Doubting for Reformation Rather Than Ruin

Death isn’t fun ever; but it can be especially not fun while attending a Pentecostal church.

My brother and sister-in-law had been trying to get pregnant for over two years. And I’m not exaggerating to say that my wife and I prayed for them to get pregnant, every day, for about 730 days straight. Then on New Year’s Day, it finally happens.

And best part was: twins. Which felt like a total miracle—a confirmation of God’s generous gifts.

Fast forward 23 weeks, and a disease called CTTS—just a random affliction, no genetic, let alone logical, causes whatsoever—hits and the babies have to be emergency delivered 17 weeks early. Rees Margot and Celia Evelyn emergency C-sectioned into the world, weighing less than a pound each.

And so it goes that Celia lives—strong and healthy to this day—but ten days after this emergency delivery, Rees passes away.

As you can imagine, this, to put it so lightly as to seem morbid, puts you in a funk. We prayed for healing constantly. Our church held three prayer meetings a day, fasting regularly for a month, but healing didn’t come.

Every night before bed my wife and I read a story from the gospels—which are, of course, loaded with healing stories. And reading them stopped feeling comforting because it felt like they were megaphoning our own family’s lack of healing.

We didn’t blame God; we ascribe to a theodicy1 that doesn’t consider things like pain and death and disaster and disease as coming from God; instead, in our opinion, that blend is sourced from the devil and principalities and the force of entropy and the butterfly effect of human sin.2

But still, even though I didn’t blame God, I couldn’t help but doubt His activity—or just His general ability to interact (or want to interact) with the universe.

In a sense, it was one of the only real times that I’ve struggled with doubt. And it felt irrational not to—we were provided a picturesque reason for doubt.

Sadly, Pentecostal environments aren’t always the best places for grief or doubt; I love me some Pentecostals, but their twin tools for dealing with these hardships are typically (1) suppression and (2) over-spiritualization. Which are to doubt what bandaids are to scrapes; they cover it up, but the wound won’t heal unless it’s paired with peroxide.

So I took a detour during this phase to think a bit more about what doubt is and does.

In surveying the varieties of doubt from those I’ve met, heard from, seen online, or read about, there are a lot of ways to approach doubt—but only a couple ways seem helpful.

Doubt is inevitable; the crux is whether we greet it as something that closes us off from reality or a process through which we become more planted in reality.

Regardless of how long it takes us to process the initial bitterness of doubt, we should eventually move toward growth, not perpetual introspection—seeing it as a challenge rather than debilitating illness, for reformation rather than ruin.