Every ideal is picked apart. George Washington has his mural painted over because he owned slaves.

The aspiration for e pluribus unum ("out of many, one")—from the Great Seal of the United States—is being shredded by the chronic subdividing of increased tribalism.

Even gender is up for grabs, as though chromosomes in place from conception are only a suggestion.

Nothing escapes ruminating scrutiny, skepticism, and the determination to control outcomes.

In Christian circles, deconstruction takes a slightly different form.

Doubt and disillusionment have become the new form of enlightenment.

It somehow sounds more authentic to share our doubt than it is to share our faith with confidence.

We watch thoughtful Christian leaders "break free" from the faith itself, as though shaking off invisible shackles. And it unnerves us.

While Scripture nowhere valorizes doubt, it is an inescapable feature of our fallen experience, particularly in a secular age. "I believe; help my unbelief" is a classic acknowledgement of doubt—and because the man humbly confesses it to Jesus, he is commended rather than rebuked (Mark 9:24).

Perhaps it's time to take another look at the way doubt and disillusionment can deepen our faith rather than destroy it.

Christians Have a Different Take

Doubt or disillusionment can come in various forms—toward God, toward his people, or just toward life in general.

But none of it has to destroy faith.

Christianity declares that the gospel of Jesus Christ is the transcendent revelation of the living God through all culture and time.

It's objectively true.

And if the reality of revelation exists pristinely, no matter what mist currently clouds my vision, then doubt and disillusionment need not pose mortal threats.

As a counselor I've struggled myself with the same doubt and disillusionment I hear from many other ministry leaders.

I know this to be true: no one really escapes this experience, if they're honest.

Doubt and disillusionment are rites of passage, occurring most poignantly in a person's 30s and 40s.

By then it's become wildly obvious that marriage and ministry and keeping a body healthy are much harder than it looked when friends were throwing rose petals in the air.

The actual experience of doubt, though, can truly feel like you've lost your way.

But that sense of lostness is not to be confused with the essence of your faith.

As Paul warned, that is the time to guard against being "led astray from the simplicity and purity of devotion to Christ" (2 Cor. 11:3).

What Will We Do with Doubt?

So what will we do with doubt and disillusionment when it comes our way?

I know what my reflexive tendency is, and I see the same in so many others: just buckle down and pull away.

I'd rather no one know there's a struggle in my soul.

Few things get better in isolation, though.

"Sin demands to have a man by himself," Dietrich Bonhoeffer said.

Alone is where we are picked off. There, all by our little self, our mind gets scrambled. Our soul turns cold and hard. Continue reading

• Paula Rinehart is a counselor in Raleigh, North Carolina. She was on staff with the Navigators for many years and now helps her husband with a leadership-development ministry called Mentorlink.

Like when I hear a baby cry right at the end of the Eucharistic prayer, or unlock the doors of a neglected community car that isn't mine, or wake up alone.

I was reading Eat, Pray, Love. I am not ashamed to admit reading the book, nor to enjoying it, nor to finding within its pages a beautiful tale of discernment and discovery.

Early in the book the author, Elizabeth Gilbert, describes her experience of family reunions, confused by the process everyone around her is engaged in. Everyone is seemingly on the same path.

She says, "First, you are a child, then you are a teenager, then you are a young married person, then you are a parent, then you are retired, then you are a grandparent - at every stage you know who you are."

I recreated that same list for myself.

"First, you were a child, then you were a teenager, then you were a young, confused, unmarried person, then you were a young Jesuit, then you were a middle-aged Jesuit, then you were an old Jesuit."

There, in my lumpy twin bed, pillow clutched between my legs, headlamp on high beam, reading a pop-culture contemporary classic, I began to cry.

Something about my life story felt empty and fleeting.

It felt like my life was already over.

There was no, 'what next?' Just Jesuit.

***

She's got a tomboy name, two initials that mask the femininity of what her parents chose to call her. Like Donna Jo Tanner from 'Full House' - DJ.

She works at a meat market in the town I'm living in this summer, and almost daily, a fellow Jesuit and I make trips to her store for rations of thick-sliced bacon, ground chuck, thundersticks, and aged cheddar.

I like her.

I know nothing about her, save her name and familial tie to the store.

She stands on the other side of the counter, old college t-shirt on, smiling brightly at everyone who comes in.

One day close to the 4th of July, the place was packed, and to lighten the tensions of a pre-holiday steak and chop shop in central Wisconsin, we fired a few jokes back and forth. Others joined in, too.

A pirate walks into a bar with a roll of paper towels balanced on top of his three-cornered cap.

The barkeep asks, 'Hey pirate - what's with the paper towels?'

The pirate says, 'Garrrrrrr, there's a bounty on m'head.'

We grab the goods and head out the door.

"See you soon enough," I say.

"Looking forward to it," she says warmly, and turns to the next customer.

Just down the road, I walk into a car repair shop, and while I wait, lament over an old-timey automobile advertisement.

The four happiest days of your life: your wedding day, the day you buy your home, the day your child is born, and the day you buy your new Oldsmobile.

Days I'll never experience.

I might witness marriage vows and baptize a few babies.

I may oversee the purchase of a new Jesuit community or reboot a fleet of Toyota Corollas and Camrys. But these won't be my own happy days.

I'll facilitate them to incite the joy and comfort of others. And, that doesn't always seem good enough for me.

A few months back, I'm on a train in my black clerical shirt and Roman collar, running late for a Friday night meal with some old friends.

One stop away from my destination, the train gets delayed.

Five minutes, then ten.

Eventually, the conductor lets us know that there is a medical emergency on one of the cars, and we won't move until an ambulance arrives.

Some young people behind me gripe.

Can't they just move 'em off the train?

God, I hate the L. Should have taken an Uber.

In my annoyance, I give them a less-than-kind look and walk out onto the platform.

Just then, someone the next car down sees me and flags me over.

"Father, can you come here? The guy is in bad shape. He just had a seizure."

I forego the explanation that I'm not a Father yet, that I'm running late, and that I can't imagine what I might do, and I make my way over to the man.

He is lying on his back crying softly and and breathing heavily, exhausted after his body betrayed him.

He's clothed in rags, more than a 5 o'clock shadow covering his dark, deeply wrinkled face.

But he sees me, and something like ease comes over him.

"Father," he says. "I'm so scared."

"Just be still and breathe. Help is coming, and everything will be ok."

He asks if I'll pray for him.

I take his face in my hands, and he clutches my wrists.

His eyes close, and I pray. And then, probably because I'd seen Pope Francis do it so many times, I stroke his hair back, and kiss him on the forehead.

The paramedics arrive, and I walk with the gurney as far as the ambulance. They rush him away, and I carry on.

I begin walking to my friend's house, a new place he just bought, the home he will share with his wife, two beautiful children, and two nice cars in the garage.

And, in this moment, I know my place.

As I walk, I think about how the world, despite its tumult and strife, still needs priests and brothers of the Society of Jesus and I am, despite my own failings and frustrations, willing to do it.

It is not always easy. But, I am where I should be. Just Jesuit.

Eric Immel is a Jesuit seminarian. This article was originally published in English in thejesuitpost.org which offers a Catholic perspective on the contemporary world.

Image: @ericimmel

Then I learned that even saints had massive doubts about God.

How reassuring.

If even the holiest of the holy had second thoughts, why not me?

Maybe we Catholics should talk more about doubt.

It actually is an intrinsic part of the pilgrimage, a Jesuit friend priest told me, common at the beginning and throughout the spiritual journey.

Then he told me to read none other than former Pope Benedict XVI on doubt.

Indeed, the first chapter of Joseph Ratzinger's "Introduction to Christianity" is all about doubt vs. belief.

"The believer is always threatened with an uncertainty that in moments of temptation can suddenly and unexpectedly cast a piercing light on the fragility of the whole," he writes.

Suddenly the believer is not just questioning the literalness of biblical stories — whether, say, Christ really walked on water — but facing "the bottomless abyss of nothingness."

And the abyss is lurking everywhere, it turns out.

Saint Therese of Lisieux, a 19th-century French Carmelite nun, wrote about her own terrible crisis of faith at the end of her life, at a mere 24.

The nuns she lived with were so horrified they edited her writings to remove mentions of the "temptations of atheism."

Spiritual genius Thomas Merton, the famed Catholic monk, said in "New Seeds of Contemplation," "Let no one hope to find in contemplation an escape from conflict, from anguish or from doubt . . . for every gain in deep certitude there is a corresponding growth of superficial doubt."

Some of the best-known Catholics novelists of the 20th century — Graham Greene, Flannery O'Connor, Walker Percy, Mary Gordon — created characters that swing wildly between faith and doubt.

A recurring theme: Faith is so hard to maintain in a brutal, unjust world; doubt comes easily.

Most famously and recently, Mother Teresa of Calcutta, whose letters were released in 2007, expressed doubt and despair about God.

Her "dark night" lasted almost 50 years, with rare reprieves, up until her death in 1997. Continue reading

Source

• Margery Eagen in Crux

Margery Eagan is a writer and commentator on current affairs.

The irony was lost on my friend.

The only funny thing he'd picked up on was that I could believe in God.

I get it. As a leftie, organic pasta, and free-the-gay-whale type, people tend to think I'm atheist.

At a stretch, I'm middle class enough to be a casual Buddhist who found enlightenment in Les Mills' Yoga room.

But in general, I get given the atheist sticker.

In reality, I like going to churches to sit in stained glass sunlit silence.

I have been christened, confirmed, and can recite the liturgy from page one to page eight of the service guide.

I grew up in a Christian house.

Well. What I mean is that my Mum's endless capacity to help others, combined with a firm belief in God, meant she was a significant figure in the local church.

And my Dad knew better than to stand in her way.

So my brother and I went to Sunday school and church weekly, until we were old enough to ask awkward questions. Continue reading.

Verity Johnson is a writer passionate about giving young people a voice. Educated in England and New Zealand, her work has been published in The New Zealand Herald, The Otago Daily Times, and Mizz magazine.

Source: TheWireless

Image: Verity Johnson

'I continue to believe that religion brings the potential for a great many good things" says the man. "I could probably continue going through the motions, except that I believe in morality and honesty, and I hate pretending to be something that I'm not. It would be very hurtful for my wife to hear about my loss of faith, but it might be even more damaging for me to continue lying. Should I maintain my secret as long as possible in the hopes that it never becomes necessary to reveal it?"

He concludes by quoting John Patrick Shanley
Doubt "requires more courage than conviction does, and more energy; because conviction is a resting place and doubt is infinite." Doubt is, he says, "a passionate exercise" we have to undertake if we're to test our beliefs and assess whether they might be misplaced,"

Lane is the Pearce Miller Research Professor of Literature at Northwestern University and the author of Shyness: How Normal Behavior Became a Sickness.

Shandley is the author of Pulitzer prize-winning play Doubt: A Parable

Read: Losing Our Religion: "Why Doubt Is a Passionate Exercise." by Christoper Lane