Maturity Causes Doubt

There's a story about the early church that is as bizarre as it is hard to explain. People show radical generosity toward one another and take care of the needs of those around them. A guy named Barnabas sells a field, donates all the money, and becomes a hero.

A couple named Ananias and Sapphira decide they want in on this excitement too. They sell a piece of property and donate it too. Except they say they are donating the full amount they received when they actually keep some back. Giving only a portion wouldn't be a problem, except they choose to lie about it. They want to look good too.

Needless to say, their generosity isn't received as they envisioned. Peter calls them out immediately. Then Ananias and Sapphira literally drop dead because of their lies. Not surprisingly, fear spreads as others hear about this. After telling the story on Sunday, I asked a tricky question.

Is this story a pastoral success or a failure?

At first glance, it all appears pretty bad, especially when we read that "Great fear gripped the entire church and everyone else who heard what had happened (Acts 5:11). But this verse is the first time the word for church—ecclesia—is used. The theologian Stanley Hauerwas says this about the story: "Peter really believed that the gospel, and this community it produced, had the power to convert even ordinary, selfish, materialistic people like us into something resembling saints."

So which is it?

We did a follow-up conversation in a Q&A style after the message. It quickly became clear that the question put many people in tension, especially as they tried to make sense of this story in light of Jesus. I offered a few different ways to explain the story. One possibility is that the story didn't literally happen. This idea usually brings quite a bit of discomfort, but this is how Jesus often taught using parables He made up.

Later that day, I got an email from a member of our online community who was there that morning. She asked the logical questions that tend to follow trying to understand how a story can be true but not literal. But it expanded to how we make sense of the Bible and why I spend my time telling stories like these if I don't know whether they actually happened.

In response, I told her I think all the stories are true. I just don't know how many of them literally happened. The Bible has invited people to experience and interact with God and with those who have gone before us. It's a beautiful book, especially when we let it be messy. I focus on telling true stories about God and creation and how we can better love those around us. I don't need things to be literal to do that. While we crave certainty, it is only an illusion. The more you study anything, the more you realize doubt is always there. That's where faith comes in. I choose to put my faith in Jesus because He's more compelling than anything else I've ever found (by a lot).

Making sense of a story like Ananias and Sapphira requires you to make your own meaning. Even though people love to say that "The Bible is clear," or that they "Just read the Bible for what it says," no one actually does. We all have to make meaning of what we read.

I'm reminded of a session I attended recently at Theology Beer Camp. A panel conversation featured Myron Penner, Matthew Segall, Sarah Lane Ritchie, and Dan Koch. The session's subtitle was "The Science of Meaning Making in a Disenchanted World."

One takeaway from that conversation was that we inherit our first meanings as children from others. Those inherited meanings come with certainty. When we lose our inherited meaning, as most of us do as we get older, we must then make new meaning ourselves. But the new meaning we make comes with doubts. This causes us to second-guess ourselves, since our original meanings came with certainty. But this should be expected. Maturity causes doubt.

Even though we crave it, certainty is an illusion. We offer it to young kids, since they lack the complex thinking to carry the weight of doubt. You can stay there, but I don't recommend it. Rather than assuming these doubts signal an issue, we should see them as signs of something deeper developing. We have the authority to make our own meaning of the world, and a mature person does so.

During our group conversation after the message on Sunday, one woman shared her perspective as a 75-year-old. She said she had started to doubt things she had believed all her life. Yet she was okay with that. She realized she was growing and understanding things more deeply. She was glad to be seeing things she'd never seen before.

I want to be like her when I grow up.

If this resonated, there's more where it came from. The online community is where I do this work every week alongside people rebuilding their faith both inside and outside institutional Christianity — book studies, live calls, weekly newsletter, and honest conversation. Find out more.

Photo by Furkan Elveren on Unsplash