Thinking Anew – Embracing hope in an age of doubt

She was a charming young English woman, happily married and very involved in the social life of the community and parish but a non-churchgoer. The friend who asked her one day why she did not attend church could never have expected the answer he was given.

The woman explained that she had one child, a boy aged seven, who she collected from school each day. One day, excited at seeing his mother approach, he rushed across the road to meet her and tragically was knocked down and killed. From that day on she had never attended church, not because she did not believe in God, but because she felt that God had let her down so badly. She was not helped by a well-meaning clergyman who tried to comfort her by saying that her little boy was in heaven. The poet Edna Millay had a much better understanding of that young woman’s feelings when she wrote: “Time does not bring relief, you all have lied/Who told me time would ease my pain./ I miss him in the weeping of the rain;/ I want him at the shrinking of the tide.”

Distress

It’s understandable that people get angry with God at such times, especially when life is hard. There are many examples in the scriptures – Job for example – of people questioning God and hanging on to faith by their fingertips. Tomorrow’s Old Testament reading gives another example where a woman challenges the prophet Elijah and blames him for her distress: “She then said to Elijah, ‘What have you against me, O man of God? You have come to me to bring my sin to remembrance, and to cause the death of my son.”

It has been said that the Christian message is like one of those sticks of rock that we used to see in seaside towns with the name of the town lettered all through; no matter how one cut it or broke it the name of the town was constant. The same is true for the Christian message; it is lettered all through with the good news of resurrection and new life no matter how you slice it or break it up. That point is illustrated in tomorrow’s readings. In the gospel Jesus brings back to life the son of the woman from Nain and in the Old Testament reading Elijah breathes life back into the son of the woman who had previously questioned his authenticity. Nonetheless we find it so difficult to embrace the hope that these events should give us, especially in dark moments of despair and personal loss; some find it impossible. But it is there, the great constant in the Christian message, despite our questioning and doubting.

In her book The End of our Exploring, Monica Furlong reminds us that there can be a positive side to our doubting.

“This is an age, not of faith, but of cathartic doubt and unless everything can, potentially at least, be questioned, then there is a betrayal of the spirit of the times. It seems possible that doubt is our search for meaning, and that whatever refuses this painful path has cut itself off from our search for life”.

It is not easy to take hold of the Christian hope of life given or restored and that is understandable in the sense that it is not of our making or giving. It is beyond us as we are, prisoners of time and space. For some that is an insurmountable difficulty because they have come to believe that if modern man cannot do it, it cannot be done. But that position has always been challenged by women and men of faith for this reason given by St Paul in tomorrow’s epistle:

“For I want you to know, brothers and sisters, that the gospel that was proclaimed by me is not of human origin; for I did not receive it from a human source, nor was I taught it, but I received it through a revelation of Jesus Christ.”