I live a mile and a half from a seminary. You could easily guess which one based on my bio, but I won’t name it here because what follows could be about any seminary. And while it may speak to present disagreements and disaffiliations, what follows was born from a moment at another seminary (different town, different denomination) almost 30 years ago. So let’s call the local school Anytown Theological Seminary.
I drive by ATS almost every day. And for the past few months I’ve been watching the progress of their construction project: a new apartment building. Soon it will house seminarians eager to learn (I hope) and eager to serve the Lord (I hope even more). As I’ve looked at the rows and rows of windows, I’ve wondered who might soon live behind them. And while I’m not usually one to give unsolicited advice, there’s a long-held memory I’d like to share with them.
Dear ATS Student,
Welcome to seminary! You may be straight out of college. You might be on your second or third career. You might be wondering what in the world God was thinking by sending you to the last place you expected to be. Maybe the last place you wanted to be? Thank you for answering the call. You may feel you had no choice but to say, “I will go.” Even so, it’s a big step.
I know what it is like to be completely certain and yet utterly uncertain upon starting a seminary program. I’ve felt it all three times.
Our desire to be right is high. Our desire to be in control is hard to shake. And even when we are trying our best to humbly follow a call, and we know that all our doubts and fears are fully known by the one who can handle them, we aren’t always sure how to trust our fellow travelers on this road. One thing I do know to be true: the road can be very hard. And the people walking near us, even with us, might only add to the burdens life throws at us, even those who walk under the same banner of faith. Because sadly, honest expressions of doubt and fear can fail others’ litmus test of faith. (“How can you feel that when you believe this? You do believe this, don’t you?”)
If one day in class, a professor asks if you can imagine something that would cause you to stop believing, and either by word or facial expression the entire class cries out, “Surely not I”—except one. One says humbly, “I think I can.” Here’s what not to do. Don’t avoid eye contact as you sit in awkward silence. Don’t make that “oh, poor you and your weak faith” face. Don’t assume. Don’t judge. Don’t deny your own doubts and fears. Assurance can be felt—and what a gift! But I suspect the reason we are prone to self-assurance is because we desperately want to feel that which we profess, and sometimes we do not.
I wish you well as you study and learn from your professors and your fellow ATS students, who I hope aren’t just cookie cutter copies of you. Listen to one another. Receive honesty and bravery as a gift and give it in return. There’s a seminary graduate out there (maybe a pastor now, maybe not) who gave me that gift many years ago. I failed to return it.
We feel. We flail. We fall. If not in the visible, “big” ways that we are quick to call out in others, then certainly in a multitude of tiny, internal ways—insidious ways—that can lead us to wrinkle our face and say to another, “Oh poor you.” Instead, poor us. If I did not learn that in seminary, I have since. But also, blessed us. Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Sometimes we bring nothing to the Lord. Not even faith. But showing up is still faith. I think that gift-giving seminarian knew that. It took me a little longer to land there too.
We need seminaries and seminarians. Learn well. Listen well. Love well.
–A fellow traveler
Confession is good for the soul. I trust it’s never too late to apologize and offer gratitude. So here’s another letter, one long overdue.
Dear Late 1990’s Seminary Student,
I’m sorry I don’t remember your name, but I remember your voice and your words. I’m sorry I didn’t speak up in that moment and say, Thank you for your honesty. Thank you for loving the Lord and showing up even when it’s hard and none of it makes sense.
You may no longer be in occupational ministry, but your presence in that moment has ministered to me for over 25 years. God bless you.
–A former classmate
Assurance is very good for the soul. And—praise God!—it’s the Spirit work and not ours.
We believe, Lord. And yet we doubt all sorts of things. But you know that. And still you stand before us and say, “Peace I give to you.” Forgive us our self-assured beliefs that keep us from receiving the gift of your presence. Forgive us for loving the security of certainty more than we love you and more than we love our neighbor. For without a doubt, you have called us to love and showed us what it should look like: humility, sacrifice, mercy.
I think there’s one more letter I need to write.
Dear Thomas,
Sorry about the nickname. Sorry for picturing you as the poster boy for bad faith. I’ve liked to think I would have done better in your place, but I probably wouldn’t have. It’s not every day you see the risen Lord standing right in front of you. Actually, it’s probably more often than I realize. And when Christ stands before me, I pray any doubts I have about who he is and what he can do will be transformed into what you have passed down to us: confession and testimony.
Thank you.
Your sister in Christ—many generations removed,
Becca
Header photo by Kenny Eliason on Unsplash
Photo by Sincerely Media on Unsplash
8 Responses
These 3 letters form, in my view, a trinity of poetry. Thank you for their truth-telling poignancy. They bring Naomi Shihab Nye’s poem “Lights from Other Windows” to mind. And, it is, after all, National Poetry Month. Grateful for the array of writers featured in RJ.
These are words to be treasured, Emily. Thank you. I will tuck them away for a time when I sit down to write and need inspiration and encouragement. Or perhaps bravery.
In a Lenten reflection I shared with my school, I wrote this: The question is not “Are you artistic?” but “What, as God’s handiwork, is your art? And how do you practice it?” But it could be phrased this way too: The question is not “Are you poetic or musical?” but “What, as God’s poetry, is your song? And how do you sing it?” (My thanks to Taylor Leonhardt and her beautiful “Poetry” for stirring my imagination on this.)
Thank you, Rebecca, for this beautiful piece. I often heard from my classmates, and felt for myself, the sentiment of “they are turning the Bible into a textbook.” But, I look back with gratitude for the depth my seminary education provided for me in my faith. And, I join you in praying for current (and former) seminarians to “Learn well. Listen well. Love well.” Thank you for this wonderful doorway into reflection on my own seminary experience.
Thank you, Gene. We don’t always know how to navigate the “both…and” realities of life and faith, and my devotional life certainly dropped off when the Bible became a textbook. Too often I felt that as spiritual failure. But seminaries would do well to anticipate those feelings and address them in the classroom, not just through extracurricular activities, small groups, and devotional resources, if they even do that. Maybe a required seminar for all incoming students called “This Won’t Be On the Test” or, because I’m a lover and teacher of grammar, “How Can I Keep from Parsing?” But in all seriousness, I know I would have benefitted from an invitation to honesty and humility on day one of the semester. And I think many of us would sign up to be guest speakers to share testimony and encouragement.
Thank you for these reflections. I believe seminary students would benefit from regular conversations with seasoned pastors. I know I would have. Humility is essential. As for Thomas, he embodies both doubt and conviction in my opinion, having been the one who supported Jesus when the others tried to warn him off from going to Jerusalem the last time. He was prone to internal conflict just like the rest of us. Please keep writing, Rebecca!
“Embodies both doubt and conviction” — exactly right. We lose so much when we view siblings in Christ (the ones we meet every day and the ones we only meet “on the page”) as one-dimensional. After hearing cautionary Sunday school lessons and sermons about “Doubting Thomas” in my youth, it was a revelation to think that this disciple, or any human I met in scripture, wasn’t that different from me or anyone else: flawed and yet called to follow. And loved beyond comprehension.
Last year in the Netherlands I heard a profound sermon on this text. The Domine pointed out that the word “doubt” never occurs, but what the Lord Jesus said to Thomas, pointedly “the Twin,” was “Don’t be/stay unbelieving but believing.” And in a very Dutch “bevindelijk” way the Dominee appealed to the twins that remain all our lives in all of us, the twins of Unbelief and Belief, and between which we must daily choose. Let me add that in my preaching in Park Slope, Brooklyn, I always assumed the premise that a person not believing the Gospel was entirely to be respected in their unbelieve, as the falsity of the Gospel remains a real possibility. That I believe it unshakeably and with joy gives me no rights or privileges before God over someone who does not.
When my husband started seminary, we attended some kind of get-together for the seminarians and spouses, and one of the professors told us spouses that in the next few years our spouses (the seminarians) would have their faith challenged and might wonder if they believed anymore. As far as I can tell, my husband’s faith was only strengthened through seminary. But I gave myself permission to admit, at least to myself, the doubts I had long tried to ignore or fight down, and consider not believing at least some of what I had been taught (a fundamentalist variety of belief that I had not grown up with but chose as a teenager because I wanted to have answers). By the time he finished seminary I had given up a bunch of things I no longer believed or at least wasn’t sure of or didn’t think they mattered, but re-adopted the ones that seemed most important. But I’ve never been able to feel sure of any of them the way so many Christians do. To turn the professor’s question around, I wonder whether there is anything that could make me feel sure of what I believe the way others seem to be. By this point in my life (approaching retirement) I’ve come to think it’s unlikely in this life. I occasionally fill the pulpit for my husband, and wonder if I’m an imposter preaching this faith that I am committed to but can’t escape the doubts that persist. It helped to learn that the way faith is spoken of in the New Testament is as much about being faithful as about believing something to be true.