The Experience of Doubt
I have always struggled with doubt. I wish that belief and trust came easily to me, but they do not. I think the first time I was aware of my doubts about Christianity, I was nine years old, weeping to my parents that I didn't have a 'personal relationship with Jesus', that hallmark of Protestant salvation and goodness. As a young adult, I discovered Catholicism, then Orthodoxy, and learned to pray the prayers of the church, relieved that I didn't have to make it all up myself anymore.
As a Seventh-day Adventist, I hated to pray. I didn't know how to go about addressing the Almighty. I was told to just talk to God as if He was a friend. Of course, God is a friend, but I didn't feel right chatting away about my crushes or worries about what classes to take. It felt stilted and forced. In college, a Catholic friend taught me how to pray the Rosary, and I loved it. I could simply relax into the prayers honed and polished by generations before me.
Nevertheless, my conversion was plagued by doubt and, especially, fear. Fear that somehow the knowledge deep inside me, beyond reason and emotion, that I had come home to the truth in the Orthodox Church—this was merely a delusion or some elaborate form of wish fulfillment. I wasn't afraid of hell nearly as much as the abyss. What if all meaning, all beauty, all truth was a cosmic trick? The random configuration of DNA to keep the species going, for no other purpose than bare survival? What if nothing was more real than all the somethings and someones I cared for so deeply?
For me, doubt has always been marbled in with a generous dollop of fear. Or perhaps, my basic fear that the abyss is true and the cross and resurrection is false are marbled in with whatever negative emotions I happen to be having about the church. I do know that when I am harassed by these kind of questions, my physical reaction is to tense up, waiting for a blow, a twisting of the stomach, a racing of the heart. The feeling of being trapped in a nightmare.
The only thing that saves me from the nightmare of the abyss is love. Especially of Mary. I don't think it's an accident that my path to conversion was through her. For me, Mary has always meant strength and love and the triumph of love over nothingness. Mary's 'yes' is beyond reason and rationality and emotion and clinging to what is safe. Her 'yes' is the first crack in the prison of the abyss. Her 'yes' includes me, loves me, allows me to re-open my hard, clenched little heart. In the light of the love of the Mother of God, the abyss vanishes. There is no argument to be made. I merely have to open my eyes.
As a Seventh-day Adventist, I hated to pray. I didn't know how to go about addressing the Almighty. I was told to just talk to God as if He was a friend. Of course, God is a friend, but I didn't feel right chatting away about my crushes or worries about what classes to take. It felt stilted and forced. In college, a Catholic friend taught me how to pray the Rosary, and I loved it. I could simply relax into the prayers honed and polished by generations before me.
Nevertheless, my conversion was plagued by doubt and, especially, fear. Fear that somehow the knowledge deep inside me, beyond reason and emotion, that I had come home to the truth in the Orthodox Church—this was merely a delusion or some elaborate form of wish fulfillment. I wasn't afraid of hell nearly as much as the abyss. What if all meaning, all beauty, all truth was a cosmic trick? The random configuration of DNA to keep the species going, for no other purpose than bare survival? What if nothing was more real than all the somethings and someones I cared for so deeply?
For me, doubt has always been marbled in with a generous dollop of fear. Or perhaps, my basic fear that the abyss is true and the cross and resurrection is false are marbled in with whatever negative emotions I happen to be having about the church. I do know that when I am harassed by these kind of questions, my physical reaction is to tense up, waiting for a blow, a twisting of the stomach, a racing of the heart. The feeling of being trapped in a nightmare.
The only thing that saves me from the nightmare of the abyss is love. Especially of Mary. I don't think it's an accident that my path to conversion was through her. For me, Mary has always meant strength and love and the triumph of love over nothingness. Mary's 'yes' is beyond reason and rationality and emotion and clinging to what is safe. Her 'yes' is the first crack in the prison of the abyss. Her 'yes' includes me, loves me, allows me to re-open my hard, clenched little heart. In the light of the love of the Mother of God, the abyss vanishes. There is no argument to be made. I merely have to open my eyes.
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