Sometimes we take a journey without leaving home. To wander in this way calls us to courage as well, fitting with this month’s theme. What brave journey is God inviting you to take?
This journey, once simply called doubt, now goes by the fancier and perhaps more devastating term, deconstruction. This term sets off alarm bells in some—if that’s you, please keep reading. Because I believe sometimes God speaks to us through out doubts—inviting us to a deeper understanding, and greater courage.
Wandering spiritually makes us brave. I’m not talking about aimless wandering—but rather, a willingness to journey without a map, to explore, to wonder. Like the children of Israel in the wilderness, to follow a cloud and trust.
Even the path of doubt can be a spiritual pilgrimage, a journey that ultimately brings us to a deeper (if less smug) faith. And it’s that spiritual wandering that might ultimately transform us, as we realize God is not surprised by our uncertainty and wants to journey this rocky path with us.
Sometimes the path is rocky and steep, but worth the struggle.
Deconstruction differs demolition, or abandonment. It implies a more careful picking apart. As we watch truth come out about religious institutions like the Southern Baptist Convention, (where 700 victims of sexual abuse over 20 years were ignored) or simply notice that the evangelical movement has been corrupted by politicians (read Jesus and John Wayne for more on that), many Christians want to give up on their faith. They want to just walk away, when walking through might be a better option.
Deconstruction frightens some folks, especially those trying to cling to power within religious institutions. But I believe a thoughtful reckoning with our spiritual questions will ultimately strengthen us.
Deconstruction invites us to in what the Bible tells us to do: to test the truth of every teaching.
Don’t let your faith simply decay, become run down. Don’t just blow it all up and walk away. Don’t ignore the questions—ask them. Wrestle with them. Carefully pick your faith apart, examining each piece, asking: is this about God, or about the institution? Is this a tradition of man or what Jesus actually taught? (By the way, Jesus warned against following human tradition instead of God!)
As you wrestle with doubt, or deconstruct, you may find that you are losing your faith in institutions, but not in Jesus. Consider this a pilgrimage—painful, perhaps, but purposeful.
Pilgrimage has a purpose
For centuries, people have undertaken pilgrimages—walking journeys of spiritual significance. They are not just about the where, but the why.
Most famous perhaps is the Camino de Santiago in Spain, which according to this site, dates back to 800 AD. Originally the path of a religious pilgrimage, it now draws about 350,000 walkers from around the world. The seven traditional Camino routes originate all over Spain and range from 71 to 621 miles. Walkers embark on the Camino for a variety of reasons. Some consider it a spiritual journey—others discover that along the way.
Photo by Yunuen Caballero: https://www.pexels.com/
In the U.S., people hike all or part of long trails the Appalachian Trail or the John Muir Trail or the Pacific Crest Trail, testing not only their physical endurance but embarking (sometimes unwittingly) on a journey of self-discovery. (Two great books about such hikes, whose subtitles tell it all: Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail by Cheryl Strayed and North: Finding My Way by Running the Appalachian Trail by Scott Jurek.
A few years ago, my college roommate hiked across England with her husband and some friends, trekking through the Lake District from one coast of England to the other on the Wainwright Trail. Her adventure is part of what inspired me to travel to Chamonix. Some travelers to that mountain region on the border of France and Italy embark on the Tour du Mont Blanc. I chose to do day hikes—though my trip was definitely a pilgrimage, transformative in ways I’m still unearthing. Meanwhile, England’s Wainwright Trail remains high on travel bucket list.
When people embark on a pilgrimage, they do so for many reasons. To hike for days, to endure blisters and other indignities and discomforts of the road—why? To take a journey over days or weeks, rather than fly, drive or travel by train, much faster and more comfortably?
Pilgrims often describe a compulsion, a calling, an inescapable tug, to accomplish something, or to prove something to themselves or to the naysayers. Maybe they are asking, is this all there is? What is the meaning of my life?
Some pilgrimages we choose, or perhaps feel compelled to take. Others come our way unbidden, throwing us into the wilderness, sometimes without our ever leaving home.
Letting go to grab hold
A few years ago, it became abundantly clear that I needed to leave the church I’d been a part of for 30 years. The process of grieving (with its familiar stages including bargaining, anger, denial, etc.), of feeling spiritually unmoored—these took me on a journey even though I was literally stuck at home (it was during the pandemic).
I found I had to let go of my church, and the sin of pride (thinking we had it right when we obviously had flaws), in order to hold on to Jesus. The only way for my faith to survive was to walk away from an institution. Sometimes we must let go to grab hold. In that letting go we discover what an unreliable thing we were clinging to in the first place.
In many ways, even though I’ve found another church, I’m still on that journey. I’m finding labels I once wore no longer fit.
Sometimes a crisis or upheaval sends us on a spiritual pilgrimage—whether we intend to take it or not.
My spiritual pilgrimage of the last several years has led me away from “certainty” and deeper into mystery and grace. I embrace doubt as part of faith. I’m disillusioned, not just with my own former church but with religious structures in general. When I was a part of that church, I often compared it to other churches, and felt superior—we embraced “excellence” and others were amateurs. I had to repent of that pride and arrogance. That awareness brought me back to Jesus, and my need for grace.
The path is often rocky and steep, but worth traveling.
The stages of faith
Perhaps you are feeling a tug toward a spiritual pilgrimage. Maybe you’re on one right now, even though you had no intention of leaving the safety of certainty and familiarity.
Psychologist and author Henry Cloud identifies four distinct stages on our journey of faith. We could see these as a lifetime pilgrimage. I outline these in more detail in the final chapter of my book GodSpace.
But here’s a brief summary:
Stage 1: Non-faith/Self-ruled. We don’t believe in God, so we see ourselves as our own god, though we may not put it in those terms. This leads us to a crisis, where we wonder if there’s more to life than whatever it is we’re pursuing.
Stage 2: We find God! And meaning! We’re happy and excited, we feel loved. We also begin to embrace rules that give our life order and structure, which feels safe and comforting. But that black and white thinking, Cloud observes, eventually causes us to “become intolerable to those in other stages” because we become legalistic. We resist doubt because we’re afraid they signal lost or eroded faith. We may retreat into shame, legalism, or fear. You may have met people who have chosen to camp out in Stage 2. But the brave push forward.
Stage 3: Pain and trouble. While this stage feels like a crisis, it provides an opportunity. The pilgrimage gets difficult. Perhaps a relational, health, or career crisis tests us. Yet those who journey on find God with them in the wilderness. If we face our pain, we realize God is still there with us, not necessarily taking it away but being near and deeply present with us. As we wander through this desert, we eventually reach the next stage.
Stage 4: Worship. And by that I don’t mean happy-clappy repetitive choruses. In GodSpace, I describe it this way: “In this stage, we don’t regain our previous faith, but it matures, as we realize we can’t fully comprehend God, and that we don’t have all the answers… We embrace mystery. …We live in the tension of faith and doubt.”
As I wrote in GodSpace: “Faith without doubt is not really faith. For faith to have meaning, it has to be placed in what could possibly be not true.”
I often find myself cycling back into stage three—which I believe is not an erosion of faith but a deepening of it. I ask questions and wrestle, arriving not at certainty but acceptance of uncertainty as evidence of my own limitations—and therefore my need for God. It leads me eventually back to a deeper version of Stage 4.
I wonder if you’re sensing an invitation? To go on a pilgrimage, even if you don’t leave home to do so? Maybe to explore the doubts and questions, not seeking easy answers, but God’s presence with you as you wrestle with them. Will you be brave, and embark on a spiritual pilgrimage?
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