Lately, I have been struggling with my faith.
I suppose anyone can say that, though. After all, faith is hard.
We, as Christians, all wish we can overcome our struggles with faith—act as if they never existed. However, how can we overcome these struggles if we even never acknowledge that we are struggling in the first place? This is why I am writing this post: I want to detail my own struggles with faith and the Christian religion.
Please note that this is not intended to degrade the Christian faith; after all, I live in a Christian family, and I still consider myself a “Christian” (maybe not an exemplary Christian, but still a Christian nonetheless). All I want is to dedicate some time to discussing my struggles here. Your struggles may be different from mine, and you may not agree with some of my beliefs. That's okay. Nevertheless, I hope you are able to find a part of yourself in this post. Hopefully, this provides you with food for thought as well as comfort that you are not alone in the struggle with faith.
My Struggles with Faith:
1. God just doesn’t feel real.
To clarify, this is not necessarily a struggle with the existence of God. Of course, believing in a supreme being that has existed since the beginning of time and has been able to maintain the geological, biological, and physical foundations of Earth is quite difficult to believe. However, I have actually been able to reconcile some of my beliefs about the raw possibility of a supreme being.
My struggle is not necessarily a question of the existence of God. Rather, it is a question of the nature of God.
We are told that God is perfect and all-knowing. After all, Deuteronomy 32:4 says that He is “a faithful God who does no wrong,” and Psalm 18:30 states that God’s “way is perfect” and His “word is flawless.”
Okay… How am I supposed to believe that? Why should I believe that?
It is hard to know for certain. We are supposed to believe that there is one all-knowing, all-perfect God… simply because the BIBLE says so!
I am not saying I do not believe in God’s power; I just find it hard to believe in His perfection. God has done many amazing things in people’s lives. I understand that, but how (and when, I shall say) will we ever learn the reason and logic behind God’s perfection—whatever "perfection" is supposed to be! Must we wait until we die and go to Heaven just to understand that?
Faith tells us that God is perfect because the Bible says so. He is faithful because the verses tell us. He is just because the Scriptures say so.
That reasoning, however, is just not sufficient to me. God is powerful. I will not deny it. But how are we supposed to suddenly believe that He is perfect? Why must we make such sudden jumps in logic just to assure ourselves that we are living with a perfect God!
This is one reason why Bible studies, which are centered around the way God can help people, have come out meaningless to me. They just seem to be an endorsement of wishful thinking. Nothing more.
2. The Bible characters don’t feel realistic, either.
In addition to making (seemingly) unproven assertions about God’s perfection, the Bible just does not seem realistic. What I mean by that is that to me at least, it does not seem to fully encapsulate human nature. That is to say, the characterization just feels very one-dimensional.
This is, obviously, very subjective. People more experienced in faith and religion may find fallacies in this belief, but I honestly cannot help but question the way the Bible characterizes and depicts morality and human nature.
Once again, this is entirely subjective, but in my (probably faulty) opinion, the dialogue and characterization in the Bible sounds a lot like what you would find in a children’s fable. Beneath all those laws, numbers, and genealogical records, we are left with naked, one-dimensional characterization; in my own mind, it seems as if the good characters are good for the sake of being good, and the bad characters are bad for the sake of being bad. The depiction of morality, character, and human nature in the Bible seems so black and white!
Satan, for instance, was described to be prideful, seeking power over the world and power equal to that of God. After all, Isaiah 14:13-14 tells us that Satan wanted to “ascend to the Heavens,” “raise his throne above the stars of God,” and “make himself like the Most High.”
However, we are not quite given an explanation as to why that is. What exactly were his motives behind wanting all that power? I understand that yes, Satan is evil, and we should not worship him, but from a literary standpoint, his characterization seemed unrealistic. There was no logic and nuance behind it. People (and devils, I suppose) must surely have reasons and motives behind their actions. Evil is not just something we acquire or inherit—it is something that we develop overtime. Why was Satan so power-hungry, and what can we learn from his motives? If someone were to tell me that a person was evil, I would rather be told how they became evil, not just what makes them evil.
This was why I often struggle to glean something from Satan and other "evil" characters in the Bible---they just lacked the nuance to help me understand what, exactly, the definition of "evil" is supposed to be.
Even the more “heroic” characters seem to have unrelatable, one-dimensional characterization. I am not trying to deny their theological importance; their contributions to theology and Christian society are innumerable, but they are presented in a way that just does not seem to fully encapsulate the complexity of human nature, motive, and morality. To be quite honest, Abraham, Paul, Peter, Joseph, and Abel all seemed to be characterized quite similarly; they were all noble believers who were more pure and noble than the people they lived with, having faith in God against all odds. Abraham was willing to sacrifice his son. Abel gave God the firstborn of his flock. Joseph was able to interpret the pharaoh's dreams. Quite similar if you ask me: they perfectly follow high-fantasy hero archetypes, almost to the point where it seems as if the characters have been fictionalized. That is why I struggle to relate to the Bible's depiction of morality and humanity: it is so rigid. It does not even seem real.
Honestly, the characters' dialogue and narration feel quite similar as well; when it comes to dialogue and first-person narration, the Bible, in my (very subjective and most likely flawed opinion), lacks variation in voice and perspective. I honestly could not quite distinguish the voice of Paul from the voice of Peter. I could, of course, still distinguish their characters based on their experiences—different things happened to them, thereby prompting them to make different decisions in their lives. However, the characterization of these heroes did seem a bit superficial and unrelatable, from a philosophical and literary standpoint. Once again, I am sure there is something to glean from these characters. However, the way the Bible characterizes and depicts something as subtle and complex as human nature and morality has been a struggle for me. This is why I feel a distance from the characters and ultimately the lessons they are trying to teach---to me, the characters are portrayed as archetypal villains and heroes you could literally find in sci-fi or high fantasy books. That is why the Bible's definition of evil and righteousness is hard to learn from.
3. Faith seems epistemologically oversimplified.
I love reading philosophical texts. I enjoy wallowing in the abstraction and gathering information from multiple different perspectives in order to formulate my own beliefs. The analysis and open-endedness in philosophy is truly subline.
Religion kind of takes away from that.
I remember this one time when I stumbled upon an image containing a quote that went something like this, “Faith does not answer questions; it only stops you from asking them.”
Christianity proposes that there is one ultimate source of knowledge: the Bible. Everything in the Bible is true and applicable. After all, 2 Timothy 3:16 states that, “All scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, correcting, and training in righteousness.”
I am not saying that the Bible is wholly ignorant. Like any other philosophical text, the Bible has a lot of interesting things to say. It’s just that the fact that all of my beliefs must revolve around a single book seems very unfulfilling.
Approaching the Bible as a religious person is different than approaching any other philosophical text. With any other philosophical text, I can digest the content, analyze its meaning, evaluate its applications (or lack thereof), and then use my opinions and assessments to formulate my own beliefs about the text and the topic it discusses. However, I cannot simply “evaluate” and “critique” the beliefs in the Bible—as a Christian, I must simply find a way to agree with all of them! While I am not completely barred from analysis when I read the Bible, the need to be faithful and believing as a Christian places a huge limitation on my freedom of thought.
Suppose I were to quote one of Thoreau’s books to reinforce and justify my support for environmentalism; I would not be expressing my support for Thoreau’s sentiments merely because Walden says so! That's obviously very fallacious! Instead, I would be expressing my support of the quote because I have run the beliefs through my head and decided I believe in them.
However, faith tells me I must believe something because the Bible says so. Again, the Bible has some interesting things to say, but the fact that I must believe something because it comes from a certain book... that just sounds very fallacious.
Dependence on the Bible as the ultimate philosophy, the ultimate source of truth, the ultimate cure to everything—that does not seem very satisfying.
It strips us of a lot of freedom when it comes to inquiry, especially critiquing and evaluation.
This is probably my greatest frustration with the concept of faith and religion: religion asserts that the Bible is the answer, thereby making it difficult to ask questions.
Faith, indeed, is a very difficult concept to grapple with. For me, the Bible’s conception of God’s nature, the book’s (seemingly) superficial characterization, and faith’s (seemingly) oversimplified epistemology are what make me struggle with my religion.
I hope this post enlightens you about some aspects of the Christian’s mind. Again, this is not intended to degrade the Christian faith; as a Christian myself, I want to stop struggling with these things. I just want to enlighten readers about some of the difficult aspects of being religious.
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