Church Joys and Anxieties from Early Childhood

[Condensing my entire spiritual autobiography into a single blog post would be impossible, so over the next few posts I'll be highlighting some key experiences in my spiritual journey and articulating the questions and issues they raise as I struggle to raise my own daughter as a child of faith.]

One of my earliest spiritual memories dates back about 27 years ago when I, a precocious 4-year-old child, used the “Time for Chilren” to boldly declare before a sanctuary full of witnesses that my daddy did not believe in Jesus. As my poor mother, a new congregant striving to make a good impression, sank down in her pew, my bewildered Sunday School teacher offered to pray for my dad, only to have me respond, “No, don't pray for him! Even I don't pray for him!”

I don't remember now why I said that, but my Sunday School teacher Elaina, who became a great mentor to me, assures me that I did. Was I afraid that God would punish me if I prayed for my dad, as if he saw my dad as an enemy? Was I afraid that my dad would be insulted to learn I was praying to the God he didn't believe in on his behalf? Thankfully, I no longer worry about the former fear, but the latter still occurs to me now and then, though I don't let it deter me. Back then, as a small child, I probably saw my dad and God as competitors – for what, I probably never articulated. For my love? For my loyalty? My obedience? How can a 4-year-old articulate such things? I do remember being worried about my dad, and a nagging doubt in the back of my mind that maybe he was right, maybe God didn't exist after all. But I knew I didn't want to be wrong on such an important matter. I wanted to believe in God's existence, but what did that mean for my father?

Maybe I could convince him to believe in God, I thought. So one day at a park, I stepped confidently off the path of a stone walkway that crossed a lake. And promptly started to sink. Apparently faith in Christ did not make it possible to walk on water, at least not literally. My dad jumped into the freezing cold water to save me, and needless to say, his faith was not helped that day, and neither was mine.

So my early childhood faith journey was filled with doubt and anxiety. But it was also filled with joy. The church was like a home to me. For a shy kid who didn't speak much at school, I found a voice in the church, a safe haven for [many of] my questions, a place of warmth and friendship and love. The adults of the church saw me as a mature and intelligent child/young lady, and it was a place where I felt special, not only loved but respected. In a way, this made it harder to voice my deepest, darkest doubts, as I was afraid of losing that respect. Questions about salvation, heaven and hell, crucifixion and the Trinity have filled my mind for as long as I could remember. Trying to make sense of a single God in 3 persons, one of whom died for my sins [but how could God die? And why was death necessary? Why is the central Christian story so violent? Does God need death? Etc.] filled me with intellectual and emotional turmoil even when I was very young. Sometimes I could articulate my questions and explore the mysteries aloud, impressing adults around me with my spiritual depth. Often, though, I would be too afraid to voice my deepest doubts, when the violence of the cross repelled me, or the mathematical paradox of the Trinity bewildered me, or the thought of hell terrified me. But I know now in retrospect that I shouldn't have worried; that I was absolutely loved for who I was and that nothing I could have said or done would have made me lose the love of my pastors, Sunday school teachers, and friends in the church. Looking back now as an adult, I realize I was never alone in my questions; these are mysteries that have plagued faithful people and skeptics alike for centuries, and my church was full of people who shared some of my struggles. If I had dared to share my most terrifying or embarrassing doubts, I know now that I would have been received with compassion and empathy. So even though I wrestled with hard questions and spent much of my time trying to hide my anxieties, I look back on the church of my childhood with fondness and love.

I could use many posts in the future to explore the questions of my childhood, most of which I'm still exploring today. But for now I just want to wrap this up by trying to articulate some of my hopes for my own daughter.

I want Sophie to experience all of the joy and wonder and curiosity in the church that I experienced as a child, but I want to spare her the anxiety and fear that I had. In a way, this is out of my control. As she grows up in the church, if she's paying attention (and I hope she will be), she'll be bound to encounter the perplexing mystery of the Trinity and the violence of the crucifixion and frightening words in scripture about hell (some of the most frightening being from the lips of Jesus himself!) I can't keep her from having doubts, though I hope she isn't terrified the same way I was.  But I know now that my fear led me to deeper faith, because for a time it was my catalyst for deeper exploration.  I know it's not within my power to keep her from all spiritual fear.  But what I can do is give her an environment in which she feels comfortable expressing her questions and doubts.  I can help her have a positive experience in church so that she knows she's not alone when she asks her questions.  I want her to have friends within the church that she trusts to share her own questions, doubts, and anxieties with, and I want to be there for her as much as I can be (and also accept the fact that, because I am her mother, there will be times I'll be the first person she wants to share questions with, and times when I'll be the last person she wants to share them with). I want her to see the church as a home and a family, a place where she is loved exactly as she is and where her flaws are known and forgiven. I want her to encounter doubt in others so that she doesn't feel isolated when doubt comes upon her, but at the same time I wonder if sharing my own doubts would overwhelm her. My strategy now is to continue to take her to church, where she can be among people who come to know and love her week after week, and let her explore the mysteries and ask her own questions as they come to her. But the older she gets and the more she pays attention, the more she'll be exposed to paradoxes and violence in scripture that I'm not sure how to explain, especially when she's still processing information on a literal level. That's one of the main reasons I want a group like this, so we can support each other as we encounter questions and doubts and struggles... in our children and in ourselves... when it comes to God and the way God works and moves and speaks in our lives.