No one lives a life completely absent of injustice, pain or trauma. We all face our trials. It’s during these times that many Christians have, in their suffering, questioned God and his Word. And it’s in these moments, during times of doubt and crises of faith, that apologist Lisa Fields wants to come alongside Christians and walk with them through their wrestling.
In her debut book, When Faith Disappoints: The Gap Between What We Believe and What We Experience (Multnomah, Aug. 2024), Fields shows how emotional pain, rather than theological concerns, is often at the root of our doubt. As a Black woman living in America, Fields knows what it is to grapple with God’s promises in an unjust world. As founder of the Jude 3 Project, an organization focused on helping Christians of African descent know what they believe and why they believe it, Fields is a seasoned apologist, speaker, leader and storyteller. Not only has she faced her own seasons of doubt, but she’s walked with others as they’ve questioned God amid their own pain and struggle.
Below, she talks with Outreach about her own faith struggles, how we can turn to God and our communities for healing, and how a spiritual leader in her own life modeled for her how all Christian leaders can walk their people through hard questions and difficult seasons in life.
Talk about your personal faith walk and how you’ve wrestled with God and with your own doubts.
I had a faith crisis when I was in seminary, because I heard of kids being murdered by terrorists. And for me, hearing about kids being murdered hits differently than adults. I could understand it logically—free will and all of that, God using things for a greater purpose—but emotionally, I was still wrestling with it. And so I want to give people what my professor gave me when I went to him and told him I was struggling with my faith because of innocent children’s lives being taken. He said, “Me too.” Instead of giving me some deep theological answer, he normalized the struggle for me, and let me know it was OK to wrestle with those things while still maintaining your faith throughout.
[When Faith Disappoints] is really giving the church and the world what my professor gave me that day: the invitation to wrestle with God in the pain we experience and the pain we see. While I felt like I was on the verge of leaving the faith when I walked into my professor’s office, that journey led me to a deeper faith. So I’m giving people permission to wrestle, because I believe at the end of the wrestle, their faith will be deeper, too.
We sometimes feel ashamed for questioning our faith or for wrestling with God. Why shouldn’t we?
Wrestling with faith and questioning are the way we build deeper relationship. I would say a faith that can be tested can be trusted. And the way to get to know anyone is through questions. When you enter a relationship with a person, the first thing you do is start asking them questions, because you want to get to know them, and our relationship with God is the same. We ask him questions to get to know him. And we see throughout Job, we see throughout the Psalms and the Prophets, that they’re all questioning why God is allowing something to happen. We have examples throughout Scripture of how we conduct our relationship with God to show that questioning is how we get to a deeper relationship.
What are the big pain points that keep many from fully embracing their faith?
I identify seven pain points that I think are at the root of people’s doubt, personhood being the first. Who am I? People are wondering who they are and looking for identity in people, places and things. Protection. Why didn’t God protect me? People are feeling like God was supposed to protect them from the trauma and suffering they experience. Power. They feel like they’ve given God control of their life, and they don’t like the direction he steered them, and so they want to get their power back and make their own decisions. Provision. Many people feel like they thought God was going to provide, or they’ve heard maybe a prosperity teaching or something, and they’ve just had these expectations of God’s provision, and they feel disappointed. Purpose. What am I here for? Pleasure. How can I find happiness and joy in a life full of pain? Peace. People are struggling with anxiety and depression at high levels, especially post-pandemic, and they’re just wondering if God will provide any sense of peace. They feel like, I’m going to church, but I’m still battling anxiety and depression. Does Christianity work? Does it provide what it said it was going to provide?
So does Christianity meet our needs 100% of the time?
Yeah, I think we have to reframe some things. When we talk about peace, for example, what is peace? I take kind of a three-tier approach. One, peace with God, which is the work Jesus has done. Peace with people, which is the work we have to do, and then inner peace. And I think God rigs our lives where we cannot really get inner peace without accepting the work he’s done and doing the work we need to do. People want an inner peace without the work of reconciling that forgiveness. So it’s not that God doesn’t provide it. It’s just that you have to go through this process first.
Talk more about how we balance our own accountability for our healing with God’s role in the process.
You obviously need prayer in your relationship with God. I think going to God with our doubts, pain and frustration and being able to be honest with him actually aids in our healing. If you are mad at him and you have to take it up with him, I think it’s healing in itself to just say, God, I don’t like what you did, I don’t like the direction you’re taking my life, I feel like you failed me, I feel like you didn’t show up, and I wouldn’t have handled it like this if I were you. I think you have to get all of that out of your mouth to get it out of your heart.
Also, therapy is great. It was helpful in my own personal healing journey, but you need community too for it to be most effective. One hour a week with a therapist can be a helpful tool, but they’re only hearing your perspective, and we all have blind spots. Your community can help you see the things you can’t see in yourself. Most people are scared of community because they’ve been hurt in community, but God has rigged our life where we can only be healed in community.
You say that the root of doubt is often in the emotional pain we feel from the trauma we’ve experienced that’s contradictory to how the Bible says the world ought to be. Apologetics isn’t effective when it doesn’t address that. Through the Jude 3 Project, you practice what you call contextualized apologetics. What does that mean?
For me, contextual apologetics has to do with listening to what people are grappling with on a deep emotional level. It’s getting to the root of the problem. Often people come to me and start by saying something like, “I don’t believe in God because of evolution.” Or they might have some deep science and faith questions. “Well, what about dinosaurs?” But if you listen, that’s not really their core concern. You listen long enough, and you notice that maybe when they were younger, they prayed for their mom when she had cancer, but she still died. And while that led them to exploring evolution or different religions or not thinking there’s a God at all, their doubt really is deeply rooted in the hurt they experienced from God not answering their prayers, not showing up for them or not protecting them when they felt like they should have been protected. I focus on the root, not the fruit.
When it comes to developing empathy among Christians from different backgrounds, what’s the best way to help others understand a person’s emotional pain at the root of faith uncertainty?
I think one is to decenter ourselves. Sometimes we center ourselves in conversations with other people about their pain, because we start thinking how we should respond rather than really listening to their story. Really listening to people’s stories helps bridge the gap. One of the most helpful things for me was to read Mere Apologetics by Alister McGrath. I’m paraphrasing, but essentially he says that giving someone the same information that you have doesn’t mean they will see it the same way you see it. So sometimes, we think if the person has the information I have, they will come to the same conclusion. But oftentimes, what made you believe could actually make someone else disbelieve, because we’re all seeing it through different lenses. Part of decentering is understanding and accepting that just because I give someone this information doesn’t mean they’re going to think like I think. That helps with humility in conversation.
What role can church leaders play in facilitating healing for congregants who approach them with doubts?
One that is super helpful, which is what my professor demonstrated, is just being honest about your own doubt. Giving people that permission to doubt and wrestle helps with the shame that sometimes comes with doubt. I think if leaders were more honest about their own wrestling, it would help take them off the pedestal that people sometimes put them on. It would also help people feel like they’re dealing with something that’s normal. It’s not going to end their faith; it’s going to grow it.
Any final thoughts?
I think many people are leaving the church because they don’t feel heard or understood. There’s often a gap between what the pastor preaches and what [people are] hearing, and pastors sometimes measure their level of effectiveness by a few people who tell them their sermon was good. I would encourage leaders to lean into the pain points that their congregation is navigating and really create spaces of listening for their congregation. If we create spaces of listening and helping people get to the root of the issues they’re facing, we’ll have more retention in churches.
Jessica Hanewinckel is an Outreach magazine contributing editor.