Tuesday, March 26, 2013

Saved by Doubt (CL)

This month we are talking about salvation. How are we saved, and from what?
I was saved, in the middle of college, from certainty. I was saved by my own doubts, and by a community that allowed me to embrace those doubts... and that embraced me with my doubts.

Some of you might already know my story, but here's a re-cap.
I went to church on-and-off as a kid, usually to Baptist churches with friends. I really wanted to believe in Jesus Christ as my personal Lord and savior, and sometimes I did. Sometimes, I didn't. I was told to have faith, to have trust, even through my doubts. And so I tried. I really tried.

My college years, like that time in many people's lives (ages 18-22 or so), were marked by great transition and a lot of uncertainty. A lot of doubts. Doubts about what I wanted to be when I grew up, who I wanted to spend my life with (or not), and what I believed to be true and right. I was changing majors a lot, and leaving behind a career I had planned on my whole childhood and teen years... I was engaged to be married, and then broke that off. I was in a Christian Sorority, and realized, sadly, that I wasn't really a Christian, at least not in the sense that they wanted me to be. I had a lot of doubts.

And then, one afternoon while procrastinating from writing a paper, I checked my email. A "spam" e-mail had gotten through my filters and I decided to open it up. One of the things in the email was a link to a quiz: Belief-O-Matic from Beliefnet.com. The quiz (which I linked here and hope you will take for yourself!) asked all kinds of questions about my beliefs: about God, about salvation, about the afterlife, about morality. I remember being afraid: What if God pulls out my Belief-O-Matic quiz results while I'm standing at the pearly gates, and denies me entrance to heaven because of my answers? But I decided to answer truthfully... The way I felt in my core (my soul, some might say), rather than how I thought I "should" answer. When I was finished, I hit "submit" and it tallied my results.

I was 100% Unitarian Universalist.

I had never heard of that long-named religion. Was it a cult?

So I clicked on the link provided, and it brought me to the UUA webpage, where I read all about this faith that honored doubts as well as answers, and honored people in all stages of their life and faith development. I sat at my computer in my dorm room, and I cried.

I was so grateful to have found a religion where I didn't have to pretend to be certain.
Where my doubts could be honored as a part of me, and where they could fuel my search rather than stunt my faith. I remember the way the minister, Rev. Laurel Hallman, began her prayer that first Sunday morning I attended church, and how she always began her prayers... to the "God of many names, whose mystery is beyond all our understanding." I remember feeling filled with gratitude for that address--one of humility in the face of the great Mystery--God is not God's name... It is the name we give to that which is greater than us all. I am so grateful, still, to be a part of a community that appreciates our questions, our doubts, and our full humanity, and not simply our professions of a particular belief.

I have been saved from certainty. I have been committed to a lifelong search for truth and meaning... Which by no means is an easy path. So, as the reading in our hymnal says (#650), "Cherish your doubts, for doubt is the attendant of truth.... Doubt  is the touchstone of truth; it is an acid which eats away the false... the truth stands boldly and unafraid... Therefore let us not fear doubt, but let us rejoice in its help."

Let us rejoice. For we have been saved.
Amen...     -Rev. Christina

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