Living a Lie

by Bob Setzer, Jr.
Last night, I saw a story on the evening news that saddened and disturbed me. Several times before cutting to a commercial, the news announcer offered a teaser about an upcoming story of ministers “living a lie.” I feared the worst.

And in some ways, this really was the worst: not local church pastors neck-deep in some moral scandal, the usual fare of such exposes, but ministers who are self-avowed atheists. Yet these ministers have not confessed their loss of faith. Instead, they bear it as a shameful secret while pretending to believe.

One of the two ministers featured in the story calls himself an "atheistic agnostic" “I don't think we can prove that there is not a God or that there is a God," he says, (but) "I live out my life as if there is no God." So why does he and his fellow doubting Thomas stay in the ministry? Because they need a job and feel poorly qualified to do anything else.

As with all shameful secrets, part of what consigns these ministers to a hell of misery and self-hatred is not confessing their dilemma. Granted, if one or both of them announced this Sunday morning they are atheists, they would likely be looking for a job on Monday morning. But what if they had come clean with their troubling questions long before healthy doubt congealed into the hardened amber of cynicism and despair? That’s what the Bible does.

Writhing in agony, the Psalmist confesses, “My tears have been my food day and night, while people say to me continually, ‘Where is your God?" (Psalm 42:3). Jesus cries from his cross, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?!” (Mark 15:34). Even Paul, the cockiest of Pharisees, admits with refreshing candor, “We see in a mirror dimly” and “know only in part” (1 Cor. 13:12).

A religion without any capacity for critical self-reflection is a cult in-the-making. By contrast, a healthy faith is one that is always growing, always stretching, always in process. And doubt--honest to God doubt--is an essential part of an ever deepening apprehension of the Divine Mystery at the heart of all things.

The difference in the original Doubting Thomas (John chapter 20) and the two agnostic wannabees in the news story is that the first went to church and confessed his doubt while the other two did not. They didn’t trust God or their fellow believers enough to confess, “I’m hurting. I’m bewildered. And I’m so afraid.”

By contrast, the original Doubting Thomas came clean with his struggle within the community of faith and as a result, found the strength to believe and hope again.

I’m grateful to belong to a church where being honest and real is not seen as the abandonment of faith but as the epicenter of where a real and living faith begins.