and I don’t know if I’ll find an answer so instead I fill my time with work and routine that has no significant meaning.
Sometimes I pick up books like The Battlefield of the Mind by Joyce Meyers. And I agree with her, but when it comes to certain verses that she references all I think is,
“I wish I could combat the lies in my head with that verse, but I don’t even know what I believe about the foundation of that verse.”
There are some books out there like The Battlefield of the Mind that could be so beneficial to my personal development, and I believe if I had a deeper understanding of my faith those books would be that much more powerful.
Recently, the Lord has led me to embrace these questions of faith and seek answers.
So, I’m filling up my bookshelf with a library of authors I’ve never heard of and ones from times past in order to help feed the part of me that seems to keep hitting a wall.
I used to be mostly scared of the questions, but now I am excited, I’m excited at the possibility that there really could be some answers out there. I’m excited that it’s not wrong that I have these questions that it doesn’t decrease my faith, but rather engages it.
I hope this encourages any of you who may be struggling with some faith challenging questions too.
– Estie
