A Stranger at the Chasm

A story about faith, memory, and finding a way forward

Image by Clicker-Free Vector Images / Pixabay.com

Evangelical deconstruction is a perilous journey. No one comes through it unscathed or unchanged.

Some abandon the Christian faith entirely and become atheists or agnostics. Some explore other faiths or embrace an undefined spirituality. A few go back to where they started.

Why did I remain a Christian? And why did I choose to reconstruct my faith?

In my previous post I said that it was because I couldn’t get past the person of Jesus.

That’s true, but it’s a little more complicated than that.

What follows in this and the upcoming posts is the story of my reconstruction, of how I began to find my way out of the Dark Forest. I’m presenting it as a narrative partly because I’m a storyteller and partly because it’s the best way to explain why I still hold to faith in Jesus Christ.

Being a storyteller, I think in terms of pictures and stories; thus, I’ve framed my deconstruction process as a journey through what I call the Dark Forest. And if deconstruction is a Dark Forest, my life before deconstruction was what I’d call the Land of Certainty.

And that is where this story begins:

A Stranger at the Chasm

The Land of Certainty was beautiful. When I lived there, I knew all the answers. I walked with confidence and self-assurance. I knew what I believed and why I believed it. I had been taught to be ready always to give an answer for the hope I had, and I felt that I could do that.

But in the midst of my Land of Certainty stood a broken-down shed. It was a place I never went, except to hide questions that I didn’t want to deal with. Over the decades I filled the shed with unanswered questions until it was fairly bursting at the seams. Eventually the weight of the questions blew off the door, and when it did the Land of Certainty vanished and I found myself in the Dark Forest of Deconstruction.

I wandered in the Dark Forest for such a long time I began to despair of ever finding my way out, getting back to solid ground, to certainty, to that point where I knew all the answers. I wanted to find myself in a field of wildflowers with bright sunlight and a cool breeze.

I was at least hoping that I’d find a clear path with a signpost that read, “This way.”

No such path appeared, even after years of walking and asking questions. After years of reading and studying and praying, occasionally I’d find “clearings” in the dark forest, times when I sensed God’s presence more than others. Times when the questions didn’t seem so daunting. But those times were fleeting, and soon the forest would close in again.

As I walked, I’d pray: Lord, don’t let go of me; and don’t let me let go of you.

I felt so alone during those times, and it seemed like the forest was getting darker and more dangerous. Eventually I found myself at the end of the road, with a deep chasm gaping before me. I could go no further.

I stood at the edge of eternity and beheld only blackness.

Was this the end of my journey? Nothingness?

I searched for a path forward, a way to avoid leaping into the abyss, bug couldn’t find anything. So I gathered some wood, built a fire, sat down on a nearby log—and waited.

I don’t know what I was waiting for. There certainly wouldn’t be a light from heaven. Not in this dismal place. For all I knew I had come to the end of the road.

I’m not sure how long I sat there. Days? Months? Years?

But one day I heard a noise behind me. Was someone coming along the same path I had followed? A fellow traveler, perhaps? Or perhaps somebody to help me turn around and find the way back?

Unable to go anywhere else, I sat and waited for whomever it was to come into the firelight.

My eyes, having long ago adjusted to not having much light, perceived a person’s shape on the distant path. Wrapped in a cloak and hooded, and walking with a cane, it moved slowly, deliberately, as if fearful of falling.

This one has been in the forest far longer than I have. Why have our paths not crossed?

When the man came more fully into the light—for I could now see it was an old man—I called to him. “Father, come and sit with me.”

His face was wrinkled, worn by years of care, but his eyes were kind. Wordlessly, he came over and sat on the log beside me.

“Are you lost, too?” I asked.

He smiled and shook his head.

“Then what are you doing here?”

“I could ask you the same question,” said The Stranger.

“What?”

“What are you doing here, Jim?”

I didn’t have an answer for that. I shrugged and said, “I guess I’ve lost my way. I know I don’t like it. It’s lonely here. And scary.”

“Do you want to stay here?”

I knew the answer to that one. “No!”

The Stranger nodded and said, “Walk with me.”

“Are you going to show me the way back?”

The Stranger said, “I’m going to show you the way forward.”

I raised a skeptical eyebrow but nodded. I’d been stuck in this place for so long. Maybe this Stranger could help me; maybe he couldn’t. But I was willing to try anything.

I stood up and dusted myself off. “Lead on.”

The Stranger began to walk and I followed behind him.

Through thick brush on the right, a path across the chasm appeared. The path wasn’t smooth. Indeed, it looked narrower and rockier than the one I’d been walking.

“Is there no other path?” I asked. “Wouldn’t it be safer to go back the way I came?”

“No,” said The Stranger. “This is the only way.”

We walked together, but the trail was so narrow that we couldn’t walk abreast. I had to follow The Stranger and couldn’t see what lay ahead of us. I don’t know how long we trod the path together, but eventually he stopped.

The Stranger moved aside and let me see what was ahead.

A door stood in our path. I saw nothing special about it. Just a plain white door like you might find in your own home.

“What is this?” I asked. “Can we go no further?”

The Stranger motioned toward the door. “Open it.”

I hesitated for a moment, wondering if I should trust this one whom I met such a short time before. But his kind face and smile reassured me, so I took the handle and opened the door.

At first, a haze obscured my view, but soon it began to clear and I saw what looked like a college student center, with a wall of tiny square mailboxes and people milling about. There was something vaguely familiar about the place, but the haze hadn’t cleared enough for me to identify it.

“What is this place?” I asked.

The Stranger smiled again, motioning to the now-open door, and said, “Step through.”

“Are you sure this is the way out of the forest?” I asked.

He just smiled and motioned toward the door again.

I took a deep breath and walked through the open door.

And I immediately knew where I was…

(…to be continued.)