Faith is Hard
The highly acclaimed writer Frederick Buechner passed away not long ago. In the 80s the New York Times honored Buechner as the leading clergyman/writer in the United States, and his novel Godric was nominated for the prestigious Pulitzer Prize in 1981. I read most of his non-fiction books that focused on the Christian faith early in my pastoral career and, strangely, did not always appreciate his writing. I had to grow in my faith by learning to respect my doubts before I could embrace this brilliant, provocative and deeply Christian writer.
Frederick Buechner
I had the good fortune to become acquainted with Buechner in my early 30s and heard him speak several times at various conferences and seminars. Once at a conference in Deland, Florida, I met him as he was leaving a lecture hall and was surprised when he stopped and engaged in conversation with me. We talked in a hallway for about 20 minutes as students passed us going to and from class. He was low-key, almost shy, and his voice was soft, almost like a whisper, but what has stayed with me after all these years were his penetrating eyes that seemed to bore directly into mine, almost as if he were looking through me and studying my soul. It was a bit unsettling, but now that I think back, maybe he was sizing me up, to see if I were a person who really wanted to learn or just trying to impress a famous writer with my litany of questions.
I struggled to appreciate Buechner early in my ministry because his brutal transparency caught me off-guard. Buechner wrestled with faith, acknowledged how difficult the God question was for him and shared so openly his doubts, fears and spiritual weaknesses in his writing that I was taken aback. He wrote how in seminary he often wondered why he was there and after working with street people, he questioned the benevolent care of God, or, even more startling, God’s existence. Years after his ordination he continued to question his call to ministry, wondering if he had made the right decision. His faith, to put it mildly, seemed a jumbled mess of contradictions, at least if you came from a conservative background as I had, where it was drummed into me that God was consistent, dependable, approachable and certainly not subject to contradiction.
For a number of years after graduation Buechner taught at a prep-school, where many of his students had rejected Christianity as a primitive form of religion for the less enlightened. Buechner struggled with how to reach these privileged and intelligent young people whose understanding of God was extremely narrow.
He decided to introduce his classes to a number of Christian writers like Karl Barth, Paul Tillich and C.S. Lewis, but he also realized, if he were to gain credibility with his students, he had to read what the students were reading—writers and thinkers who had rejected Christianity. Buechner wanted to show his students that Christianity grappled with some of the same dark issues as the popular existentialists’ and atheists’ writers who were vogue at the time. Buechner’s students, for the most part, were under the impression that Christianity was only a feel-good religion that ignored life’s cruel and inhumane realities. How could Buechner help these young minds and hearts to know that Christianity also struggled with faith in God and was intimately familiar with grief, despair and doubt?
Life is no picnic and there is much pain and heartbreak in the world and to dismiss these tragedies and focus only on the blessings make religion a form of escape, a soothing illusion that helps us get through life. Buechner wisely recognized the need for his students to be aware that the Christian faith struggles with the same perplexing questions and life-shattering events that non-believers do. Taking a note from the Christian philosopher Soren Kierkegaard, Buechner writes, “Faith is the most difficult of all things.”
Because my early Christian background and education had either skimmed over or avoided the hard questions of faith, I was unprepared early in my ministry to fully appreciate the soul-wrenching honesty of Buechner. As I experienced more of the raw, pain-filled world and the senseless sufferings that so many endure, I began to realize that to question faith, even to doubt God’s existence, or to sympathize with writers like Camus and Sartre who saw life in all of its horror and bleakness, was not evidence of a lack of faith, but was in reality an expression of real faith.
Camus and Sartre
Like Buechner, Camus and Sartre, people of biblical faith also struggled with making sense of the world and God’s place in it. King David, whom the Bible calls a man after God’s own heart, could sink so low in his life with God that he confesses, “Our days on earth are like a shadow, and there is no hope” (1 Chron. 29: 15). The prophet Jeremiah felt so betrayed by God that he accused God of sexually assaulting him! (Jere. 20:7) Job agonized over spiritual darkness, too, and called God a deceiver of people who creates nations only to destroy them and ruins the lives of those who have been faithful to him (see Job 12-14). I haven’t even mentioned the psalmists who often found God AWOL in his responsibility to watch over Israel. The writer of Psalm 88 laments that even though he has not sinned against God, God has abandoned him. Haven’t many of us felt that way at times?
Buechner’s writings find companionship with these darker passages of Scripture, and know they give a richer and more meaningful understanding to faith. His books do not back away from exploring these seldom discussed topics within the church community because he realizes that to ignore them leaves us unprepared for the bitter sting of winter, when God appears far away and hope only a wishful fantasy.
Buechner is right—faith is hard. Many of us readily identify with the man in Mark’s Gospel who confessed to Jesus, “Lord, I believe; help my unbelief.” Often we too hang on to faith by our fingernails. But we are not alone. As we have seen, the great personalities of Scripture knew that faith was hard. Still, they continued to believe, continued to pray and continued to trust. Even the disciples of Jesus--who had walked beside, seen the miracles, broken bread and talked with Jesus--wavered in their faith. Jesus, seeing their hesitation, asked them point blank if they would rather follow a different path. Peter quickly blurted out: “Lord, to whom would we go?”
Buechner understands that faith is hard but maybe it is not the most difficult of all things—a life without faith is incredibly more difficult.
