Is your life of faith looking more like an either/or or a both/and? We tend to think of our life as disciples of Christ as being more of an either/or. We either have faith that God is with us or we feel afraid. We either feel grateful or we worry about money to pay the bills. We either acknowledge our blessings or we feel anxious in the midst of a crisis.
Christian faith is not an either/or, though. What if you knew that it’s more like a both/and?
Perhaps you’ve read things like, “Faith is the opposite of fear” and felt wracked by guilt, thinking your faith isn’t very strong during times of fear and anxiety. Maybe you’ve heard someone say, “Trust in God and everything will be alright,” and you have wondered if you trust enough and if anything will ever be alright again. These are either/or statements. They don’t speak to the reality of what you’re feeling, what you’re struggling through. They also layer feelings of shame and guilt on top of very real human experiences of fear, anxiety, and crisis.
Faith is not the opposite of fear because opposites cannot coexist. For example, it cannot be both cold and hot outside. It cannot be both light and dark. One cannot feel both love and apathy for someone. Yet, faith and fear can coexist, just like rain can fall when the sun is out. It is possible to feel anxious and fearful even while enjoying devotion to and communion with God. God’s presence with us does not take away from the fact we are completely human. At the height of my anxiety, God was no less present than she had been before my anxiety began.
At the same time, we can trust in God while we’re struggling. Our trust won’t take away the struggles. I have a friend who suffered through months of frustrations and anxieties following Hurricane Florence. Another friend, also a faithful Christian, recently felt the painful loss of her beloved sister. Crises still come to the faithful. Sometimes all we can do is allow the cries of our hearts to speak the words we can’t and in the midst of the storm pray earnestly, “Help me believe more. Help me trust more.” It’s not that we don’t believe or trust enough, but we want the reassurance of doing so even more, and we have faith that only God can give this to us. And still, we talk to God. Still, we listen.
We are living in the in-between zone of both/and. We are living in a time when people are genuinely worried about having money to pay next month’s bills even though they are praying and having daily devotionals with their families. There are people who are faithful disciples of God who are very sick. Their families are praying earnestly for their healing even as they feel sad about missing them and worried about their health. This is the reality of the Christian life in this world — an endless tension between our kingdom-oriented hearts and our physical and emotional selves. This is an okay place to be. We’re all here, if we only admit it. And God is here with us, giving us his endless love and grace.
