Doubt and Disillusionment
Posted on February 7, 2008
My favorite blogger and online theologian, Real Live Preacher, has a redesigned site and is writing again. One of his new essays was particularly powerful for me today and I want to share the heart of it with you:
If there is an intelligence behind the universe, behind all that exists. If there is an intelligence that put these forces in motion, the forces that cause tides to pull and the plates of the earth to shift. The forces that pull matter together in swirling galaxies and blast energy outward when stars die. If there is an intelligence behind all of this, I know nothing about it. Any ideas I have about this intelligence will be wrong. Any name I give it, Hashem or God or Allah, will be a false name. Whenever I think I have come to understand this being, my understanding will have to be broken down and rebuilt, only to be broken again.
Yet in my ignorance, I can serve Hashem with acts of goodness in Hashem’s name. I can honor even the possibility of Hashem’s existence with my prayers and worship and life. I can follow the Christian spiritual tradition with its story of death and redemption, but not arrogantly, as if I have found the key to unlock the reality of Hashem. Instead I must follow the Christian path humbly and broken, for it is the only path I know.
Always there will be breaking and disillusionment. Always I will be building, and never will I achieve understanding.
And so I build and tear down. That’s all I know.
Tomorrow I will tell you the story of a time when I was terribly disillusioned. My way of honoring God was broken like the stones of a sacred city and scattered across the plains.
I will tell you this story because on the spiritual journey, disillusionment is as important as enlightenment.
So, can we share our stories of disillusionment and doubt with one another? Can we talk about how we made it through? Isn’t this key to the spiritual life? In the Unitarian Universalist hymnal we have a reading that says Cherish your doubts, for doubt is the attendant of truth. Doubt is the key to the door of knowledge; it is the servant of discovery…”
I’m so often struck by how much we seem to try to be perfect and to never let a mistake, a doubt, or a moment of weakness show. How can we truly be in religious community if we aren’t given the opportunity to share this part of our dear, sacred, amazing, and beautiful humanity? What are your stories of doubt?
» Filed Under Ministry, Social Commentary, Theology
Comments
4 Responses to “Doubt and Disillusionment”
Leave a Reply
I’ll be interested in reading more about this, Rev. Sean. I have been thinking deeply about humility. That’s something I don’t hear about much in a UU church … I think we’re missing out on a rich path to understanding.
Thanks for the tip. I would have missed it otherwise.
“…on the spiritual journey, disillusionment is as important as enlightenment.”
That gave me shivers, Sean. Thanks so much for the heads up!
My story is not so much of doubt, as of the feeling that the details about God and the Universe are on a “need to know” basis, and that what we are being told is WE DON’T NEED TO KNOW!
As Doug Muder says, what’s important is knowing how to live in the here and now, what to spend ourselves and our life on.
The rest will take care of itself.