My friend, Aaron West, wrote an excellent exploration of the spiritual struggles so many of us face. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.
Tucked away in a quiet corner of Genesis is the Legend of Peniel. It’s a seemingly random aside thrown into a larger narrative of the brotherly rivalry and reconciliation of Jacob and Esau. At first glance, it’s a blip in a Sunday School tale; if you’re not careful, you might miss it. As I grew up, this handful of lines was hardly spoken of, glossed over because, frankly, people didn’t know what to make of it. Jacob was Jacob—cunning, entitled, backstabbing: the archetypal Younger Brother—that is, until Jacob is no more, and Israel takes his rightful place, having “contended with God” and made it out alive.
Believe me when I say that the confusing and somewhat obscure, quirky nature of Israel’s origin story isn’t lost on me. Here is our reluctant, problematic protagonist, who years before cheated his brother—eldest and rightful heir to their father’s blessing—out of an inheritance and therefore out of his way of existence in their ancient nomadic context. On the journey back to his homeland, Jacob hears that Esau and a group practically large enough to be an army are on their way to meet him. So, foreseeing an exacted revenge, Jacob sends his family on ahead and fades into the background in expectation. As night falls, Jacob lies in wait for what I imagine he could sense would be a significant change, a permanent transition never to be undone—but thus far an unknown one. And then he wrestles a man.
Yes, without warning, background, or elaboration, a man is there and Jacob wrestles with him—all night, in fact. Being the obstinate Younger Brother, Jacob insists that this figure bless him, and the picture comes into clearer focus: we realize that this is no mere human, but the very embodiment of God. Seeing that Jacob would not be overcome after an arduous night of physical struggle, the figure places his hand on Jacob’s hip and throws it out of place, thereby ending the match, but not before the stubborn brother continues to demand he be blessed. The figure sees the first light of dawn, and states that he must go, and so Jacob walks—or rather, limps—away with his blessing and a new name. He is no longer Jacob, but Israel. Interestingly, right after his new identity is given, Israel asks the figure for his own, and in response is asked “Why is it that you ask my name?”
Israel calls the place Peniel, meaning, “I have seen God face to face, and yet my life is preserved.” There the legend is—loose ends, misplaced cultural contexts and all. In the midst of the escaped meanings and hasty readings in my youth, though, I have found new significance in this nook of a tale. It is not only the source of Israel’s humble branding, but a story of doubt. It is a story about uncertainty before impending struggle. It is about the accomplishment of what so many who come face-to-face with God do: we toil, often painfully, refusing to release our opponent, and come away limping—perhaps a bit more unsure, perhaps a bit more secure, but usually with a new sense of meaning that allows us to be called by a different name: one that defines us in sometimes unexpected ways, indicative of our having been in one place and arriving at a new one changed.
As any good Western reader would do, I find myself relating to the protagonist of this story. I imagine we’ve all been there: struggling, as though literally, with a combatant—whether that’s a spiritual crisis, a difficult decision, an impossible task that lies obscured in our unknowing and trepidation. Like Jacob, saturated in uncertainty about what was to come, I find that doubt has also found a home in my experience. In this I know I’m not alone.
I’ve been in places where doubt has been treated like a plague or the boogeyman: dare name it, and it will destroy you and all you hold dear. I’ve heard the concerned platitudes—“Just pray more, and give it over to God;” “Have you tried spending more time in the Word?” or, in the worst circumstances, “Doubt just shows that you don’t trust God—you should really work on that.” Even worse than the simplistic, often fairly well-intentioned one-liners meant to pacify doubt is the permeating silence that so many faith communities shroud it in. Whether due to discomfort, helplessness, or an inability to relate, the silent treatment is far more counterproductive to the goal that so many have: helping doubters work it out. What if we’ve missed the point with this? What if instead of working it out with a plethora of answers and certainties, our goal was to cultivate a community that learned to live in the dissonance between belief and disbelief, preconceptions and experience, knowledge and hope? How might our faith, our world, look different if we embraced this discomfort as part of the human condition and an authentic relationship with God?
In the past couple of years, I’ve taken greater comfort in the legends and accounts of scripture that feature those who wrestled with doubt, despite their differing conclusions. There are the obvious examples, like Job and the Apostle Thomas; the father of a possessed child that cried out to Jesus “I believe—help my unbelief!” There are the perhaps less-obvious ones, like Gideon using divination and a fleece to push into God’s supposed promise, Sarah laughing at God’s revelation, Habbakuk declaring that God is callous in the face of suffering, Mary and her sons coming to hide Jesus away after he incites controversy, and even the Messiah himself in Gethsemane, wondering if the cup could pass from him, bringing about “Thy will” through some other means. The answer is assumed silence—leading eventually to the Son of God’s question on the cross: “Why have you forsaken me?” I assume all these figures feature prominently due to a human familiarity with doubt. It is a part of who we are, even if subconsciously, no matter how much we may try to avoid it.
I find it fitting that the Legend of Peniel begins with the descent of dusk. I can imagine the dark haze of twilight enveloping first the horizon, then Jacob’s immediate surroundings as he awaited a hidden future. The literary symbolism of night often accompanies a time of waiting, of struggling, of the palpable unknown and transformative growth. Sixteenth-century poet and mystic St. John of the Cross articulated the concept of the “Dark Night of the Soul”—a time of spiritual turmoil: a trial or tribulation that one passes through in her own journey of unifying with God. In my own Dark Night, I’ve found myself in the throes of confrontation with my own doubt, demanding I be blessed with meaning and hope in the face of disillusionment and exhaustion.
And this is what I now grapple with in the murky dark of night. The very things I once turned to in order to satiate my seemingly trivial doubts have become the very things I question—and for good reason. If I do not question, how can I know what I believe to be true? In my youth, I once searched for firm footing in family tradition, the comfort of what I’ve always known, the easy answers, the blatant inerrancy of scripture, the consistent moral binary of black and white. In light of these assurances—the foundation on which I once built my faith—experience, and the understanding that the world functions in utter nuance, has shattered the illusion; the cracks in the foundation have eroded under some of their very own unsustainable assertions. What is to be done when certain ideals my faith tradition is shaped by become untenable?
When I learn the history of Christian denominationalism’s origins—and the assumption that somehow through the many centuries of splits, reforms, movements, and branchings off, that my own faith tradition is effectively the only one that matters?
When I begin to grasp the complicated role of white supremacy and colonialism that have been intertwined with significant portions of my religion’s history?
When I am forced to look the other way when marginalized groups are routinely cast aside, ignored—or worse—disdained by those I share a pew with?
When the contradictions and diversity of genre, purpose, and context within sections of scripture are explained away by literalists who insist that anything less is a slippery slope?
When I feel as though I’m asked to check my intellectual integrity and, at times, conscience at the door—to reject honest science in order to accept wholesale outdated and disproven tenets?
When our fear of eternal damnation and desire to beeline for heaven is the basis of our practice; when simple church service attendance and adherence to a series of strictures for worshiping correctly is the litmus test for how closely you follow Jesus?
When our focus is not on the “greater matters of the Law”: mercy, faith, justice; or the alleviation of suffering, healing the sick, or setting the oppressed free, but scoring political points in the self-defeating American culture war?
When we are told, “This is how it must be,” when an antiquated cultural code has clearly shaped our very understanding of what it means to be a follower of the Christ in this nation?
What now, I ask?
I believe the answer lies somewhere in the dawn. Interestingly, I am reminded that the mysterious figure made a point of requesting release as the first rays of sunrise broke across the horizon. God’s task with Israel was done when the light of day breathed over the ground and into the sky: the new name was then given. When my own night may draw to a close, giving way to whatever lies beyond, I will look back over this period of unsure wrestling. I will remember the times in which I lost my footing, the moments where I prevailed and kept lunging because the blessing was worth believing in, if even shakily, momentarily, to be doubted again in some other struggle. I will remember the feeling of a hand on my hip, humbling me—that in the midst of doubting, I still saw the fight of reexamining, reshaping, and reclaiming as worth it: the reality of that space, the presence of the process, the point. If this current struggle concludes, I will look my adversary in the face and, like Israel, ask that it please tell me its name.
I have a feeling, though, that the answer may not be what I initially expect. Perhaps the reply will be, “Why is it that you ask my name?” and I will see then that, all along, it was not doubt that I was wrestling with, not the disenchantment with faith itself. No, doubt was the struggle. It was God that I had wrestled with. And perhaps I will come away sore, but with a new name: one who has striven with God and prevailed; one who doubts, and is better for doing so.