“When Faith Fails” with Dominic Done
Show Notes:
How do we deal with seasons of doubt? How do we wrestle with the big questions of suffering and pain within the context of God’s never-ending love and come out with a firmer spiritual foundation and a stronger sense of God’s grace and work in our lives? Can we even admit our doubt, and if so, is it productive to our lives as Christians?
In this episode, Eddie and Chris are joined by Dominic Done, author, pastor, teacher, and founder of Pursuing Faith. Dominic has gone through his own seasons of doubt, and openly shares his journey in his most recent book, When Faith Fails: Finding God in the Shadow of Doubt. He believes that we can not only push through doubt and step into a deeper faith, but we can and should come along side others in their seasons of doubt and struggle. If we are honest with our pain and willing to open ourselves to the grace of Jesus Christ through community, we grow as followers of Jesus.
Dominic earned his Master's Degree in theology from the University of Oxford and has served as a pastor in Oregon, North Carolina, and Hawaii. Dominic has also taught English for companies in Europe, lectured in theology and history at various Christian colleges, worked as a radio DJ, and lived as a missionary in Vanuatu and Mexico. He is currently the leader of Pursuing Faith, a ministry that equips Christians and church leaders to navigate issues of faith, doubt, and apologetics.
Resources:
Follow Dominic on social media:
https://www.facebook.com/DominicFrancisDone
https://www.instagram.com/dominicdone/ https://twitter.com/dominicdone
Find out more about Pursuing Faith:
Find out more about When Faith Fails:
https://www.pursuingfaith.org/whenfaithfails
Transcript:
Eddie Rester 00:00 I'm Eddie Rester.
Chris McAlilly 00:01 I'm Chris McAlilly.
Eddie Rester 00:02 Welcome to The Weight.
Eddie Rester 00:04
Today we are talking to a man named Dominic Done.
Eddie Rester 00:09
Dominic has been a pastor, he's been a professor, but now he started a new work called Pursuing Faith. And what he's doing is creating space and opportunity for Christians to wrestle with doubt. In this day where deconstruction seems to be a big topic all around us, he really shed some light on what deconstruction is and why deconstruction can be so helpful for us.
Eddie Rester 00:37
Dominic wrote a book a few years back called "When Faith Fails: Finding God in the Shadow of Doubt." And we kind of talked through our way around kind of our own personal journeys of faith and doubt and into a deeper faith, and then just kind of explored some of the reasons why we think this is an issue today. But it also is not a new thing.
Eddie Rester 01:01 It's not new.
Chris McAlilly 01:01
It's not a control fad. It's something that the church has been thinking through, in its practices and its theology for centuries. And so I found the conversation really helpful.
Eddie Rester 01:14
I think, growing up, just growing up in the South, faith was presented to me as something: "This is what it is." You don't question it. You don't move beyond it. The walls are the walls, and you live within those walls. And I think in my own faith, at different moments...
Chris McAlilly 01:32 Crap happens.
Eddie Rester 01:33
Stuff, you know, life happens and struggles happen and bad things, you know, just life comes atcha and sometimes the walls don't work anymore.
Eddie Rester 01:44
Yeah, they just kind of break down. Whatever the frameworks or the the ways or conceptions of how you put together your belief system, or kind of your worldview, or whatever, sometimes that stuff can break down. I think what's helpful though, for him, there are ways, there's a distinction that that dominant draws between productive and unproductive. And he acknowledges that that some doubt is unproductive. It can lead into a place where you despair, where you really kind of have a hard time reorienting, and that's not something he's necessarily advocating for. He's advocating for the kind of productive doubt that's not idolized or demonized. It's not idolizing or demonizing doubt, it's just acknowledging there are times we are torn. But on the other side of that you can move through to a deeper trust.
Eddie Rester 02:37
So if this is you, if you've been asking big questions, and you haven't known what to do with
Chris McAlilly 02:44
Your church doesn't talk about it.
Eddie Rester 02:45
Your church doesn't talk about it. I think this is an important episode for you. It's also an important episode I think for me, as a pastor, and for other church pastors to really begin to... How can we create more space for folks to ask the questions out loud that they're thinking and struggling with?
Eddie Rester 03:05
People are honest, just not at church.
Eddie Rester 03:08
Thank you for saying that out loud. Yeah, yeah. I think that's right.
Eddie Rester 03:10
So how do we create space where people can be more honest at church?
Eddie Rester 03:14
So enjoy? Or is there another word for enjoy? I don't know. But I hope you'll wrestle with this one.
Eddie Rester 03:22
Yep. You're wrestling with it. [LAUGHTER] We're glad you're here today. And yeah, thanks for being a part of the journey with us on The Weight.
Eddie Rester 03:30
[INTRO] Life can be heavy. We carry around with us the weight of our doubt, our pain, our suffering, our mental health, our family system, our politics. This is a podcast that creates space for all of that.
Chris McAlilly 03:43
We want to talk about these things with humility, charity, and intellectual honesty. But more than that, we want to listen. It's time to open up our echo chamber. Welcome to The Weight. [END INTRO]
Eddie Rester 03:58
We're here today with Dominic Done. And I think I pronounced that last name right. Didn't I, Dominic?
Dominic Done 03:59 You did, actually yes.
Eddie Rester 04:05
Dominic, thank you for being with us today. We know you've been a pastor and a teacher and now you've started a new work. Before we kind of dive into the topic today, give us just a thumbnail sketch of you and your life and your family. Tell us about you a little bit.
Dominic Done 04:20
Absolutely. Yeah. So I was born in Oxford, not Mississippi, but the other Oxford across the pond in England. And I was eight when we moved to Southern California. And there is no accent although I still say tomahto. That's like the one word.
Eddie Rester 04:37 The one thing that stuck.
Dominic Done 04:38
I have ruthlessly held on to. Then grew up in Southern Cal, Oregon. I graduated high school, was on the mission field for several years in Mexico and then three years in a country called Vanuatu in the South Pacific. We got married. We then moved to Europe, where I was a teacher. My wife was as well. And then to Hawaii, where I was a pastor for about eight years, and then back to Oxford, in England, to do some master's work. And then Portland, Oregon. And we spent about 10 years there, pastoring. And now we live in Colorado. We're running a ministry called Pursuing Faith, so focused on that and creating content and speaking and writing and things of that nature.
Eddie Rester 05:26
So perhaps we could start with your current work, and maybe back up from there. So you mentioned that you've transitioned to Colorado, and just tell us a little bit more about the work that you're currently doing?
Dominic Done 05:39
Yeah, so about three years ago, I wrote a book with Thomas Nelson called "When Faith Fails," and it was about doubt and what do you do when you feel like your faith is being shaken? And how do you move through seasons of deconstruction in a healthy way? What does that look like? What does the Bible say about that? What's a good theology of doubt? And that was birthed out of a personal place in my own life where I had gone through in the past a season of deconstruction, reconstruction, but then also pastorally, because at that time, pastoring, a church with lots of young people who were in that space.
Dominic Done 06:16
And then once the book went out, God just began to open up different doors and opportunities and I began to realize like, oh, this is really a live topic, and this is something that we need to focus more of our time in helping disciple people through their seasons of doubt. And so long story short, through prayer and counsel and all of that, we ended up starting this nonprofit. And that's what we're focused on full time now. So it's everything from one-on-one mentorship for people who are going through seasons of doubt, to conferences, we put on different speaking engagements, and then doing a lot of writing. So then the next book is on faith, whereas the first one was on doubt. And I think they are two sides of the same coin. And one of the things we can do to really fortress our soul with resilience in preparation, for those inevitable seasons of doubt, is through looking at what does scripture say about having a healthy soul? What is faith? And how can we grow in faith?
Eddie Rester 07:17
So how would you define just the words faith and doubt? How would you for folks who, you know, maybe are trying to kind of get their mind around how you think about those things? How would you just define those two words?
Dominic Done 07:32
Yeah, absolutely. Well, when it comes to doubt, and this is a massive, massive conversation here, because I think in many ways--and this is painting with a broad brush--but Christians, when they go through their seasons of doubt, which by the way, 45% of American Christians will inevitably go through some kind of realignment in their faith. Two-thirds of American Christians right now, I'll say that they wrestle with doubt on a regular basis. But doubt isn't the antithesis of faith. I think for years, that was kind of my perspective, and it was a perspective that I had heard and kind of been immersed in growing up. But when you actually do a deep dive on doubt in scripture, you'll find that the opposite of doubt isn't faith; rather, the opposite of faith is unbelief. Doubt is kind of that middle, murky space in between, that, depending on how we deal with it, can either lead us into a more robust, lively, beautiful, authentic faith, or it can lead us to a place of unbelief.
Dominic Done 08:41
And for years, I thought that was something to be suppressed. I think people are given two options when it comes to their doubt, and neither one is good. One is to idolize their doubt, which we're kind of seeing right now in certain elements of the deconstructionist movement. The other option is to demonize your doubt, and that is to suppress your doubt.
Dominic Done 09:04
But really doubt is just the state of having questions and uncertainty about a held set of beliefs. Or it can be even deeper than that. It can have to do with a personal relationship that has been shaken through, you know, some life tragedy or questions about scripture or scientific issues or philosophical concerns. And so I like to frame doubt as really an opportunity for our faith to grow rather than the enemy of faith. And I think that when we start in that place then it leads us to what Jude 22 says, "to show mercy to those who doubt."
Dominic Done 09:48
And into your question, you know, what is doubt really? Well, the word "doubt" comes from this Latin word "dubitare." It just means two. It means you're kind of torn inside. It's what James spoke about, you know, when you're kind of tossed back and forth, or what you see in Psalm 73, where the author Asaph says, "truly, God is good." But then in verse two, he says, "as for me, my feet almost slipped." So there's this kind of dividedness, this tearing of the heart because of some issue, because of some season of suffering. Where on one hand you're saying, "God, I trust you, I believe in you. I have faith in you." But on the other hand, "God that's been shaken right now because of what I'm going through." And that moment can actually be incredibly redemptive. If we lean into those questions, bring them to God, wrestle with him, with others in community--I think community is a big part of this--and then our doubt can actually lead us to a place of lively, robust faith.
Eddie Rester 10:52
You talk about the Psalms a lot in your book, "When Faith Fails" and I so appreciate that, because most people are familiar with the pretty psalms, Psalm 23, Psalm 121. But nobody goes around quoting Psalm 13 or Psalm 22 or Psalm 73. As you point out, where there are people who are wrestling with these deep issues of life and death and pain, and loss. You know, you mentioned the word "deconstruction" and I want to talk about that for a second because so many people right now see deconstruction. It's very public, people deconstructing their faith. People are posting about it on Tik Tok and Instagram and other places. And you see a lot of people who have been well known Christians who talk about going through deconstruction and losing their faith. Josh Harris who wrote a book years ago now claims not to be a Christian after season of deconstruction. Kevin Max, I think from DC Talk has kind of talked about that. Beth Moore, in some regards, has gone through, I think very public and healthy, in some ways, season of deconstruction. But when you hear that word, and again, you've really done a beautiful job thinking and writing about this, what is deconstruction? And what's dangerous about deconstruction? And what's hopeful about deconstruction?
Dominic Done 12:22
Oh, that is such a good question. You know, you trace the history of the term deconstruction. And, of course, it was a word originally coined by the French philosopher, Jacques Derrida as a critique of Platonism. But in recent years, it's become more popularized to describe the dismantling in some cases, or the reorientation of faith. And I think this is where it can tie into a healthy form of deconstruction would be when it leads you back to a place where Jesus is the center. Or maybe it is a dismantling of unhealthy theology or practices or things you've taken on board in your spiritual journey that aren't really central to the gospel.
Dominic Done 13:04
So a healthy form of deconstruction, you just think about building a house or dismantling a house. If you were to go buy a house, and let's say you discovered that the walls had rot in them. Then you want to deconstruct that. You want to take out the wall. You want to reframe it, right. And there are some things in our faith that I think ought to be thought through. There are some things in certain forms of American Christianity that ought to be thought through. And when it's done in community, when it's done with a motivation for a deeper, more authentic faith, when Jesus remains at the center, then I think it can be a really, really beautiful, life- giving process.
Dominic Done 14:02
Unhealthy deconstruction is often fueled by maybe it's anger towards something or bitter towards a system or a church. Or maybe the motivation isn't necessarily for robust faith, but rather simply looking for an opportunity to tear down faith. And deconstruction only for the sake of deconstruction will inevitably lead you to a place of kind of vacuous uncertainty. If you begin to deconstruct the house without any form of reconstruction--you take off the roof and the walls, you rip up the flooring. Well, sooner or later you have nothing left to live in. And that's the problem is everyone needs a worldview. Everyone needs a house to live in. Everyone needs the shelter from the storm, right?
Dominic Done 14:55
So what I see, many people who just deconstruct because it's a cultural fad or because they're angry at their parents or because there's some kind of bitterness in their heart towards evangelicalism or whatever, they go down that path deconstruct, deconstruct, deconstruct, that inevitably leads into a place of "I don't even know what I believe anymore or why I believe." And in that space, I think there's room to reconstruct and that can be a beautiful process.
Dominic Done 15:32
You know, Walter Brueggemann, it's fascinating. You mentioned the Psalms, because in the Psalms, you see this process of what Walter Brueggemann calls orientation, disorientation, reorientation. So the Psalms of orientation like Psalm 8 or 24 or 33. It's like the psalms of praise and "I believe" and it's wonderful, "God, you're good." And then psalms of disorientation, you mentioned Psalm 13, or I'd throw in Psalm 22 or Psalm 51. You know, it's kind of a place of unexpected disruption or anger, despair, and suffering. That's kind of the deconstruction of "Oh, my God, where are you?" It's the gritty, raw for me questions, right? But he doesn't end there. The third phase of Psalms is new orientation. And this is faith reborn. This is where, sure, there might be questions still. But the author of the Psalms harnesses that energy to move toward belief rather than unbelief.
Eddie Rester 16:21
You know, I think about those three types of Psalms. And I think people sometimes are surprised to find that there are people who doubt and struggle with God, anywhere in Scripture. I think that there's been something in our church culture, and I don't know how deep--you may be able to speak to that--but how deep it may go in our history that basically says, you can't doubt, you can't really question. Recently, one of my college daughters was having a conversation with a friend, my daughter and her friend are both freshmen, and they were talking about science and creationism and evolution and the impact of all that and had this long conversation, and you know, my daughter trying to say, "We can believe in science. We don't have to deny science, because we trust in Jesus." And the girl, she said, when they got done with conversation, the girl said to her, this: "I never knew I could question that."
Dominic Done 17:20 That's fascinating.
Eddie Rester 17:21
What is it that we, I mean, what is it that we've woven into Christianity that says we can't question? Why do we have this sense that Christianity has to be so certain? Where did that come from? Or maybe you can speak to why, where you see that and where that came from?
Dominic Done 17:40
Oh, that's very interesting. You're right, there is kind of a cultural obsession and this concern with modernity, with certainty, right? And we see this in kind of the 80s, 90s, apologetic approach where it's all about, do you have a question? Here's a book: 101 answers to your questions. Memorize these points that all begin with the letter P, or whatever, and you can have a faith that is 100% certain. But what I see in Scripture is less of an emphasis on certainty and more of an emphasis on trust.
Dominic Done 18:16
And I'd want to push people back from kind of a modernistic approach to faith where I need to have every single answer lined out if I'm going to believe, to a place where it's more of a rabbinic--what you see in Scripture and how Jesus led his disciples or the ethos of the Old Testament or the way the psalms are written. Questions were part of the theological enrichment. This is why in the book of Deuteronomy, God actually encouraged, commanded his people to ask questions. He told parents, he said, "When your children ask you, here's how you can engage them in conversation." And this is just part of the way of God's people for thousands of years to wrestle.
Dominic Done 19:07
This is why Israel, you think of Jacob who became Israel, how did that happened? It was in the process of wrestling with God. And that is how God's people approach faith. It's a wrestling match. It's not some bullet point certainty. But rather it's a it's a place of back and forth and give and take and not being afraid to ask the hard questions and encountering God on the mountain or wrestling with him in the valley. That's how our faith grows. And this approach we've had for many years, I think it's changing now, but for many, many years, the approach the American church was apologetics is about certainty. And I'd say actually, no, it's about learning to trust and it's about learning to live in the tension, many times, of an unresolved faith.
Eddie Rester 20:02
Yeah, I'm just taking in the conversation and thinking about, I mean, I think about my own kind of journey of faith. My father was a pastor. And one of the things he would often say in his sermons was that doubt is the ants in the pants of faith. If you're not doubting, you're either dead or asleep.
Dominic Done 20:20 Yes.
Chris McAlilly 20:21
I'm sure that comes from somewhere, and I don't know where it comes from.
Dominic Done 20:23
Yeah, Fred. That's from Frederick Buechner.
Chris McAlilly 20:25
Oh, there you go. So yeah, so I'm sure he got that there. But I think for me, like, that was always part of how my... I don't know, that was the theological world that my father created for me to live in. And so I don't know, I think that sometimes when I see... I guess, I'm kind of curious about the fact that it feels like deconstruction is a cultural fad when there is a long kind of tradition within Christian theology and within the church of creating space, and you're kind of connecting folks to places in Scripture, but there's also something that's called apophatic theology. So the sense of you can't know God, except by acknowledging that all the language that we have to say is not God, you know.
Chris McAlilly 21:17
And then, and then I think about Meister Eckhart in, like, the 13th century, "as long as we have and know who God is, we don't," this, you know, a line from from Meister Eckhart and I think I am kind of curious about folks who have gone through a period of deconstruction and appear to be quite certain in their unbelief, you know. It's like their deconstruction is a bit too timid, you know, it needs to go a little bit farther. It's like, if you really go there, you don't know much, you know. Like what we can know is so limited. And at some point, you have to kind of fall back on something like trust and something in the mystery of the fact that we're even here that we can even have these thoughts.
Chris McAlilly 22:06
I don't know, for me, it's always helpful to kind of get out of my head a little bit, you know, and I don't know. I think the places when I haven't been able to think my way to faith, right, or I just need to reenter community, or I need to go back out into the woods, or I just need to get out of my head for a minute, you know. And for me, those are places where I kind of reconnect to trust. What about for you, Dominic? As you think about, you know, you have a really interesting way of thinking about these things. But what's fascinating about you is that you've created opportunities, you're creating, you're thinking through how to sequence things so that people can move through doubt back into faith. Talk a little bit about kind of what you're learning about the opportunities that you're creating.
Dominic Done 22:56
Hmm, well, I was reading a book recently by a theologian named Christopher Wright. And he had this fascinating line that I think really ties into what you're saying there. The book, by the way, is called "The God I Don't Understand." It's an amazing title. And it comes down to the place of him walking, wrestling with God for years and years and deep waters of theologies on personal pastoral experiences. But there's this line that really jumped out to me where he said, "it seems to me that the older I get, the less I think I really understand God, which is not to say that I don't love and trust him. On the contrary, as life goes on my love and trust grow deeper."
Dominic Done 23:44
So part of the process for us in helping people walk through the seasons of doubt is to demonstrate that doubt isn't the destination. It's a road to be traveled. And God is there with you in those seasons of doubt whether you sense him or not. You know, I think of CS Lewis who, in his book "A Grief Observed"--and talk about hard questions. The first part of the book, especially, is very much in line with what you see in Psalm 13 or other psalms of disorientation where, you know, his wife Joy died. And then he begins to ask questions, like, "God, I came to the door of prayer. He didn't open it. He slammed in my face." He calls God the great iconoclast.
Dominic Done 24:34
He describes--again, it's deconstruction--his view of God was being shattered and disrupted, but it was also being reborn. And I think that process and also the end game, the end goal is beautifully summarized in another of his more obscure books. I think it's probably one of his best books, "Till We Have Faces." And there's this haunting line where he says, "I now know Lord, why you utter no answer. You are yourself the answer before your face questions die away, what other answer would suffice?" And that's part of the process is saying, look, we can wrestle with these things. We can look at possible apologetic approaches to your doubts. But for me, I think there needs to be a pastoral element to this, walking with people through those seasons. One of the most loving things you can say to someone who's deconstructing their faith is, "I will love you through this."
Eddie Rester 25:39
A friend of mine, who has for the last year or two really been on just a deep journey of doubt and struggle, and you know, in some ways unraveling of her faith, one of the things that she said recently was," I wish people rather than say, 'I'm worried about you,' would say something along the lines of, 'I'm curious about where you are.'" Just a shift of the language even, to allow her not to feel shame in her journey, but to be allowed to share her journey with other Christians who may not be in that same place of doubt or unraveling or questions.
Eddie Rester 26:25
You know, in the book, you talk a lot about your season of really unraveling, and it happened when you were in Oxford, England, in school. And really, you had some things, I think, almost unexpectedly, or maybe some commitments that you had, during that season that really began to open you back up. Would you share just a little bit about your journey and what really opened you back up to trust in God?
Dominic Done 26:52
Yeah, of course. So I wasn't born in a Christian home. When our family did become followers of Jesus, I was later years, the middle school going to high school. And at that time, we were part of a church, where kind of the culture towards doubt or questions were "just got to have belief. You got to have trust." So I kind of imbibed this mode of relating to God, where doubt is seen as the enemy. And the problem with that, of course, is life happens. You start really wrestling with stuff.
Dominic Done 27:31
And for me, it was multi-layered. Part of it, and I shared this in the book, was kind of some of the brokenness that was in my family growing up, and my dad was an alcoholic, and there's just a lot of stuff going on in our family. Part of it, too, was intellectual stuff, philosophical questions. At that time, you know, the new atheism was really gaining ground, and my first year of Oxford was devoted to studying the works of atheists. So this, for me was the time of deconstruction, not losing faith, but rather, taking a really hard look at some of these questions that were being raised.
Dominic Done 28:12
And there were some times where I felt, you know, what Asaph described in Psalm 73. "As for me, my feet almost slipped," right. It's this incredibly disorienting process. It's like if you've ever gone rock climbing, I went a few years ago, not sure I'll do it again. But at one point, I think I was like, 100 feet up, and my foot slipped. And fortunately, you know, I'm locked in with the rope. But my whole body kind of swung out and your stomach just sinks and feels like everything's spinning, right? Doubt is kind of like that. Deconstruction is like that. "As for me, my feet almost slipped." It's this incredibly disturbing, difficult process. And I went through that, again, I kind of laid out in the book what happened there.
Dominic Done 29:00
But then there was this shift. And I think, for me, it was in the wrestling. It was not being afraid to ask the hard questions. It was doing a deeper dive into worldview. That was a big part of it. It was the community aspect, having trusted mentors and people in my life that I could, you know, process these questions with. And in that process, and I call it a process, because it wasn't like this one sudden moment, like, "Oh, my faith is strong again." It was a deep dive into, I think, my heart, into the heart of God and discovering there Jesus, that he actually encourages and invites us to wrestle with him, and to ask these hard questions.
Dominic Done 29:55
That's why when Jesus called these disciples, the way he taught wasn't just classroom, right? Memorize these points. The way he taught his disciples was on the journey. And he asked them over 300 questions: Do you believe this? Who do you say I am? Or that question in the Gospel of John, what do you want? That's a really good question. And it forced the disciples to open up within their own assumptions and forced them to wrestle, and also to grow. And so for me, that process of deconstruction, reconstruction, disorientation, reorientation looked a lot like Jacob wrestling with God.
Eddie Rester 30:32
When I think about, just this came to mind, the people that Jesus had the most trouble with were the ones who weren't really willing to ask and wrestle with questions, or they were asking questions to maybe undermine Jesus rather than questions of faith and life. You know, even Nicodemus, who comes to Christ by night, and you never really hear how that sorts itself out, but at least he was willing to come to Christ.
Eddie Rester 31:03
Yeah, I don't know. I guess I'm thinking about what the difference is between productive and unproductive doubt. And I feel like there's a... I guess I just hear you pointing back to at the heart of a productive kind of doubt is a charity or rather than suspicion, or there is a kind of trust as possible that even the process of working your way through the questions is gonna lead somewhere. And yeah, I mean, I guess you've got to have hope that you kind of work through that, you know, I mean, I think it's easy... As I read in some of the things that you've written, it's really about kind of creating a space where people don't despair in the midst of doubt. Because I do think that's possible. I see that
Eddie Rester 31:52 It's disorienting.
Chris McAlilly 31:54 It's very disorienting.
Eddie Rester 31:55
When the world that you thought you lived in, doesn't appear to be there anymore. Just like you were talking a minute about swinging off the rocks. It's just incredibly disorienting.
Eddie Rester 32:07
Yeah. And I think there is a kind of, I don't know, I can't remember... I guess there's a there's a philosopher named Paul Ricoeur who talks about a first naivete and then a kind of second naivete, that you can kind of come back to on the other side of working through a set of questions. You can come back to a kind of childlike faith. It's not the same as when you were a child, but there is a way that you can re-engage the language and the question or the Creeds and the practices of the church.
Chris McAlilly 32:46
For me, that was incredibly helpful, that I could bring my full mind to the church, you know, that I could bring all of the questions that I would bring to bear or all of the tools of literary analysis I was learning at college, like, I can bring all of that to bear on the Bible and on my faith and the Bible can take that stuff.
Eddie Rester 33:14 God can take it.
Chris McAlilly 33:15
God can take it and receive it. And in receiving all of those tools of intellectual engagement with the faith, that that wasn't somehow going to lead me, you know, away from Christ. If I was going to find my way back to Christ, it was going to be through that stuff, you know?
Dominic Done 33:34
Absolutely. Yeah. I remember. I think Isidore Isaac Rabi. He was a Nobel Laureate, 1944, for his discovery in nuclear magnetic resonance, I believe. And he was once asked, you know, how did you become so successful? And his answer was so intriguing, because he said, "Well, my success as a scientist," he said, "I credit it all to the way that my mother greeted me when I came home from school." And they probed, what do you mean by that? And he said, "Well, most moms would ask their children, 'Did you learn anything today?'" But he said, "My mom, when I came home from school as a kid would ask me every day, 'did you ask a good question today?'" And he said, "That made all the difference, because it inspired in me this longing to grow and learn through the questions."
Dominic Done 34:33
Just like you said, it's so good. Not only can the Bible handle it, the Bible actually encourages us. The Bible gives language to our questions. Sometimes one of the big questions I hear so often is well, where's God in the suffering? And not only does the Bible engage with that question, it has an entire book, the other book of Job, that is devoted to it, and it doesn't really leave the question fully resolved.
Chris McAlilly 34:57 That's right.
Eddie Rester 35:01 That's right.
Dominic Done 35:07
But what you find at the end is a man who still worships, still trusts, doesn't fully understand, but still God met him.
Eddie Rester 35:17
Yeah. And I think it's helpful. The picture that I have in my mind is just a map. And, yeah, what I was thinking, as you said, that it's not just that, I think we come to the Bible, or we come to God with a set of questions. And what we receive is not answers to those questions, but what we see is, we get doubt narrated. There's this narration of not our story, but somebody else's story, but it's outside of us. And it's just removed enough that we can kind of look at that person and kind of think of it as "I'm just looking at this other person." You know, "Look at this miserable person who lost everything. Man, that was awful. It must have been so bad for him."
Eddie Rester 36:04
And the friends, he's got terrible friends. Yeah,
Eddie Rester 36:06
Yeah, like, what a bunch of douchebags, man, like, who are these people? And I don't know, there's something about that that gives you kind of a map or I guess places of orientation, I think that's all I would say, and structure. You know, for me, it's the Psalms, always the Psalms. It's coming back to the Psalms as a structure for brutal honesty. No matter kind of where I find myself on any given day, do I really, can I fully confess the Creed today with my whole heart? There are days where I can and days where I can't and that doesn't mean that I don't believe it. I do. It doesn't mean that I don't trust God. I do. But it's just being honest about a real, live, adult journey and process of faith that we're working out, you know, that each of us are working out, that all of you listening are working through as well.
Dominic Done 37:11
Yeah, it's that prayer, "Lord, I believe, help my unbelief." Or, you know, what's striking is in Matthew 28, when Jesus had risen, and he's meeting with the disciples, there's this epic moment of commissioning, being sent to the world to preach the gospel, but a little phrase we so often miss is, it says, "Some worshiped and some doubted."
Eddie Rester 37:32 Yeah.
Dominic Done 37:33
So here's the resurrected Jesus, and talk about evidence and apologetics and answers. He's standing right there. And still, some believed, some doubted. But here's the beautifully redemptive thing to me is that Jesus sent out both of them. You know, if it were me, I'd probably separate the worshipers and the doubters. Worshipers, you're on the team, go plant churches. Doubters, you know, get more training or whatever. But he sent them both out, the worshpers and the doubters. And, you know, Acts tells us they turned the world upside down. And I think that's the beautiful thing.
Dominic Done 38:09
I love your honesty in what you just said there because in those moments, in those days, where, Lord, I believe, help my unbelief, or like CS Lewis once said, "there are days when I fully believe," and he said, "there are other days, I don't even know if I'm a Christian anymore." And for me, usually, that means I need another cup of coffee and I'll feel better about life. But there is this disorientation, latent in the human heart, a fickleness in the human heart, as well as striving, a struggling, a wrestling in the human heart. And this is why our feelings can't be what drives our faith. That's why it has to be more than just getting answers. It has to be trust. It's like any relationship. It's built on trust if it's to thrive.
Eddie Rester 38:57
You know, that's so important that you say that, I think because so much of, I grew up in the 80s and 90s, as a youth director, and so much of it was building towards how you feel about Jesus and the emotion that we tried to conjure up to help me help other kids experience Jesus. And I think what we did is we shortchanged Jesus because as we know, the word love in the New Testament, isn't just an emotion. The word love in the New Testament requires a choice to choose for. And on some days, faith has to be a conscious choice.
Eddie Rester 39:43
There was a man who I heard say that one time, years later, he lost his son tragically, when his son was in college. And I had an opportunity a year or two later to talk to him about that. He said, "Yeah, I've still got the article whereI read that originally." And he sent that to me, and he said "I've thought about that more," since his son died, he said, "than ever before. That on many days, faith has to be a conscious choice." Because for him, it didn't make any sense that his son would die tragically, none whatsoever. But for him, it just had to be this moment of, "I believe, help my unbelief."
Eddie Rester 40:22
And I wonder, as you think, because so many times, churches unintentionally preach that your faith just has to be on this continual upgrade path, better and better and better. We don't leave a lot of room for folks who are doing what we're talking about today. For church leaders or, you know, small group leaders who are listening or other folks who lead in their church in some way, what would you say to Chris and I as well, how can we create that space? What are things that churches can be about and do to make sure we're operating in a way that leaves room for folks to take a deep dive into their doubts?
Dominic Done 41:06
Yeah, that's such a good question. I mean, there's a practical element there, you know, where it's directly engaging with the questions that are being asked. I think there's also a culture that's created in any church. Some cultures, and we've probably all experienced this, questions aren't really welcomed. And people feel like they have to express their doubts in order to act a certain way. But we can also create environment where doubt isn't seen as the rival of faith. In fact, I actually believe that doubt kind of depends upon faith for its existence, because when you doubt something, it's only because you first believe. You can believe without doubting, but you can't doubt without believing.
Dominic Done 41:50
Every doubt has a foundation that it's standing on. I think it was John Wesley who said, "The higher the hill, the stronger the wind." The higher the life so much stronger will doubts assail us. And when someone's in that space of wrestling, in many ways, I think it's something to be applauded. Like, okay, you're struggling with this because you really believe this. If you believe suffering, for example, disproves the existence of God, well, your underlying belief, the deeper belief there, is that the world shouldn't be that way. Right? There's a deeper belief that God ought to exist. And so you're grappling with the kind of God that he is.
Dominic Done 42:33
If we follow our doubts to our beliefs, I think we will be surprised where it can lead us. I think it can bring a depth to our faith. And so for me, I think it's about instilling hope in the heart of the wrestler. It's about speaking hope into the life of the doubter. It's about walking with them through those seasons of deconstruction, disorientation, but leaning into reorientation. It's about celebrating the struggle. Anne Lamott, she talked about the ancient worlds, how, if a valuable dish or jar was cracked, I think it was in Asian cultures, rather than throwing it away, they would adorn that crack with a gold leaf, not to hide the break, but to draw attention to it. It's their way of saying, Look, we're not going to pretend the brokenness doesn't exist. Instead, we're going to own it, share it, turn it into something beautiful. And I think that's what Christian community ought to be like: being honest with our wounds, but then allowing ourselves to be adorned with grace, community. It's the liberating choice to let people see us at our worst, so they can see God at his most redemptive best.
Eddie Rester 43:52
You mentioned the word "community" there. And as you get to the end of your book, "When Faith Fails," that's one of the things that you talk about. And you know, I'm going to loop back to your story of reading all the new atheists and everything. And I believe, if I'm remembering correctly, it was your wife who kind of pointed, hey, maybe you should read something on the other side of that. You think about oftentimes how we present as Christians, but maybe to enter into the knowledge of the doubts that you, have the person sitting beside you in worship probably struggling or has struggled or will struggle with the same things that we... I can't remember who said, but we all come as beggars to the table. We all come as humans needing grace and hope and certitude at some point in a way that's real and faithful.
Eddie Rester 44:48
What's the first step for someone who is listening to the conversation and they're trying to figure out what to do next? What would you say?
Dominic Done 44:55
Yeah, I mean, I think it depends where they're at in the process. I think motivation is a big part of it. There are specific issues that can be explored. Absolutely. I think step one, though, would be your doubt isn't a sign of a faith that's collapsing but a faith that is screaming for substance and truth. Reframing the conversation, helping people see their deconstruction even as an opportunity for something more beautiful. Then I go back to community. I think we need to be wrestling together through these issues. One of the worst things we can do is isolate ourselves when we're going through those seasons of doubt. Find a good community, find a healthy community, find people who are willing to walk with you in that process.
Dominic Done 45:50
I think cultivating the life of the mind. You know, towards the end of the book, I talk about some of these practices, but our minds and our thoughts and how we approach faith and how we think about God and faith really matter. And that's why for me in my season of disorientation, a big part of the process was I can't just be immersed in the works of nihilistic writers and expect my faith suddenly, being rich, right? There is the wrestling process of okay, what's the other side to this? I think sometimes we can get lost in our own thoughts, our own headspace, our own doubts, even. You know, Nietzsche, he once said, f you stare into the abyss long enough, it will begin to stare into you. And I think that can happen with our doubts, right? "Life of Pi," remember that novel, had said something similar that doubt can be useful for a while, but in the end, you also need a way to frame and live your life.
Dominic Done 46:49
So I think seeing your doubts as okay, they may feel unresolved, but through community through cultivating the life of the mind, through seeking God through prayer, through wrestling, through even being okay with unanswered questions, our faith can grow. And I think that's a big part of it, too. There are some questions that will be unresolved. It's why Paul said we see through a glass dimly. But then face to face, there will come a day, our questions we still have will be resolved. But until that day, we're learning to love, we're learning to trust, we're learning to walk with God and community through the process.
Eddie Rester 47:34
Dominic, thank you for your time today. And thank you for the work that you're doing, helping us all rethink in these days. The book, if you're interested in the book, is "When Faith Fails." If you're interested in checking out what Dominic is doing now, the website is pursuingfaith.org. You can find a lot of resources. He's got some videos and some great information for you there as well, so that's pursuingfaith.org Again, Dominic, thank you so much for spending some time with us today.
Dominic Done 48:11
It's been an honor to chat with you guys. Thank you for the work you're doing.
Eddie Rester 48:14
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Chris McAlilly 48:22
If you would like to support this work financially or if you have an idea for a future guest, you can go to theweightpodcast.com. [END OUTRO]