Loss and Spiritual Meltdown

A terrible and unimaginable thing has happened in your life.  You've suffered a deep and wounding loss.  Or maybe even a series of losses that seem to have come out of nowhere, devastating your life.

God didn't seem to have your back like your faith tells you He's supposed to.  You've done everything correctly, you've prayed, you've read the word, you've tithed, you've stayed in constant fellowship, you've walked a tight and legalistic highwire, leaning on God for everything and suddenly you fall and there is no net below you.  Church friends tell you not worry, "God has a plan," and this horrible circumstance is "His will" that you may or may not ever understand or have clarity on.  Suddenly, your strong faith begins to shift.  You begin to question God and everything that He's about. You find your belief system may not be as air-tight as you had once thought.

When a long held belief system starts to not make sense anymore, it can be a very confusing time.  Often, a profound loss can shake your faith and when you find that your theology isn't comforting, it can become a time of compounded grief.  The things you once believed do not seem to be true all in this devastating time.  No matter how hard you try to make it all fit together, things just don't add up.

All of a sudden the world under your feet feels like shifting sand.  What if God doesn't really have a plan for my life written down to the last detail, what if He does not micro-manage my life? What if the bible is not actually inerrant, what if there are errors and legit inconsistancies? What if the writers of the bible were not actually dictating the thoughts of God directly onto paper, but viewing God from their limited and ancient human perspective?  What if the bible isn't God's Holy Word but just a spiritual history book, documenting the Hebrew Gods' ancient people and the life and resurrection of Jesus Christ.  What if it's not actually living and authoritative? What if the scientific data is right and people really are born gay and it's not a sin?  Your mind spins out of control with these persistant invading questions which threaten to wreck your now fragile faith.  You pray and read the word in hopes of overthrowing these thoughts, but they persist.

 
You feel yourself sliding into an abyss of confusion, fear, depression as you begin to realize just how wrong you've had it all these years.  You can feel just how many people you've wounded with your bad theology and how it's estranged people from the love of Jesus.  You are having a life changing spiritual meltdown. Your understanding of God is changing, it's frightening, it's lonesome, it's distancing you from family and church friends.  People are trying to reason with you and giving you advice, expressing their concern about your skepticism, expressing that you might be falling away. 

Over time, you make progress in your journey through grief, you find that your search for clear answers to all of these questions becomes less important, but your search for an authentic understanding of God's character beomes the main focus. You feel desperate as you seek to see God and Jesus in a new light.  You think that perhaps there is way to have faith without adhering to biblical inerrancy doctrine.  Perhaps there is a way to understand God outside the context of fundamentalist theology and all of it's legalistic, enslaving doctrines. 

You begin to experience peace and quiet calm. You slowly start feeling  hope again.  You run across people who have had similiar spiritual meltdowns and loss of faith and find out that they've survived it, many times with faith in God and Jesus reconstructed and new.  Perhaps not all is lost after all. You're feeling hope that God may be real, that He may be loving and that you don't have to follow the fundamentalist crowd, spiritually, politically, theologically, socially or otherwise.  You feel a shift to the authentic and basic principles of Chrisianity.  Love, kindness, compassion, mercy, grace. 

Lord Jesus help me to search and find You in the midst of my trials and shaky faith.  Let me know Your authentic message and be comforted by Your truth.  So be it.