Spring Flower Show 2024, Minnesota Landscape Arboretum

A number of years ago I read an article by Ryan Bell, a former 7th Day Adventist pastor, who explained why he no longer believed in God or felt any real need for God. I’m reminded that M. Scott Peck, author of the “Road Less Traveled, ” would talk about his own period of atheism. He traced his faith from an early literal understanding of the Bible through a period of doubt, atheism and then to a place of true faith.

Many of us will walk that journey. We doubt that God exists or if God exists, that God loves us. We look at wars and tragedies and wonder how God can allow suffering. We doubt God means good for the world, and in particular our part of the world.

The book of Job wrestles with the question of why God allows bad stuff to happen to good people. Job, however, never questions if God exists. He questions why God seems to have disappeared in his life. He questions the “Why” of God’s absence, while clinging to his belief that if he can just have a heart to heart talk with God, all his questions and doubts will evaporate.

“Oh that my words were written! Oh that they were inscribed in a book! Oh that with an iron pen and lead they were graven in the rock for ever! For I know that my Redeemer lives, and at last he will stand upon the face of the earth.” Job 19:23-25

Job never gets the answers he is looking for. Instead, he discovers a God full of questions that he is unable to answer. The “Why” of God continues as mystery, the “Presence” of God as reality.

I went through my own period of skepticism as a young woman. A book I’d read had set me on a path of doubting everything I had ever learned about my faith. Both doubt and skepticism grew. Even though I was doubting God, there was a yearning to know and be known by the God I wasn’t sure existed. Months passed which turned into years. I tried to believe, but didn’t really. I thought I believed, but wasn’t sure.

Some of my evangelical friends would use the term born again, when eventually I came to experience the reality of God in my life. I tend to think of it as reaching the point where all my defenses were down, that allowed God to touch my heart. Us Wesleyan’s like to refer to John Wesley’s moment of awareness of Assuring Grace, when he spoke of feeling his “heart strangely warmed.”

One night I simply turned my life over to God. From that day doubt and faith have mingled together. Life experiences forced me to rethink what I once believed about God. At times, I’ve wondered what God could possibly be thinking, entrusting people like myself with a message of love and grace.

I’ve wondered why God does not prevent tragedies. At other times, I have seen God move mountains in people’s lives, as one person after another feels a need to help, to reach out, to care in some tangible way for a person they know is having a difficult time. I have seen people whose lives were a mess, turn them around as they encountered the presence of the living Christ. I’ve known men and women who have drawn strength and encouragement from their faith in the midst of  tragedies and losses. I have watched those who approached their own death with grace and dignity, confident in the knowledge of God’s love surrounding them.  

There is a space in each of us that is meant for God to touch. My daily walk with God, is what gives me direction, adds joy to my life and constantly challenges me to grow as a human being.

A version of this post was previously published on January 8, 2015 as  “Does Anyone Really Need God”