The midlife breakdown happens like clockwork. A systemic collapse. So they say. I never thought it would really happen to
me. My faith in Christ was rock solid,
could never be shaken. I knew the Bible
inside and out, and felt like I knew God the same way. I had been face-to-face with grief,
suffering, and evil. I had been disappointed,
treated unjustly, and peed on by people
whose acceptance and affirmation I craved.
I thought I understood why God allows suffering and evil and how he
transforms us into a Christ-like image of Him.
And then one day, five months ago, the impossible
happened. My belief left me. I had
believed in some invisible world and a God who watched over me – and I went
along with all this nonsense that turned out to be a hoax. The things I learned (and taught) in Sunday
school were stupid. My whole life had
been built on lies. It was like looking
in the mirror and seeing a silly costume on me and asking, “who picked this out
for me?”
Without Jesus, my faith, and my religion, I had no idea
who I was because He had been my everything, or so I thought. I filed spiritual bankruptcy, and for five
long months, I struggled. The operating
system that I had been equipped with from birth malfunctioned with a fatal
virus, and I had no idea how to fix it. Or if I needed to replace it.
Psychologists say our ‘operating systems’ are programmed
to reach our peak power, and then to crash.
If this spiritual breakdown happens to ‘everyone’ in mid-life, I’d like
to meet them. Just one person. Since I know no one personally who has
experienced this, I have been reading spiritual memoir books like crazy to
understand the experiences of others in hopes to understand myself. About the fourth month into my
spiritual/identity crisis, I picked up David Anderson’s book Losing Your Faith, Finding Your Soul: The
Passage to New Life When Old Beliefs Die, and he helped me to begin to make
sense of all this. It resonated with my
current feelings.
In the early stage of faith, it’s all about our
achievement through religious or spiritual performance. In our early adulthood,
we spend most of our time attending to the outer shells of our lives, according
to Anderson, an Episcopal minister and graduate of Yale Divinity School. He explains that we are defined by our
family, our jobs, our parenthood, our churches and how we serve, our
neighborhoods, our inherited political parties. The world tells us how we are
doing in both subtle and blatant ways. We
know our status and how we are doing, but it is difficult to get a read on our
souls. After we have played the game for
30-40 years, we come to the point where we decide ‘No more!’.
The gift of the midlife crisis, according to Anderson, is
that it dethrones the pretender self and welcomes the ascent of the real
self. As we start to separate from the
worn-out system, we discover we can take charge of our own lives, let go of the
“you should’s”. We step out, stand
apart, and plant our flag, uncovering what is inside and not creating something
externally anymore.
The
strangest rule of spiritual growth is that it begins against your will. You
undergo the stripping, and when you’ve endured the pain without resorting to
your usual escape routes, you find a new kind of joy. It’s the kind that comes
from nothing. It’s a happiness that is
not contingent on any thing; it just is. You didn’t gain it, and you can’t lose
it. This happiness has nothing to do
with your circumstances. (page 153)
Anderson explains that as we do the early work of
separation, firming up the core of our being, we find we are no longer
dependent on other people to change so that we can be free. We no longer depend on other people to be
less depressing or judgmental so that we can be happy. We no longer depend on them to act like
mature adults so we can too.
But where he says we start of find our own authority and
our own power – this is where I digress.
Only in my complete nakedness was able to realize what was lacking. I didn’t want to rely on my own authority and
my own power. I truly wanted to give it
to Jesus. While my belief had left me, my faith never did. While I rambled down roads of atheism and
then agnosticism, then universalism, in the end, my faith in Jesus was what I
chose, even after I questioned it. It is
because of Jesus that I found my true identity.
I’m not at the same place I was at the beginning,
though. I’m still in the process of
gradual transformation, but it no longer feels like a crisis. I no longer feel like I have God figured out
or that I have the answers, and I am embracing the mystery of it all. I am letting go of criticism and judgment. I didn’t even know it was possible because it
was part of the ‘old’ me. In letting
them go, my heart opens wider as I simply let life have its say, let God have
His say in whatever form He wants, and let people be who they are.
If your faith has failed you at some point in life, if you
used to believe, or if you are pretending to believe and going through the
motions, if you feel like your faith has been snuffed out by evil or suffering
after a life surrendered to God, then I would recommend David Anderson’s
book. He will not lead you to
evangelical or even Christian conclusions.
Like me, you may not agree with everything he says. But he will help you articulate the journey,
make sense of it, and lead you through the stages of doubt and re-discovery, pointing
you toward where you are headed. He will
help you change your crisis into a journey.
(Thank you Blogging for Books and Convergent Publishing for providing me
a complimentary copy of this book in exchange for my honest review.)
Matthew Paul Turner tells his story of growing up in a
fundamentalist church in his book Churched:
One Kid’s Journey Toward God Despite a Holy Mess. This story is not the typical
anti-fundie, bitter rant, but rather, a light-hearted humorous story that will
make you laugh without feeling disrespectful.
He shows how his upbringing helped him love Jesus despite the many
foibles of the fundie culture. I imagine
that every church contains the types of characters that cross his path, and if
you were conservatively “churched”, you may find you know these people
too. Somehow he manages to tell his story
in a light but profound manner, humorous without sarcasm. His giftedness with penning words to his
journey is exceptional and his writing style is delightful.
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