Sometimes we must let ourselves lose faith in God so that we can discover that the God we believed in was not really God at all but a projection of our fears and anxieties. So powerful are these projections that they colour all our religious experiences, including the way we hear and interpret scripture, how we experience the sacraments, how we pass on our faith, and how we love and serve God and community.
So much that is not life-giving and inspiring in the practice of religion could stem from the fact that the God we worship is not really God but our projection of God.
So much that is not life-giving and inspiring in the practice of religion could stem from the fact that the God we worship is not really God but our projection of God. So perhaps those who truly seek will necessarily need to pass through the dark and frightening passage of DOUBT at some point in their journey. To ask themselves again at the most fundamental level, “What do I believe?” And “Why do I believe it?” and have no assumptions about where their questions will lead them.
But to really ask these questions (and to allow others to ask them) with courage paradoxically requires that we trust that we are safe, that somehow we are held and loved at an existential level beyond anything we can comprehend. So really, the most fundamental question that all of us are asking, whether we realise it or not, is “Am I loved?”
When it is love that launches us into doubt, we can be fearless in our questions because we are putting to doubt the shallow and narrow understanding of faith we used to hold sacred.
When it is love that launches us into doubt, we can be fearless in our questions because we are putting to doubt the shallow and narrow understanding of faith we used to hold sacred. So let us be loved sufficiently to doubt everything, so that in letting go we might more fully BECOME Love.
This post was originally written as a Facebook reflection on 8 January 2018. Recent conversations with people made me realise that many others have been experiencing a similar crisis point in the last year.
This blog post is meant to give them hope. Let us not be afraid when Love launches us into the Deep which is the Sacred Unknown!
Journey of the Heart 