Why I Don't Know What I Believe Anymore... And Why I'm Okay With That.

“What do you believe?” Is a question I am asked more and more these days. People can see a difference in me. They want to know where I stand. Am I a Christian, or not? Am I in, or am I out?

What is my most truthful answer? I don’t know. And I’m becoming more and more comfortable in that space.

I didn’t use to be. I was confident in my beliefs and assumed that was the only way a Christian could be. 

What changed? I did a Christian thing and moved overseas to be a missionary for six years. 

Guess what happened? It challenged the way I saw the world. 

I left my home country and moved to a foreign one, burning with passion and desire to show people the truth. I KNEW I had the answers to their questions. 

I never once dreamed that they might begin to inspire me to start asking my own questions... or that those questions might just be the best thing to ever happen to me. I thought I was bringing Jesus to them... turns out, they were Jesus in disguise.

What do I mean by this?

Before I lived overseas…

… I had no idea that I read and interpreted the Bible through the cultural perspective of a modern North American.

… I thought there was only one (proper) way to see the world.

… I had no idea how much privilege I lived in every day.

Then, with my superhero complex, I swooped in to save them… and it was embarrassing. I needed their help to get groceries, take the bus, and go to the bathroom. I came in to be a solution to their problems, and I had no idea what their problems even were, let alone how to solve them. For six years I pushed myself to the limits just to survive in a foreign environment, learn their language, and acclimate. I may have helped some in small ways… but not nearly the way the locals came to my aid nearly every day. 

After years of pushing myself beyond my physical capacity, I broke. I stopped functioning. Depression and anxiety had taken over my body so severely that I barely got out of bed for six months. I couldn’t keep pretending I was stronger or holier or braver than any of them were. I had nothing left to offer. I couldn’t physically stay overseas anymore, so I came home… utterly defeated and ashamed.

When I returned home my community and my previous life looked very different than I remembered.

… Immigrants reminded me of myself, trying to cope in a new country where I missed my family incredibly and felt deeply isolated, and sorely inadequate. Not to mention the trauma many had already faced before they even made it to my country.

... Racism became deeply personal to me because I had experienced it first-hand, in a lesser capacity. I remembered the feeling of being branded, labeled, and treated like a commodity for the color of my skin. I remember the feelings of distrust, wondering if I was being used for my ethnicity.

… Church didn’t make sense to me anymore. All the rallying cries to sacrifice everything and change the world… I tried that. I thought I was something special. Someone “chosen”. I began to wonder if my "chosen-ness" was a bit of an ego trip. I wondered if “becoming the greatest in the Kingdom by becoming the servant of all” didn’t include my white savior complex at all. 

… The complaints people had didn’t make sense to me anymore. Waiting more than a minute at a drive through? Really? When you have abundant food to eat, and people actually properly wait in line? Your doctor’s bedside manner sucks? But you can be seen when you need to, in a country with free medical care, with facilities that are clean and readily stocked? The gas prices are too high? But you have a vehicle with climate control and a roof and windows? They don’t have the right brand of cereal? And your store is stocked to the ceiling with other options? I used to be one of the people who complained until I came back and was so thankful to have the options to complain about.

… The idea of being “blessed” became deeply troubling to me. Did we really think just because we were born into middle-class families in developed countries with ample job and education opportunities that God somehow favored us more than the destitute overseas who were born into extreme poverty, who cried out to the same God that we did for rescue, and watched their children die of starvation?

… And this “defending the faith” thing… it was the most confusing of all, after living in a communist country for six years. We didn’t even realize what we had.

… And then… After six years of burning myself out in my attempts to change the world, I had returned home clinically depressed. In my circles, it felt like a scarlet letter. I felt pushed to the fringes as well-meaning people tried to give me advice… to try and tell me the truth… that if I had enough faith, God would heal me. It felt like as long as I had depression, I would forever be a second-class Christian. It was demeaning. I hated feeling like someone’s project, especially when they never asked me what it was like to be me. I wondered if that’s what the people overseas felt like when I tried to tell them the truth.

… I started to question my belief system because the pat answers I had given other people weren’t working for me. And I wondered if God would abandon me for not knowing what I believe. But He didn’t. I felt His all-encompassing love and presence more strongly in my doubt than I did in my passionate belief. And I began to wonder if having the answers was ever the point, to begin with.

… And when I stopped trying to be the one with all of the answers, I realized how much of the beauty of God I had missed. (More on this in a future blog)

I left my home country with a clearly defined religion and strong convictions, firmly believing certainty was what made me strong. I came back confused and questioning and learned that the questions were a gift to be welcomed because they would make my heart come back alive.

I left my home country thinking I was God’s chosen one to heal broken hearts. I came back with a heart broken open... and learned that until we’re broken we can’t heal. And until we begin to heal ourselves, we can’t heal others.

I left my home convinced I would save the lost. I came home and I was lost … and the lost saved me.

I used to have the answers. The answers broke me to pieces and gave way to the questions that had always been just underneath the surface. 

Once I let the questions take over, I heard stories I had never heard, from people I had never listened to. The answers I had made less sense. Some of the answers I had made no sense. I remembered what it was like to be an outsider in a foreign country, and I started listening to the outsiders in my society. My answers were to questions they weren’t even asking.

I left my home country with answers to the wrong questions. I came home and learned that the answers might be in the questions. 

I left home thinking I knew what love was. I came home in desperate need of love, and I found it in those I had pushed to the fringes with my loving message. 

And wasn't Jesus always found with the ones religion had pushed to the fringes?

So if you wonder why I’m not sure exactly what I believe … it’s because I preached all the answers until I didn’t have any left. And oh, how beautiful the world became.