What Happens When We Don't Believe?

What happens when you don’t believe anymore? Not in yourself, not in church, not in God, not in anything. What really happens? I’ll give you a hint: the answer is not nothing.

A lot of times, in all honesty, we act as though we are scandalized at the thought of someone not believing. We don’t talk about this kind of thing in church. But what if we did? What if we spoke about people whose lives had been hard, who had prayed and trusted, who were let down by empty promises of hope and consolation? What if we talked about the people who were always left out, who could never find a way to feel like they could reach God – that God could never (or would never) reach them? What if we told the truth about the mornings where it didn’t seem to make a difference whether we believed one thing or another, in God or Buddha or Minerva or Zeus?

What would happen if we told the truth? Faith is really hard. What happens when times are tough, when everyone around us seems to speak in platitudes, in words that seem more geared towards comforting them more than us, leaving us in the big empty tunnel, alone?

It sounds pretty dark. It sounds pretty hopeless. But this is the place from which faith takes wing. And no, it doesn’t always. And no, if we’re being honest, it doesn’t for everyone. There are times, however, that we realize it is not we who hold – or have – faith, but it is faith that holds and has us.

I have completely stolen the last sentence from Ben. One day, as we were discussing the difficulties of faith and life, I said, “I’m not sure I could be a pastor if you ‘lost’ your faith.” And he completely schooled me on how faith works. Me, a seminarian, and him, an artist. He said to me words that would change my life forever: “Mandy, I don’t have faith. Faith has me.” And, with my eyes filling with tears, I realized he was right. I’m not sure faith can be lost. I’m not sure people can ever, finally, be lost. I don’t think this is a “get out of jail free” card or license to treat our neighbors poorly, to do whatever we please as it suits us, regardless of the implications it has on another person or on us. Rather, I think this speaks to the graciousness of our God. It is grace upon grace. It is fundamentally impossible to understand. It is the greatest gift when we receive it, and it is completely scandalizing when we realize that those we don’t deem worthy have also received it.

But what happens when all of the lights seem to have gone out? What happens when tragedy strikes, fraying the edges of our faith so that we’re not sure whether it is faith, God, or we ourselves who are going to get us through the mess? What do we cling to? Who do we cling to? Where do we go?

You will never be let down by anyone
more than you will be let down
by the one you love most in the world
it’s how gravity works
it’s why they call it “falling”
it’s why the truth is harder to tell
every year
you have more to lose
but you can choose to bury your past
in the garden
beside the tulips
water it
until it’s so alive
it lets go
and you belong to yourself
again

When you belong to yourself again
Remember forgiveness
is not a tidy grave
It is a ready loyal knight kneeling before your royal heart

Call in your royal heart
Tell it bravery cannot be measured by a lack of fear
It takes guts to tremble
It takes so much tremble to love
Every first date is a fucking earth quake

Sweetheart, on our first date
I showed off all my therapy
I flaunted the couch
Where I finally sweat out my history
Pulled out the photo album from the last time I wore a lie to the school dance
I smiled and said “that was never my style
Look how fixed I am
Look how there’s no more drywall on my fist
Look at the stilts I’ve carved for my short temper
Look how my wrist is not something I have to hide” I said
Well I was hiding it

The telephone pole still down from the storm
By our third date I had fixed the line
I said listen,
I have a hard time
I mean I cry as often as most people pee and I don’t shut the door behind me
I’ll be up in your face screaming “SEATTLE IS TOO RAINY SEATTLE IS TOO RAINY
IM NEVER GOING TO BE ABLE TO LIVE HERE.”
I sobbed on our fourth date

I can’t live here
In my body, I mean
I can’t live in my body all the time it feels too much
So if I ever feel far away know I am not gone
I am just underneath my grief
Adjusting the dial on my radio face so I can take this life with all of it’s love and all of it’s loss

See I already know that you are the place where I am finally going to sing without any static meaning
I’m never gonna wait
that extra twenty minutes
to text you back,
and I’m never gonna play
hard to get
when I know your life
has been hard enough already.
When we all know everyone’s life
has been hard enough already

it’s hard to watch
the game we make of love,
like everyone’s playing checkers
with their scars,
saying checkmate
whenever they get out
without a broken heart.

Just to be clear
I don’t want to get out
without a broken heart.
I intend to leave this life
so shattered
there’s gonna have to be
a thousand separate heavens
for all of my separate parts
And none of those parts are going to be wearing the romance from the overpriced vintage rack
That is to say I am not going to get a single speed bike if I can’t make it up the hill
I know exactly how many gears I’m going to need to love you well
And none of them look hip at the hot coffee shop
They all have God saying “good job you’re finally not full of bullshit”
You finally met someone who’s going to flatten your knee caps into skipping stones

Baby, throw me
Throw me as far as I can go
I don’t want to leave this life without ever having come home
And I want to come home to you
I can figure out the rain

—    Andrea Gibson, “Royal Heart”

Sometimes, I think we want faith to feel like a first date, over and over again, but it – as the bridge imagery for Israel in the Old Testament suggests – is more like a marriage. Israel and God aren’t on their fourth date. They’ve been together for quite some time, and now the doors have been slammed, tempers raged, words screamed, and it seemed like God has placed God’s house key on the counter and left. For good.

And here comes Isaiah. Isaiah, who told them this was going to happen, who warned them. Isaiah, who seemed to bring doom and gloom, now brings this word, this good news, the good news they didn’t know to look for because they were sure it wasn’t there:

¹⁰For as the rain and the snow come down from heaven, and do not return there until they have watered the earth, making it bring forth and sprout, giving seed to the sower and bread to the eater, ¹¹so shall my word be that goes out from my mouth; it shall not return to me empty, but it shall accomplish that which I purpose, and succeed in the thing for which I sent it. ¹²For you shall go out in joy, and be led back in peace; the mountains and the hills before you shall burst into song, and all the trees of the field shall clap their hands. ¹³Instead of the thorn shall come up the cypress; instead of the brier shall come up the myrtle; and it shall be to the Lord for a memorial, for an everlasting sign that shall not be cut off.”

People of God, you will never be cut off. God’s word does not return empty; it is not uttered in vain. ⁶Seek the Lord while he may be found, call upon him while he is near; ⁷let the wicked forsake their way, and the unrighteous their thoughts; let them return to the Lord, that he may have mercy on them, and to our God, for he will abundantly pardon. ⁸For my thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways my ways, says the Lord. ⁹For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts. 

During the Exile, God was not saying “I’m leaving” or “Go away.” God was saying “Come home.” You see, it wasn’t really God who had left the keys on the counter, but God’s people. It wasn’t God who screamed and said God was leaving for good. It was Israel.

And sometimes, we want to leave our keys on the counter, close the door, and say “See ya” because this love stuff, this faith stuff, is really really hard. I think that is the way it is with anything real, anything true, anything that is worth believing in.

The Word of God does not return empty. It goes out to the ends of the earth, looking for God’s beloved, saying “Come home. Let’s try again. Just come home.” Because the one thing God doesn’t know is how to give up on us.