You are in a blue funk. You are going through the motions, quite successfully, but internally you are hitting an emotional wall. If you are expressing any of it, it probably comes out either as weariness or cynicism. Internally it becomes a growing crisis of faith. Maybe life is just a bunch of atoms hitting against each other, without rhyme or reason, certainly without purpose. If there is no meta-story, no God who is working God’s purpose out as year proceeds to year, then why keep banging your head against the wall?
Maybe tomorrow or next week you will feel differently, but right now nothing holds much meaning. So what can you do? If this is the dark night of the soul, how should you respond? While it is always important to check yourself out physically, because chemical imbalance in the body can have a major impact on ones thoughts and emotions, it is also important to examine your spiritual side. It would be best to do this with a trusted spiritual friend but you can also do this with a piece of paper or a computer.
The basic question you are examining is “What if God is real and actively involved in our universe as a compassionate God?” That may seem to abstract and theoretical yet what you are exploring is how to make sense out of our world if God is real. To make it more personal, assume that God is real and trying to communicate with you in your present state. What might God want to say? At this point, you are not wrestling with whether you believe that or not but simply exploring what it would mean if it were true. Sometimes the barrier of doubt can be best approached from the other side of the hurdle. If you did believe, then how might your life and the world look?
Living your life “as if you believed,” can sometimes help you move past the dark moments of doubt. If your response is that you would be living a lie, then hold on to the possibility that after you are done exploring, you can still return to a stance of disbelief, but then you will know what you are sacrificing for that disbelief.
