What I am asking is not a new question. It’s plagued theologians far wiser than me for generations. If we falter in faith, does God still save us? If, in a moment of doubt, we are swept away to face God, does he see the years of faith, the confessions of sin, the profession of Lord, and does he still save us? Is falling away for a moment falling away forever?

The Internets are a flutter with deconstruction and rumors of deconstruction these days. It’s big news when a fellow believer falls away, I guess. Bigger, it seems, if he made his living trying his best to navigate premature fame, an inherited church scandal, and the conference circuit. Belief, it would seem, matters more if you are  a Very Important Person, and therefore ought to be commented upon as such.

I have always been thinking about faith and doubt and their very tenuous relationship mostly because I have always had a very tenuous relationship between them myself. I’ve made no secret about it here on Sayable ever and, God help me, I never will. My anthem, if I have one, has always been, “I believe. Help my unbelief.” Easy believism is not a gift I’ve been granted, and if I’m honest, it’s not one I want. I almost always feel and think I am one step from apostasy. I know a lot about God and this keeps me hemmed in most days, but I rarely feel a lot about God and this is where my doubt manifests itself most.

This past week it came in waves, one after another. Giant disappointments, glaring slander, opportunities for faith (and fear), abject shock, deep sadness, questioning of self, the Spirit, of others, and more. I rarely feel until I feel all the things at once. And, in there, once my feelings get shook, my faith shakes too. Not my faith in God—never that, but my faith in faithfulness, in doing the best we can with the information we have at the time in which we have it and then finding out we’ve failed or people have felt failed or been disappointed. I ask the question: “Is it worth all this?”

On Saturday Nate and I talked all day long. It felt like a glass of the deepest, clearest, coldest water I’ve had in a long time. It’s been a full season and has meant we fall into each other at the end of the day, watch a PBS Masterpiece bit, and go to sleep.

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