Devout Sceptics - do most of us remain on the fence?

[Emphaticmaybe]

I have been interested in religion, (predominantly Christianity) for about 15 or so years, really since having children.

I have extensively read, attended courses, workshops, prayer groups, had long and in-depth discussions with people of faith that I respect, but here I am still sitting on that fence.

I can see all the benefits of a strong faith, especially for someone with my personality type, (big worrier, pretty sensitive, prone to depression), but every time I think I've come close to figuring out my beliefs and making that commitment I am suddenly filled with doubt again and the whole debate in my head starts again.

Does anybody ever reach a state of peace and reconcile themselves to the fact that for them there will never be any 'right' answers?

Have you ever been part of a worshipping community?

Yes ClaireAll I attended a weekly day group at my local church for about 2 years. It was specifically aimed at people that would otherwise not have attended church on a Sunday for whatever reasons.

I found it interesting and very supportive, although I was often left with as many questions as answers. Sadly the woman who ran the group was often at loggerheads with the rest of the church leadership over the best way to reach out to people of other faiths or none and when she died tragically the church closed the group. I felt a bit lost then as I had never felt comfortable in the traditional church services when I had attended them in the past and Sundays were particularly difficult for me with 4 small children.

After that I joined a 'house church' of some good friends which I went along to in the evenings. Again very supportive, but I still felt unable to make the leap required to commit myself to full church membership.

I have ambled along since then, continued to read and talk to people about their journeys to faith but feel I am no closer to a decision myself than I was 15 years ago.

I am always interested in the thoughts of others so feel free to advise.

Anyone?

Hello EmphaticMaybe. Yes, I recognise what you are describing very well. I sat on the fence from my late teens till my early 40s, when a combination of different things put me in a place where I felt able to start attending church regularly again. Even then, I started doing this quite sceptically at first, and with significant doubts. What made the difference to me was not any blinding revelation but a conscious decision to 'park' my doubts and see where that led me.

This probably sounds odd, but a large part of it for me was that some close friends were going through a tough time, and I was powerless to do anything practical to help them... the only thing I could think of to do was to pray for them. But in order to do that I needed to work on the assumption that God existed, and listened. So I started to pray, first just for my friends, and then more generally (for others and eventually for myself). Introducing prayer into my life on a daily basis was really helpful in building a relationship with God, and it's one of the reasons why I post most days on the prayer thread on here... it just reminds me to keep that up, iyswim.

I was also influenced by a friend whom I spoke to about my feelings, who said that whereas for many people they want to believe but feel that their doubts prevent them from making that final 'leap' of faith, for her it was the opposite: she acknowledges her doubts, but they are not enough, ultimately, to make her able definitively to reject faith. I don't think I see this in exactly the same way as her, but her thoughts were useful in helping me to see that the fence that I'd been sitting on, which I had imagined to be high and impenetrable, was actually lower than I thought, so low, in places, that I could step right over it if I wanted to.

So for me that 'leap' of faith, was not so much an elegant high leap as a sort of stumbling tumble off the fence. And it took me a while to get used to being on the other side, but over time I have come to understand how good it is here. I still have doubts, of course, and things that make me go , and of course bad stuff still happens, and I still get angry and frustrated and sad. But I have a peace in my life now which I haven't had before (you could have been describing me when you described yourself: worrier, sensitive, etc.), which has genuinely transformed me in many ways, I think.

One last thing (sorry for writing an essay): I don't think I could have done this without attending church regularly. I already knew the 'theory' as it were(from my background growing up and from my work), but I do think it's important to tap into a broader church community. I don't do much for the church except just turn up on a Sunday; but it is important to me in sort of 'resetting' me for the week. It's also important for me to take communion regularly (and I don't completely understand why this is so very important to me, but it is probably one of the things that I missed most during my time on the fence and was one of the things that most strongly pulled me back into church in the first place and determined the kind of church that I wanted to go to). I can see that it's hard for you to get to church on a Sunday if you have four LOs, but if you can find some way to manage it (either by leaving them with someone else while you go initially, or finding a church with a good Sunday School/creche/whatever) then it might help.

OK... I'm sorry to have gone on so long. I wanted to reply when I read your OP, but I knew I wouldn't be able to be succinct, so I thought I'd see if anyone else went first so that I could just agree with them. But since no-one did, you've got my ramblings instead.

I wish you luck, whether you fall off the fence on one side or the other or continue to survey both sides from up there. (But I'd say... give it a try over here!)

Oh, and - sorry... all that splurge and I kind of missed the point - what I wanted to pick up on was something in your OP, where you said that every time you felt that you'd figured out your beliefs and were ready to make the commitment the doubt came back. Well, I guess what I did, and what perhaps it's in the nature of faith to require us to do (if we could explain it, it wouldn't need faith, right?), was to make the commitment first and to try to figure out the relationship between my beliefs and my doubts later.

Hi Tuo - thank you for your great post it was really helpful.

Your relationship with God seems to have evolved when you actively started to act and behave as though he was real by praying daily and being part of a community - sort of suspending your disbelief if you like in order to give belief a chance. Is that what you mean? As in not that the doubts have suddenly disappeared but you have developed a relationship with God by acting on what belief you do have instead?

Lots of people have told me it's okay to doubt and I get that, but the thing is I often feel like a bit of a fraud when I have been involved in the church community as often it is presumed that you are on the same page as the majority attending, and obviously I don't always want to be explaining myself all the time or make anyone uncomfortable by challenging things I don't agree with or understand. I feel like there are plenty of courses for the specific purpose of questioning and I've already done most of them, and still feel full of doubt. At the same time I don't feel able to just walk away - I would like to believe enough to have a meaningful relationship with God.

I am beginning to see that it really is a choice: I can choose to let my doubts be a barrier to attending church or I can see them as part of being human and recognise that many Christians feel the same.

Oh I just wanted to clarify, the reference to small children was how it was at the beginning of this journey, they are all relatively self-sufficient now, although DH does work on Sundays I can't really use them as an excuse for not attending on Sundays any more. It is my own enertia.

Thank you again for such an honest post it is reasuring to know I'm not alone in my doubts and that it is possible to move forward without all the answers.

I solved some of those problems, EM, by attending a church where I could be fairly anonymous at first (large cathedral, rather than small local parish church). It helps that my preferred worship style is more traditional and formal, too. I think I'd have run a mile at first if I'd been asked to speak or asked too many questions. (I was asked a lot of questions at the first church I went to, because we were temporarily living abroad at the time, but they were all of the 'Where do you come from? What are you doing here?' sort, so much easier to deal with!)

Being abroad was what enabled me to shrug off the inertia. Everything was different. Going to church was different too, but it was all part and parcel of the more general difference. Keeping it up when we came back was the tough bit, and I did have to work at that for a while (also because my dh is very 'anti', so I didn't have any support there), but it's now become normal for me and even dh doesn't grumble much any more.

Anyway, I think that what you say in your second paragraph is right, except that I have not only developed a relationship with God based on the belief that I do have, but that that relationship and that belief has grown and developed massively, to the point where it far far outweighs any doubts. But that wouldn't have happened if I hadn't first said 'I accept that I have doubts, but I am going to run with this anyway'.

Erk... last sentence is grammatically nonsensical. Hope you can work out what I mean!

Yes I would love to just sit at the back of some sort of liberal church - I seem to live in a very evangelical area and the three churches nearest to me, in an attempt to be welcoming i'm sure, are actually quite invasive. Maybe that's not the right word. I also stuggle with some of the more fundamentalist teaching as I am a compete, woolly liberal.

It's funny because I quite often feel at home with the traditional style of some Catholic and high church C of E services, but at the same time feel really at odds with much of Catholic doctrine. I love the feeling of peace and otherness in some churches it just often all falls apart when I struggle with the message being preached.

This inability to find the right space has for me been part of the struggle to commit. It has not stopped me continuing my internal dialogue with God but I do feel like I'm missing out on community. I also have a sense that God will not move forward with me while I continue to procrastinate if you see what I mean.

Also like you, I have a very sceptical DH. We share the same politics and values in pretty much all other areas, but he just doesn't have the desire to explore religion further. I suspect he was slightly surprised by my need as when we got together we were on the same page. It does make it more difficult, but not impossible I agree, to make your faith an intrinsic part of your life if the rest of your family are not involved.

I maybe need to start the search again for a church I feel comfortable with. My inactivity is making me feel worse.

Thanks so much for sharing your experience.

Oh and I totally got your last sentence,

I would definitely recommend your local cathedral, if you have one within striking distance. My local church is also very evangelical and, while I recognise that they have LOTS of people there on a Sunday, so they are clearly doing something right, it's not for me. What I love about the cathedral is that it's feels theologically and politically liberal (definitely pro ordination of women, and it feels very accepting of all - I haven't heard anything I have a problem with, and I'm as woolly as they come!) but is liturgically conservative and the music is wonderful too... (I really like it - can you tell?)

The deal I did with dh was that I asked only that he not disparage religion or the church openly in front of the kids. He has been good about that, although they know that he's an atheist, and he will not have anything to do with the church (he didn't even attend when dd2 was baptised and confirmed - at her own instigation - last month). Dd1 has sided with her dad since we came back to the UK and doesn't come, but I am not pressurising her to do so - she's 12, so old enough to think about this and come to her own choices. Dd2 is really committed - she's a server and her ambition when she grows up is to be 'a thurifer with a thurible'!

I wish you lived near me (maybe you do... you can PM me if you want) and I'd meet you and take you with me so you could have some (understanding) company.

The only way I could do that was to move away from organised religion entirely, and towards exploring my own spirituality, taking bits from Hinduism, Buddhism, Paganism...I know when something is true in my heart because suddenly it makes sense. It's like a light shining, and I know I've found the answer that is true for my soul.

I struggled for years to reconcile my beliefs, and my soul, with Christian doctrine, and I just couldn't do it. Maybe you'd find it helpful if you stopped trying and just quieted your mind and listened to your heart. If God is real, he'll speak to you then...or your soul will...or the Universe...or the Goddess...or whatever is real

Thanks Flamingo - I have kind of been doing that for large chunks of time between actively examining organised religion.

When I have been exhausted by the whole thing or frustrated by the lack of answers there is nowhere to turn really but internally - to listen.

What I find there, is a sense that God is real, sometimes that in itself has been enough without worrying how I should respond to Him. Other times I have felt pretty bereft - that we are very much alone in the universe and all rational thought pretty much tells us this and it is our inability to accept this that causes the struggle.

Luckily for me the sense of God is fairly consistent, but it is the next step which I have so many problems with. Obviously for me it is not enough to have a vague feeling He is there - I would like to develop a relationship, but you are right I do stuggle with aspects of Christian doctrine which makes the next step difficult. However Christianity along with Judaism is the religion that feels the best fit culturally for me and while I've looked at Buddhism and Islam and some alternative faiths I feel like I am continuously brought back to Christianity.

Thanks for your input,

Hi there. I'm not sure i'm going to help much but I do identify with your struggle. In brief, I went from rc to pagan - I simply did not belief most of the basic tenets of the rc church or the other abrahamic traditions, and my pagan practice fitted so well with my views of nature, cosmology, etc. After many years on this path the mythology started to fail me and so I had to really look at the stripped away core of what I believed. This has taken me on a journey encompassing Hindu, Buddhist and Taoist philosophy, but nothing has been an exact fit. For example, Buddhism comes close but I find the concept of impersonal reincarnation hard to accept.

I really wish there was a faith that I could say 'yep - that's me' because, like you know, there is so much support and comfort from belonging, and it would be wonderful to have that surety of belief. However, I have found that I can't dive in and ignore the doubts - it's a bit like marrying someone you're not sure about. I appreciate you are looking to stay within the christian tradition, but I do think you need to be authentically true to yourself, even if this is a more difficult path to walk. To answer your original question about reconciling yourself to not finding the 'right' answers, I deal with it by looking at life as a journey and not a destination, and i'm learning along the way, adapting what I think as my knowedge base increases.

Love your posting name, Maybe! Sums me up.....very similar feelings and same with my DP too being atheist but supportive. Am a bit like RedMolly, forming my own sort of identikit spirituality - I think I have realised that doctrine is always a stumbling block for me and my forensic brain, and that the spirituality is the important bit. Posting to say, have you tried going to a Quaker meeting? I have found that very helpful when needing a "group of people" sort of experience. It is nominally Christian but everyone is allowed to believe whatever they like about god, some Quakers are even atheist. You sit and share inner silence with a group of fellow seekers. Some people stand up and speak, sometimes I find that embarrassing so it's not perfect. But sometimes there is real insight in what they say, or a particular image that I find really helpful. Just a thought, anyway. Hugs from another anxious worrier!! When it comes down to it I think there is more to all this than meets the eye......

Ah, glad someone has bumped this... was hoping it was you, Emphaticmaybe, but hoping you'll see this. I've been wondering how you've been getting on...