God Over Good By Luke NorsworthySample

Day One: Letting Go

I stand surrounded by a thousand people singing about God being a good Father, my faith gone mute. I can’t sing those words because allowing a child to suffer is not how I define a good, good parent.

A few months after my singing predicament, I was in a North Hollywood apartment for a podcast interview. Barely into my normal, introductory, awkward attempts at humor, that episode’s guest, agnostic comedian Brent Sullivan, interjected, “Do you know any pastors who doubt?”

Dumbfounded, I was sure Brent didn’t mean his question to be personal. He didn’t know that the entire reason I started my podcast and recorded hundreds of episodes was to get respected people to help me make sense of the faith I was fighting to keep. He didn’t know I had been pulled out of my certainty into the unknown and was drowning in my disorientation, desperately looking for deliverance. 

“Do you know any pastors who doubt?”

“Um . . .” The truthful answer was simple and straightforward. I just didn’t want to say it. “Yes, I know a pastor who doubts. I see him every morning in the mirror.” 

I remained silent, but my thoughts did not. Should I bury this tension, disregarding what doing so will do to my soul? That’s assuming I, in fact, have a soul. This “sweep it under the rug” approach comes naturally to me. But I know the junk I try to bury in my soul gets progressively worse the longer it’s unattended.

But maybe if I retrace the steps, read the same verses, and pray the same way, I can become more like myself again. Maybe I should just keep shoveling the same sand into the same cracks in the same wall in hopes the water will finally stop getting in. Or maybe there’s another way. Maybe salvation isn’t about trying to get certainty and confidence back or trying to force God to match my expectations for what God should be. Maybe salvation isn’t about running from my doubts as though they are the enemy of my relationship with God but instead embracing them as the very place we meet. Maybe salvation looks more like letting go than holding on.

Why do we tend to believe that salvation is about certainty? Why might it look more like letting go than holding on?