Whelp. After an hour and a half of laying in bed wide awake I finally gave up on trying to go to sleep. It will happen when it happens.
My brain has been really struggling for the past week. I feel trapped in the lie that I’m “overdue” for having a handful of things in my life figured out. Things like life purpose…..personal desires….intimacy with God….”hearing His voice”…..and Leviticus in general. But let me add some scope to that daunting outline.
I was recently reflecting on the nature of my research project and the nature of science/engineering in general. Perhaps I should spend more time actually doing it and less time reflecting on it, but I digress…. In science we celebrate the doubters and the questioners. We give them Nobel prizes. At every step of the way they doubted what they were told, questioned the status quo and most importantly questioned themselves by checking, double checking, and triple checking their work. When it comes to my lab, my PI encourages me to make a case for everything I say and do. Having “faith” that I measured the correct amount of solute or homogenized at the correct speed does not end well. In school and in the lab, having doubt gets results.
So believing something without touching, smelling, checking, double checking…placing my hands into his sides….that’s always been tall order for me. Simply having faith in God is still incredibly difficult for me, let alone defending and explaining that faith to others when sometimes I feel like my jury’s still out on Him. I doubt not only my faith but also when other people give me advice. More doubt permeates my perception of my ability to lead and love other people, and the idea that I could have unique gifts. Too often I think “why should I bother doing this? Someone else out there is doing it better…” Specifically in terms of leading other people towards Jesus I can be frozen in doubt. There are some pretty difficult passages in the Bible, and many times I don’t know exactly what to say when people ask me about them. And then I get freaked by verses like Mark 9:42 “if you cause one of these little ones who trusts in me to fall into sin, it would be better for you to be thrown into the sea with a large millstone hung around your neck”. Um. What the heck am I doing leading other people if I don’t have all of this figured out!? Someone please throw me into the ocean….
Faith can only come from God, so even in the middle of doubt there is evidence for God in my life if I take notice that those doubting times are just times and not all the time. Times of doubt highlight their beautiful counterpart – the times of faith that evidence the God’s Spirit in me. Just because sometimes I doubt God in my life does not lessen His presence and work in it, and because of what Jesus did on that cross God sees me not for my doubts but for the completed woman of faith He is shaping me into. The Gospel means I am qualified to come empty-handed before the God who made me, who knows all wrongs that I commit against Him, and ask Him boldly to show me Himself in all gloriousness. And I think the Gospel also includes the sweet freedom to possibly be wrong my whole life and get to heaven and hear Jesus say “yeah, you got that one wrong theologically. But I knew the answer and I died so you wouldn’t have to.”
So here’s to just getting out there and doing things regardless of how much I don’t know. Here’s to kicking doubt while it’s down because I’d rather be free than paralyzed with fear.
