While at a small group Bible study several weeks ago, adults of all ages and walks of life seated in folding chairs and sofas eating leftover confetti cake, I voiced a concern of mine that has been gnawing at the edges of most of my spiritual experiences for the past several years. “I know there are lots of theological explanations about this,” I began, wanting to beat others to the punch, “so I’m not saying that I, like, don’t know any of the apologetics about it, but yeah, I’ve just been…having a hard time with the concept of Hell lately, and it’s hard to rejoice in my own salvation when I know that some loved ones don’t experience that same joy.”
It’s amazing, how quickly canned responses come to our brains when we hear others’ theological conundrums. One fellow small group member immediately fired back, “Don’t let Hell steal Heaven’s joy for you,” and so I replied with another canned response: “yes, you’re right, thank you.”
A long pause. And then, another member spoke up. “You know,” he said quietly, voice tentative and not overpowering, “I think Paul expressed a similar sentiment in one of his letters. Romans 9.”1
That comment did not merit a canned response. Struck, though I couldn’t at that time articulate by what exactly, I nodded. “Y-yeah.” Another long pause. “Yeah. Yeah!”
The conversation turned to other topics from there, perhaps in part because no one was quite sure what else to do with it, but my friend’s remark has stayed with me. It was not until a week ago that I realized why.
My friend did not attempt to offer one-sentence healing. He did not shy away from what I said or treat it as a problem in need of solving. Without using so many words, in comparing my struggle with Paul’s, he offered an alternative I had never before considered: perhaps there is something of God in our wrestlings with truth.2
Another scene. Different setting. Different characters. I sat at a table with, once again, quite a mixture of people. Different ages. Different ethnicities. Different mother tongues. One of them, not a Christian, spoke up. “If Jesus is the only way to Heaven, what about people who are never exposed to the Gospel?”
Bang. Let’s go. Theological answers. None of them are wrong. Neither do any of them respond to the heart of the question: I feel hurt and confused over this subject.
Finally, my father spoke up. “You know,” he said, “I don’t think God is displeased with your questions. He gave us working brains and a sense of justice. Struggling with this issue shows that you’re using your God-given brain and sense of justice to make sense of it.”3
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Concerning Emotional Wounds Caused by Spiritual Struggle
I have hurled some pretty serious questions at God and even accused Him of things that aren’t true. I have crossed the line from honesty into disrespect and frustration into resentment. I am not a model for how to deal with doubt healthily because my response for many years was to try to hide my heart from God. I’ve already written a piece on what I believe is a healthy way to look at doubt now. That’s not going to be my focus here.
Instead, what I want to process a bit here is this: the power of responding with compassion to doubt. I do not believe that problem-solving answers are the key to coping with the emotions that come with doubt. At least, that’s not been my experience. In fact, if someone spouts off a trite theological saying in response to my doubts, which has been my experience more times than I can count, I’m actually quite unlikely to listen to anything they have to say.
For those of us who wrestle with questions that have caused us actual emotional distress, I have found a piece of hope to add to my growing collection.
“When I’m crying with [a friend], who’s regularly in my life, and [she] cries with me, something changes, literally, in my brain…There’s this science that says that our neuro pathways actually heal when we mourn with someone who mourns…The way your brain heals is when you share your pain with someone,”4 says Jennie Allen, who wrote an excellent book on emotions called Untangle Your Emotions. I watched her speak these words over a video streaming, and what she did next after explaining how our damaged brains get rebuilt through others’ empathy was show us a video of neuro pathways in the brain getting reconnected to one another through bringing a compassionate person into our mourning.
Empathy and mourning heal our damaged brains. It’s no wonder so many of us turn away, disgruntled, when our serious doubts get met with simple answers. Are the answers ever simple? Yes, sometimes. But the circumstances that lead us to ask questions rarely are, and they require more than just head knowledge. They require compassion (a word that, by the way, literally means “to suffer with”).
We need someone to sit with us and say, whether explicitly or not, “your struggle doesn’t scare me. I am not uncomfortable with sorrow. I do not intend to fix you so much as walk with you.”
The reason my friend and later my dad’s replies to expressiosn of doubt and/or disbelief meant so much to me is because their words communicated exactly that. When people try to offer quick solutions, often the underlying motivation is discomfort with other’s struggles. Meeting disbelief and/or doubt with empathy does not mean we are tossing aside truth or theology. It means we’re willing to meet someone where they are and work with them in that.
There’s so much more to be said here, so much to unpack, so many implications that are the automatic outward flow of what I’ve been learning. I’ll stop here for now. By no means am I attempting to offer solutions to doubt in this article; I just want to get started thinking. Empathizing. And eventually, healing.
Romans 9:1-3: I am speaking the truth in Christ—I am not lying; my conscience bears me witness in the Holy Spirit— that I have great sorrow and unceasing anguish in my heart. For I could wish that I myself were accursed and cut off from Christ for the sake of my brothers, my kinsmen according to the flesh.” Paul’s sentiment and mine were not exactly alike—I am not as selfless as he was—but our grief and dismay at what is, in my opinion, God’s most heartbreaking judgment start from the same heavy heart of grief.
This! I want to write more about this topic, in and of itself, sometime.
Disclaimer to those whose kneejerk response is “if it’s truth, then it’s truth, so who cares how you feel about it!” My dad did agree with the conclusion that faith in God’s judgments is necessary. However, instead of immediately jumping to that, he spent time empathizing with my friend’s concerns and validating the great dissonance that our human brains see when dealing with some of God’s difficult-to-understand ways. Also: I firmly believe (based on testimonies I have heard) that God can use supernatural means to reach people who are searching for the Gospel without any humans or resources in their lives to share it with them. Just because we don’t know of God’s work at some remote part of the world doesn’t mean He isn’t working. Also: my beliefs on Hell have evolved and (I think) become significantly more ACTUALLY Biblical over time, meaning they are somewhat less literal than many evangelicals were raised to believe. You should ask me about it over a cup of coffee sometime.
Allen, J. 2024. Because of Jesus, We Are Free [Video]. IF:2024.
This caught me: "We need someone to sit with us and say, whether explicitly or not, 'your struggle doesn’t scare me. I am not uncomfortable with sorrow. I do not intend to fix you so much as walk with you.'" Recently, I was listening to a parenting talk on toddler tantrums. The speaker said that a child's default is to blame themselves inwardly for every negative emotional situation. Because of this, it's vital that the parent be willing to sit calmly with the child through the entire emotional storm to show them that (1) the parent loves them no matter what and will never leave them and (2) that even if the child is frightened by their own feelings, the parent is not. Your writing made me think—maybe it's not just kids who respond to their negative emotions that way. A lot of us need "parent" figures who can stay steady and engaged through our most honest expressions of distress.