IN THEORY:

The posthumous publication of Mother Teresa’s private letters revealed a woman tormented by many years of religious doubt and spiritual emptiness.

Have you ever gone through long periods of doubt and, if so, how did you persevere? How do you counsel others who doubt their faith?

I have never doubted that God is, but have questioned what God is. In a world where cruelty and indifference vie for pride of place, it is often difficult to discern God’s righteousness and mercy.

I have echoed Abraham’s challenge: “Shall not the Judge of all the earth do justly?” Job’s plaint: “Will you harass me as a driven leaf?” and the Psalmist’s cry: “How long, O Lord? Will you forget me forever?”

But faith is what we do with our ignorance and how we respond to mystery.

On the wall of a cellar in the city of Cologne, where Jews had hidden from the Nazis, the following inscription, a testament to faith in crisis, was discovered after the war: “I believe in the sun even when it is not shining, I believe in love even when not feeling it, I believe in God even when He is silent.”

Rabbi Mark Miller

Temple Bat Yahm

Newport Beach

Do you love your mom and dad? Your spouse? Do you feel it right now? Most of us love our parents, and our spouses, and are mature enough to realize that love is more than a feeling.

Love is a choice. When we start believing that love is a feeling and the feeling isn’t racing through our veins, we move on and choose to stop loving.

Even when my dad and I were not on the best of terms, I knew I loved him.

I definitely didn’t feel like it, but I choose to continue to love him.

When the feelings we associate with love are gone, we have to make a choice to continue to love or to stop loving.

Faith is the same way. It is a choice.

Often I have had dry spots when it seemed like my prayers have merely bounced off the ceiling.

I have had days of lackluster spirituality, but in the end I know that, like with my birth father, loving and having faith in my spiritual Father is a choice.

Ric Olsen

Lead Pastor,

The Beacon

Doubts are the “ants in the pants of faith,” as Fred Buechner says in “Wishful Thinking.” Doubts keep our faith awake and moving; they help us form questions to which God is always the answer.

If we don’t have any doubts we are either asleep or kidding ourselves.

My own times of doubt have been blessedly short-lived, but productive.

Challenges have led me into places of thoughtful belief that I would not choose to go when all is well.

I have wondered whether or not my life matters and if I am loved. Ultimately I trust God’s resounding, “Yes!”

(The Very Rev’d Canon) Peter D. Haynes

Saint Michael & All Angels Episcopal Church

Corona del Mar