In recent months, word has come that a friend of many years has died. I don’t know the circumstance of her “passing,” as we say, but I do know that she suffered much in this life and wrestled in a very authentic way with what the next life offers. Not all may have found her answers acceptable, but what concerned me more were those who questioned her right to wrestle.
Nancy Arnold Eiesland suffered much in this life, particularly physically, but it was the wounds of fellow Believers which pained her – and me – most. I recall her telling me how when she was in Bible college her teacher grew tired of her questions and told her she could no longer ask them in class, lest they confuse her fellow students. She thought this odd, as do I to this day. Those students were preparing to minister to multitudes of Believers and unbelievers in our society and in cultures around the world and yet the teacher was afraid to let them wrestle with the very questions those multitudes wrestle with every day. Where better to wrestle than in a school devoted to the study of the Bible?
After graduating with honors from that very school (in spite of or because of her questions, I do not know), she went on to continue to ask questions, questions which led her to fall out of favor with her circle of fellow Believers who, like that teacher, chose to discredit her questioning rather than wrestle beside her. She was no longer welcome in the midst of the “Faithful” because her questions made her appear unfaithful to them.
I have my own doubts, but one thing I do not doubt: the Master does not disparage my or anyone else’s doubts. Doubt is not the enemy of faith. Unbelief is. Unbelief says don’t ask questions, don’t think, don’t wrestle. Any such wrangling is useless. As if God or faith were not up to the challenges. Doubt says there must be something worth striving for, something worth investigating. What we already know is not the sum of God. So doubt leads us away from unbelief toward faith.
At the same time, grace makes ample room for doubt. Grace understands that doubt is not the enemy, but is a part of the process through which we embrace faith. The Apostle Thomas is Example Number One. People often label him “Doubting Thomas” as if he is a bad model. Thomas’s moment in the Gospel limelight shouts to the world that those who doubt, those who question are very much welcome into the inner circle of Jesus. In fact, who is the only disciple not present the day Thomas posed his questions? The one who had stopped asking questions, the one known as Judas Iscariot.
Questions and doubts and wrestlings are a sign of God’s presence. As we used to say to our team in China, a mind that begins to ask questions is taking its first step toward the Cross. God welcomes the child who probes, who questions, who wrestles, who thinks, who engages, who challenges. On the other hand, a nonquestioning mind is asleep, comatose, dead – even lost.
At a moment of deepest despair in my own life, a close observer noted that though I was full of questions and anger and challenges for God, I had not given up on faith in God. Apparently at that dark moment in my life, I had not let go of life – or God Himself. Rather than flee God’s presence, I chose like Jacob to wrestle with God until I found his blessing (or favor). Jacob, who wrestled with God until God blessed him had his name changed to Israel, which means “struggles or wrestles with God.” He, who could find no favor on earth, found favor in heaven because he refused to quit wrestling.
Though I haven’t seen Nancy in years, she remains a beacon of faith to me, of a faith that is not afraid of the dark or of doubts, but a faith that embraces all that God places in our lives and says that though there is something of God very difficult for me, I will not let God go until He favors me. Nancy, like Jacob, suffered severely in her hip. That suffering was caught up in all her questions. But all her questions led her toward and not away from God. And that is the profound secret of wrestle-worthy doubts.
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