I receive e-mails from all over the country every week. People hear about Marble Church from others who know our story. They visit our web site. They study and worship with us on line every Sunday. And they write with comments, encouragement, compliments, suggestions, and the most intriguing questions.

Recently I received a question from someone who lives a long distance from NYC, but I suspect it is a question frequently posed in our city and every city, town, and village where people think about Faith. He said: “How can I believe in God when I don’t feel it down deep inside?”  I’ve heard that question posed in many ways: “Can I believe when it doesn’t make sense any more?”  “How do I believe what I accepted as a child when now I know so much more about real life?”  “What if the connection between my head and heart is broken? Can I listen to my heart when my head is so unsure?”  All those are reiterations of the e-mail question: “How can I believe in God when I don’t feel it down deep inside?”

Let me answer by saying three things: First, do not feel guilty about it. Crises of faith do not mean that you are a bad person or somehow un-or-anti-Christian. Jesus encountered a man whose small child was epileptic and often fell and injured himself. The father, who deeply loved and desperately feared for his child, had prayed and prayed and prayed some more with no visible results. Jesus asked the man: “Do you believe?”  He answered: “I believe. Lord, help thou my unbelief.”  It was a beautifully honest answer. It was like saying, “I want to believe. I’ve tried to believe. But, I am having trouble doing so.”  Jesus did not judge or chastise the man. Instead, He honored his honesty and healed his child. If you have trouble believing, do not beat yourself up about that. Christ won’t, so why should you?

Second, remember that (in the words of Leslie Weatherhead), there is such a thing as a Christian Agnostic. Agnosticism is not atheism. It is, instead, a confession that you do not have all the answers alongside a hunger to know more. If you are having trouble accepting some of the dogmas or tenets of orthodox Faith, and if that is an issue to you, and if you wrestle with it, then perhaps your inner turmoil indicates that God is actually important to you. In fact, your inner struggle to come to terms with the reality of God may mean that Faith means more to you than to some folks who think they have God captured in a tidy little systematic box that He/She is let out of only for an hour or so on Sundays. The hunger to believe and the honest struggle with deep questions show a respect for the Divine Mystery we call God.

Finally, Practice faith till you find it. John Wesley, the founder of Methodism, used to tell the missionaries he sent out that there would be dry seasons, times of spiritual weariness and doubt. When those times come, he always said: “Preach Faith till you find Faith again.”  In short, there is something to be said for practicing spiritual disciplines even when you don’t feel particularly spiritual … for worshiping when you’d rather stay home in bed, for praying when you feel like the words bounce off the ceiling, for reading scriptures even when you doubt their relevance to the contemporary world, for setting aside daily devotional time even when your mind is somewhere else. In doing the work of spirituality, even when it seems like meaningless or rote work, the human spirit is fed, and the whispers of God in time are heard again.

All our emotions have a tendency toward ebb and flow, even the deep emotions of Faith. When the silent seasons come, I think these three pieces of advice are worth remembering: Do not heap guilt upon doubt. Remember that your struggles and questions can be statements of the importance of faith in your life. And, practice faith until you find it again, for sooner or later you will.