AM EXIT OR AN EXODUS?
A Quest for God Amid Doubt

Mel Leaman

She sat by the sliding door in the kitchen. Sunlight streaked her silver-gray hair. "Mom," I queried, "do you ever doubt God?"

Perhaps it was a silly question to ask a woman who had witnessed both miracles and misery but could still sing "Great Is Thy Faithfulness" with seemingly unwavering belief. Why couldn’t I sing with equal conviction?

A brief silence ensued. There is a lot of life to review when you have raised seven children. She thoughtfully replied, "Don almost died in Tanganyika and David in the States. Sometimes it was hard to understand God’s purposes as I watched my children struggle with various issues in their lives. The church had its challenges too!"

The family and her church were my mother’s passions. Dad pastored a Mennonite congregation in York, Pennsylvania for many years. They gave their all to God, whether on the mission field in Africa or in the local ministry.

My mother continued. "I’ve cried out to God countless times for wisdom and understanding."

I heard the words before they fell from her lips: "But, Melvin, I can’t say I ever doubted God."

Shamed by her strong assurance, I wondered how I could ever confess the depth of my doubts. She wouldn’t understand. It was safer merely to scratch the surface of my uncertainties. Mom’s kind of faith felt like a distant memory to me.

I was embarrassed to admit that my faith faltered, because the difficult times I had encountered seemed trivial in comparison to the things my mother had endured. Frederick Buechner suggests that "doubts can be the ants in pants of faith." My belt had already loosened and I feared my pants were about to fall. Too many tough questions were just not adequately answered for me. I felt overwhelmed and guilty.

I was the pastor of a growing United Methodist Church where people were genuinely excited about their sojourns of faith. Lives were changing and love ran deep. Small groups were being formed while talk about relocating and building new facilities was in the air.

I felt breathless. They were energized, but I was exhausted. The fresh breath of God no longer "fill[ed] me with life anew." The right words were there, but I lived and moved between the waxing and the waning of faith. How long could I stay there and serve with integrity? It was December 1994, about a year and a half after that talk with Mom, that I penned this prayer:

While faith is waning for me, O God, can I yet have faith in you? Will you hold me or let me go? Do you consider doubt the termination of relationship or transformation? Does my struggle for faith negate the effectiveness of my prayers, and of your faithful response? Will you yet pray for me when my prayers to you are confounded—perhaps infrequent? Can I trust your love for me or do you thrust me aside in my doubt and diminish my ministry?

Would you dare to accept the possibility that I may not be losing my faith, but rather expanding it? If you would, perhaps I could!

God, I have no other passion beyond that of following you, but when you are breaking out of my package, I must be free to explore and find you somewhere beyond the familiar trappings that once tied everything together. I fear you will not be faithful; that I will somehow step beyond the boundaries of your acceptance; that transformation might tear us apart rather than tender our love.

I do not want to lose you, O God, but I cannot find you fully in the confines of the faith to which I cling. Is to search, to stray? Can I really trust that to seek is to find? And if I stray too far in the seeking, could you yet find me?

Tenets of my faith are fraying at the edges; the garments of salvation are tattered. Does christocentricism imply exclusivism? Have I duly and deeply considered the character and conclusions of other religions? Why would a God of love choose to create a world in which only some hear God’s promise in Jesus, even fewer follow, and those who don’t are damned?

How can life be affirmed as a gift from God when so many experience it as suffering, trials, temptations, and others experience it as a test with eternal consequences? Does the reality of my questioning suggest that I have been duped by relativism?

Oh God, please hear my commitment to you, yet also acknowledge the call that compels me to answer these and many other questions. If by January 1996 I cannot find a more comfortable integration of my faith and my questions, then I will consider leaving the ministry.

The years passed; the doubts didn’t. This issue was still under consideration. It seemed the harder I prayed, the heavier my heart became. Frequent confessions and constant petitions for renewed joy brought little peace. I shared my struggles with a few special friends. Still this was not enough to thwart the eventual disconnection between my calling and my questioning.

Attempts to be open to the Spirit from all sides of the theological fence found me at seminars on world religions, including a graduate course in Judaism taught by a rabbi and a member of the Billy Graham School of Evangelism. My experience at the evangelism seminar proved a turning point. I was greatly impressed by the speakers’ enthusiasm, dedication, and theological surety. Upon my return home I preached a sermon in like fashion. That experience only confirmed my discomfort with attempts to wrap truth in a package of certainty. The message had to be mine. Personal integrity demanded that I needed to preach from a more questioning spirit.

Church attendance increased. We bought property to relocate. The "promised land" was just over the horizon, but I wasn’t sure if I could cross over Jordan with my people. I was a leader with too many questions. Growing churches need pastors with answers, don’t they?

I experienced times of deep inner turmoil during the next two years. If I left now, the congregation would have to adjust to being relocated and also accept a new pastor. After 15 years of shared ministry, wouldn’t a sudden exodus feel like an act of betrayal?

However, I could no longer preach with heartfelt conviction, so it seemed dishonest to linger. I didn’t know what I was going to do, but I knew the vocation that had embraced me for over 20 years could no longer hold me. The following poem (written in August 1999, soon after I took a voluntary leave of absence from the pastorate) tells of some of the inner conflict I was feeling.

For years my call has been to help people solidify beliefs and find firm foundations.

For years to come, my farewell to that call may feel like release and liberation.

The freedom from that call beckons me, for I no longer bear the weight of responsibility.

The fear in that call brings the curse of being an unfaithful servant—eternally!

My God, is this an exit or an exodus?

Am I merely leaving or am I going some place?

Is this a dead end or is there a promised land just around the corner?

An exit or an exodus: Which has it been? Perhaps a bit of both. I felt I had failed God and family in my exit from the ministry. How could a third-generation pastor let doubt defeat faith?

My prayer in 1994 noted the fear "that transformation might tear us apart rather than tender our love." I vacillate between the felt distance my decision has created and a longing to be held again. It’s a real mix. Yet there are times God has come intimately close amid the chaos and despite the distance.

It is my hope that the Holy One determines to make this exit an exodus. God doesn’t go for dead ends. Grace has to be greater than that! I am praying that it is a haven where exits lead to entrances. Hopefully, grace is leading me home. Whether that home will look like where I’ve been or where I’m going remains to be seen.

The winds of transformation are on the move and no one knows where they may blow. It seems that even my present employment as a professor of religion is somehow providential. The story of my landing this position sounds itself like a serendipitous saga of grace. Perhaps the "promised land" is not always the end in mind as much as it is the process of moving simultaneously within it as well as toward it. "I don’t know, Mom. What do you think?" The sojourn continues.

—Mel Leaman, West Grove, Pennsylvania, is Assistant Professor of Religion, Lincoln University. Leaman was raised in a Mennonite home, then following college and a few years of teaching, he was Christian Education and Youth Director at Asbury United Methodist Church, Maitland, Florida, and joined the UMC. A minister in Ohio and Pennsylvania 1981-1999, he received a D.Min. in marriage and family from Eastern Baptist Theological Seminary in 1990. He can be reached at jmleaman3@juno.com.