Let the Doubters Doubt: A Reflection on Wrestling with God and Walking away Wounded and Blessed | Sarah Woodard '20

First, a confession: whatever book I’m currently reading inevitably has a great influence on what I write, and that will certainly hold true for this post. Right now I’m in the middle of Rachel Held Evans’ Inspired, a book about the late author’s wrestling with Biblical doubt, imagining, difficult experiences in the church, and ultimately, about loving and being loved by God in the midst of it. As it turns out, this book came at a good time for me.

Last week, I turned in my last collegiate papers and exams, and this Saturday, I will attend virtual graduation and officially garner my new title as graduate and alumnus. Honestly, I’m not sure how to feel, especially about the virtual part. While I’m still processing these emotions, one emotion that keeps coming back to me—and that I’ve heard echoed by my friends and fellow class of 2020 graduates—is gratitude. Despite the disappointment of watching our highly anticipated graduation ceremony on our little screens and spread out all over the state, country, and even world, the word I have heard from the most people to describe their UVA experience since quarantine began is grateful. That is not to say that the gratitude we feel eliminates the sadness, anxiety, and uncertainty we feel. We hold our thankfulness and our sorrow at once.

So in the spirit of the collective gratitude that I believe helps sustain us in the grief, I want to add my own piece. Reading Inspired has reminded me of an unexpected source of gratitude: today, I am grateful for these last four years of what will surely be a lifetime of spiritual wrestling. I am grateful for the spiritual doubt, questions, and uncertainties that I acquired during my time at UVA. Mainly, I am grateful for the university—its classmates, students, and assigned readings—that introduced me to issues that made me doubt, and to the communities who welcomed me in my doubt and helped me process it without pretending to have all the answers. Spiritual growth is not possible without struggle and inquiry, so I am grateful to the communities that poked and prodded at my faith and unknowingly tested it in the fire. I am also grateful to the communities who watered and revived my faith when it began to dry out. Sometimes these communities were one in the same.

My classroom experiences went hand in hand with those in religious organizations. Questions that arose in the classrooms, conversations, and books I was reading for school—questions like, “Why has so much of the injustice and violence in our world been carried out in God’s name?” “Why am I just now learning about this particular moment of racial strife in America?” “What do I, as a follower of Christ, think about [insert political issue]?— were questions I was often able to wrestle with in religious organizations like Theological Horizons where I could consider them in light of God’s Word and other believers past and present.

Or, vice versa. Often, Christian organizations and friends raised new questions without attempting to answer them. Sometimes, I found my answers, or the beginnings to them, in so-called “secular” books or classes. The lines between the “secular” and “spiritual” are not so rigid as I once thought. That is one of lessons I’m thankful I learned here.

This question raising and doubting is sacred work. It is also human work. To doubt, to struggle, to ask questions about the world around us – this is how we better understand each other and God, broaden our horizons, and develop empathy. This work is not only what makes us essentially human, but also what makes us fundamentally humane. Journalist and civil rights activist Eugene Patterson said, “We don’t become more spiritual by becoming less human.” What I learned in my classrooms helped me cultivate and develop my humanity in a way that made me dive deeper spiritually.

In the last four years at UVA, I’ve asked and doubted, and I’ll doubt and ask some more. It is risky to ask questions. I can’t expect to wrestle with God and walk away unscathed. Jacob certainly didn’t; he limped the rest of his life from the wounds he acquired in his fight with God. I may just lose my faith if I keep pressing to understand why certain Biblical stories make God seem just fine with the Israelites annihilating entire indigenous tribes in Canaan, for example. But I will certainly lose my faith, even if quietly and without fanfare, if I silence and ignore my qualms and questions.

Evans argues that the “hardest part of religious doubt” is not feeling isolated from God but from your community. What a revelation, and one that has given me overwhelming cause for gratitude.

Thank you to the mentors, friends, and communities that gave me the freedom, encouragement, and courage to doubt my faith. Thank you for not isolating me when I asked, “but why?” when I demanded more, when I insisted, like doubting Thomas, on touching Jesus’ hands for the nail marks, for pressing my hand to His side to feel the wound left by the soldier who pierced him.

They could have isolated me—told me my doubts were dangerous—but they welcomed my doubting self with grace and humility instead. The graceful spirit of these people and organizations watered my soul when it thirsted and showed me the light when I was enveloped in darkness. They helped me to grow. Because of this posture of openness, because of the communities and individuals who allowed me to brashly and unabashedly spit my questions in God’s face, I have come out of college exclaiming, like the father of the boy Jesus healed of an impure spirit, “I do believe; help me with my unbelief!” (Mark 9:24).

Like Sarah, I have laughed at God when he told me the improbable, and then fallen to my knees in awe when he saw it through (Genesis 18). When I was in the wilderness, I have asked God, like King David, “Why have you forgotten me?”; I have been able to “pour out my soul” and “praise” Him even as my bones shake in agony within me, “saying to me all day long, ‘Where is your God?’” (Psalm 42).

And I want to continue to do so. In the words of Evans, “I’m still wrestling, and like Jacob, I will wrestle until I am blessed. God hasn’t let go of me yet.” And neither has my community let go of me yet.