There were many problems (and a surprising number of good things) about the Christianity I was raised it, but the one I have been thinking about most recently is the way in which we were taught - implicitly and explicitly - to see faith as assent to a series of propositions. 1/

That predisposed me to see faith and doubt as binary opposites, and thus doubt as something to be avoided, or to be moved through as quickly as possible. I felt I had to exert a lot of effort to be as certain as possible, or else my salvation might be in doubt. 2/

Several years on, I increasingly see doubt of a particular kind not as an unfortunate but unavoidable aspect of the Christian life, but as part of the content of my faith. 3/

As God reveals to me more and more how perfectly I am loved, and than in him there is no shame, I am confronted with the absurdity of that claim. The more aware I become of God's loving presence, the less sense that makes to me. Why on earth would God love me? 4/

My faith is the only honest response I can give to the experience of God's love for me. I don't understand that love, and tbqh sometimes I would love to walk away from God, but I do not, because to do so would simply feel absurd, as though I was lying to myself. 5/

I stick around, because my faith is the only way anything makes sense. And I know that if I felt I could grasp God, I would have fallen into grave error. God is present, yet always just out of reach. 6/

This is the paradox of faith as I understand it now. Doubt no longer feels like a barrier, but simply my attempts to reckon with the absurdity of God's grace. 7/

There are still many things I need to work on in my spiritual life, but doubt no longer feels like the burden it once did.

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