Faith is not a choice: some thoughts on William Lobdell

Posted on by

The Los Angeles Times this weekend ran a painful, powerful story by their former religion beat writer, William Lobdell. Lobdell, a serious Christian, had sought the job eagerly, but in time, became profoundly disillusioned. In the course of his work as a religion reporter, he covered sex scandals and uncovered financial wrondoing by trusted leaders. The abuse and hypocrisy he encountered shook him. His faith suffered.

For some time, I had tried to push away doubts and reconcile an all-powerful and infinitely loving God with what I saw, but I was losing ground. I wondered if my born-again experience… was more about fatigue, spiritual longing and emotional vulnerability than being touched by Jesus.

And I considered another possibility: Maybe God didn’t exist.

Lobdell continued to cover religion for the Times, but after witnessing a dismal case in Portland where the diocese refused to take responsibility for caring for a child conceived as the result of an affair between a priest and a vulnerable young parishioner, his doubts overwhelmed him.

My soul, for lack of a better term, had lost faith long ago — probably around the time I stopped going to church. My brain, which had been in denial, had finally caught up.

Clearly, I saw now that belief in God, no matter how grounded, requires at some point a leap of faith. Either you have the gift of faith or you don’t. It’s not a choice. It can’t be willed into existence. And there’s no faking it if you’re honest about the state of your soul.

Sitting in a park across the street from the courthouse, I called my wife on a cellphone. I told her I was putting in for a new beat at the paper.

Bold emphasis mine.

I read the article over the weekend and was deeply moved. I had forgotten about it (oh, how quickly the ENFPs move on to new ideas) until Jill blogged briefly about Lobdell yesterrday.

Like Lobdell, I had a born-again experience rooted in “fatigue, spiritual longing and emotional vulnerability.” I fell in love with Jesus nine years ago this month, after yet another suicide attempt and another involuntary hospitalization. My addictions to substances and experiences had left me so empty that I was desperate for anything, and I turned to Christ less as the result of a thoughtful, gradual process and more out of a sense of profound despair. Coming as it did at the very same time that I took the first temporary vow of celibacy of my adult life, my nascent faith in Jesus was very much like a passionate, hormonal love affair.

The great wonder is that my faith has lasted these past nine years. Oh, it’s grown and shifted a time or three. I’ve affiliated myself with Christians as diverse as Pentecostals (AG) and Mennonites and Episcopalians. I’ve flirted with theologians as liberal as John Shelby Spong and as conservative as John MacArthur. I’ve tried out Five Point Calvinism and Progressive Anabaptism and I’ve been “slain in the spirit”. It would not be uncharitable to say that in the first few years after becoming a believer, I replaced one form of promiscuity with another! My attachment to specific church communities was fleeting, but always intense. Like any good Borderline, I moved from idealization to disillusionment with extraordinary rapidity. The difference was that I was now idealizing (and then rejecting) churches rather than women.

I’m a lot more stable in my religious and personal commitments these days. But the truly amazing thing is that what happened to Lobdell didn’t happen to me. Though I have frequently been appalled by the dissonance between what my fellow Christians say and what they do, I’ve somehow never connected the failings of the church with my own beliefs. Perhaps because I never put down roots n any one faith community, I never had my faith shaken by the misbehavior of pastors or parishioners. My love for Jesus is too personal and too private to be threatened by what any one group of fellow believers says or does. That’s the privilege of the adult convert who can break communal attachments as easily as he made them.

In the end, after all this time, I still think of Jesus as my best friend and greatest lover. Like many evangelicals — particularly those influenced by Pentecostalism — I’m more in love with the Son and the Spirit than with the Father. Frequently, when someone asks me about my spiritual affiliation, I say simply “Jesus lover”. It’s a bit precious, I realize, but it also allows me to escape the theological pigeon-holing that I find so deadening and tiresome. In my life, Jesus comes first, my wife comes second, and everyone else follows. And my faith in Jesus, so far, has proven remarkably firm. Indeed, it’s been consistent for nearly a decade, and other than respirate, teach, and be addicted to caffeine, I haven’t done anything else consistently for that long.

Lobdell is absolutely right: faith is not always a choice. I don’t know why some people stop believing and others get to keep that sense of God’s presence. I know plenty of people, like the Times reporter, who work harder at keeping their faith than I do — and they still lose it while I remain strangely certain. I’m a great believer in hard work, a great believer that all relationships, even one with God, require effort. But I’m also reluctantly convinced that faith is a result of a grace that is, mysteriously, not given equally to all. That doesn’t mean I’m a Calvinist convinced of total human depravity. It does mean that I don’t believe, not even for a moment, that my conviction that God is real and that Jesus died for me and for the world is the result of my own personal virtue.

Those of us who are blessed with a faith that has withstood many trials would do well to remember how fortunate we are. And those of us whose faith came to us through our parents must test that faith to find out if it is what we can embrace as adults. Those of us who, like me, came to faith as adults in a moment of deep crisis must be honest about whether or not our belief is rooted more in authentic spiritual conviction or in the simple emotional longing not to be alone, to be loved unconditionally, to have (at last) someone who loves us so much that they will never leave us.

I’m praying for William Lobdell this morning and for the broader church. I’m grieving the countless sins, big and small, that we in the churches have committed that have helped drive Christians like Lobdell away.

And I’m feeling really, really grateful to have what I sure as hell did not earn.

UPDATE: Christy has a terrific post up on Lobdell as well, and she throws in Tammy Faye for good measure.

0 thoughts on “Faith is not a choice: some thoughts on William Lobdell”

  1. See, the faith is not a choice goes against everything I was taught in my churches. In my churches, (which, mind you, are not as liberal as the ones you appear to attend) I was told that you could will faith into existance, by praying and reading the Bible and tithing. Needless to say, all the Bible study in the world did not magically make faith appear in me, but that was just resolved away as “too much brain, and not enough heart”.

  2. Indeed, Antigone.

    Falling in love is not a choice. You can’t make yourself fall in love with someone if the chemistry isn’t there at all. Once in love, however, you can work to deepen that connection and make it more than a mere physiological response. Though it’s an imperfect analogy, I think there are some legitimate comparisons.

  3. So, this wonderful gift of a deep and sustaining relationship with a perfect being is given to some but not to others? So, us secularists are just plain out of luck? Some divine being.

    And then, of course, there is the claim (that seems well supported by the New Testament to me) that Christians are committed to the position that only people with faith will be saved, then you have the following problematic set of claims:

    1) Only people with faith go to Heaven, everyone else suffers for an eternity.
    2) Whether one has faith is not voluntary; some have it and some don’t.
    3) Some people suffer for an eternity because of something beyond their control.
    4) God is good and just.

    But even if you, say, reject (1), then there does seem to be a problem with the idea that a loving God would deliberately withhold this wonderful thing from people. Seems petty.

  4. I was also raised on a church in which faith was presented as the outgrowth of the right thoughts, the right mindset, and the right actions. But I never had faith, not even as a kid. I can’t remember a time in my church-going life in which I ever had a sense of god’s presence, or felt as if my prayers were doing anything but rattling around inside my head. I’ve never had any type of experience with the divine as it was described to me during my child- and young adulthood. Needless to say, for years I believed that this was because there was something especially sinful and rebellious about me.

    At some point in my young adult life, I realized that I’m simply not wired for faith. I no longer believe that the god I was taught to believe in exists, but if he does, I’m not tuned to the right frequency to hear him. Whatever it is in other people’s brains that allows them to seek meaning through the experience of the divine is missing in mine. That realization was enormously freeing.

  5. Nice post Hugo, as was Christy’s.

    Flannery OConner wrote a letter to a friend suggesting we need to try on doubt from time to time, see what it would be like to live w/out faith. And Chaim Potok suggested he’d rather live in a meaningful universe with pockets of insanity than in a meaningless universe with pockets of “beauty” with no explanation. As someone who doubts more often than he believes, but believes more deeply than he doubts, I’d suggest that the “gift of faith” does not preclude doubt but, rather, all true faith must, by necessity, incorporate doubt — and I suppose at times be overcome by it.

    Still, that grumpy new Pope had a wonderful prologue to his “What is Christianity” suggesting that the believer and doubter are not that far apart — each had moment when they thought, “But I could be wrong.”

    Stephen

  6. I’m Jewish (raised Reform, despite my family being secular since the Holocaust, if not before), and I, too, have come to the conclusion that faith is not a choice. I had a profound and comforting sense of G-d throughout my entire childhood, but it completely vanished when I was about 16, leaving me with a sense of nothing but the void. I had some long, agonizing months of total doubt, emptiness, incomprehension, in which I wanted to connect with G-d more than I’d ever wanted anything, but was completely incapable. G-d was nowhere to be found. My spirituality eventually came back (in a very different form), but only after I had learned to live my life around that hole in the universe.

  7. Although, I do have faith. I have a very strong faith in the goodness of humanity. I have very strong faith that working towards progressive goals will make a more just society. I have faith that people would not choose to do evil, if given better choices.

    I just don’t have faith in an intangible parent-figure.

  8. Good stuff, everyone. Steve, as usual you’re right on here:

    As someone who doubts more often than he believes, but believes more deeply than he doubts, I’d suggest that the “gift of faith” does not preclude doubt but, rather, all true faith must, by necessity, incorporate doubt — and I suppose at times be overcome by it.

  9. Andrew Brown has a post on this; that includes this comment:

    I don’t myself know any religious correspondent whose faith has survived writing about it – possibly some of the more radically pessimistic Catholics, but even there I am not sure. Sufficiently sophisticated magic is indistinguishable from truth.

  10. As an agnostic (i.e. doesn’t know, not an atheist) – and I’m not sure, given the facts, that anyone can be anything BUT an agnostic – I’m puzzled by this: A person who only has contempt for others, who is always striving to present himself as better than someone, even in petty things, and would run over corpses to do it, who has a far different private life than public life (not in the good way) and who uses God as the backup who is going to “get” others if they don’t do exactly what the bully says, who may use others for sexual, financial or ego-boosting ends … will go to heaven … but a person who really tries to be of service to others and society … is going to go to hell for wondering about the real nature of reality and the universe, and for wondering about the applicability of a bunch of old stories.

    *Yawn*

    I’ve actually seen tirades of people on Christian Web sites about how God is going to punish them, and you better believe it, buster.

    I’ve had anough with stupid people and phonies. Seriously, I’ve really had enough. The universe is beyond my ability to understand, but the bigger point is: It’s beyond the ability of blowhard know-it-alls to understand. I’m fairly sure of that.

  11. Take a usual assortment of dolts – the slightly retarded, hide-away child in a Royal Family in Europe; a housewife who dropped out in 9th grade (or even one who finished college, but 20 years later); Cindy Sheehan; Katie Couric; a full-time teacher at a community college; or even Brittney Spears – and you could shape their environment so that they believe pretty much anything you want them to believe. Just set up the right stimulation via TV, radio, people around them etc. and you could have them worshiping Gorzo, the ultimate being, who arose from a corn cob, in no time.

  12. Denker, since that would pretty much violate all scientific ethics, we’ll never try that one. but you’re possibly right.

  13. I think my biggest question for the US is: Why not just worship in private, whatever God or being or whatever you want to worship? Is there some kind of command, like there apparently is with Islam, to force your views on others?

    And I’m getting this from mainstream Web sites. I lean to the (secular) right politically, but I see idiots like Doug Giles on Townhall.com almost on the verge of condemning people to Hell who won’t do exactly what he friggin’ says. WTF? Just enjoy your own 70 virgins, or Heaven or whatever.

    I’m coming to the point of view that religion has killed nearly as many people as Communism and Stalinism.

  15. Denker, Anne Lamott (a Christian) once pointed out that you can be pretty sure you’ve remade God in your own image when He just happens to hate all the same people you do.

  16. I participate in the church for many (not all) of the same reasons that I participate in democracy. Both are human institutions with many flaws, but maybe even my tiny efforts can make a difference.

  17. Pingback: Warren Throckmorton » Blog Archive » Is religious belief a choice?

  18. I read a book a while ago and it keeps coming back to answer many questions that seem to arise. That book is by James Fowler called Stages of Faith. One tenent of his theory is that what many people consider “losing their faith” is really movement to a different level of faith. If we just stick with the discomfort, we will emerge with a more mature and useful faith. An overview can be found here: http://www.knowtown.com/epicjourneys/wp-content/stages.doc

    I have begun to think of being “born again” not as a movement to or within stage three faith, but more as the movement through stage four faith into stage five fatih. This movement involves the pain of giving up the black and white of stage three and the comfort that either/or provides. Moving through the unknowns of stage four and then emerging into a more mature (and I would say more useful) stage five faith. Unfortunately, people see stage four as “Losing your faith” and don’t proceed on.