Introduction

Welcome to the facing up Club where we discover life beyond belief I’m Dr Maury Robertson—or at least I used to be.

Back in the 90s I started a church that was pretty darn successful. I led it for over 20 years. Along the way I got a PhD in New Testament, I became a professor at a major Seminary, I met a beautiful girl and married her, We had three great kids, I built my own house… I was your basic upstanding citizen.

But along the way something really inconvenient happened: I stopped believing.

This didn’t happen overnight. It’s not like a bomb went off. It was more like a termite infestation. This resulted in a horrible sense of confusion and suffocation and it got to the point that I really had no choice but to resign my church. It wasn’t because I had some Plan B. It was just that Plan A was over. I had no idea what would happen next.

I went on to teach for the Seminary for a little while, and then Julie and I hit the road and traveled for a few years. We moved to Seattle where I worked for my brother-in-law in a hardware store. This was not  glamorous. In fact, I was a stocker. I got up at 4:00 a.m. to stock shelves. The irony of that, after having climbed to the top of the mountain of church success and Seminary success and… now I’m stocking shelves?? It was weird!

I remember one night when we were there in Seattle, I walked into the kitchen. My wife was doing the dishes and she had this plate in her hand. I had just finished teaching an online Greek course. It had gone really well and I was feeling pretty full of myself. I walked into the kitchen and said, “It is weird to be so good at something that you know you can’t do anymore.”

Julie slowly looked up at me and asked, “How did you lose your faith?”

It was a question, not an attack, but it hit me hard. It was the first time I realized that I had lost my faith and it wasn’t coming back. I had lost it for good.

See, like like most people who believe in something, whether it’s religion or whatever, there are times when we doubt. There are are times when it’s difficult to believe. We fight through it and find a way to believe again. I had done that a lot of times as a Christian but that night I realized that I had lost my faith for good. I would have to learn to live without it.

How did I lose my faith? I guess sort of like I lost my hair. Somewhere in my 30s it started falling out, piece by piece. One day I looked in the mirror and it was all gone.

This began the most terrible time of my life, three horrible years of confusion and darkness, I guess what people call a dark night or an existential crisis or whatever you want to call it—Hell. I was confused. I felt like my life had no point. I felt like I was completely worthless. I couldn’t talk to my old friends about this because their solution—understandably—would have been to point me back to God to revive my faith. But I knew that was over.

I remember just being so angry at myself. I felt so stupid, like the last kid to stop believing in Santa Claus. It was horrible. It’s hard even to find the words to describe how dark it felt. I just I wanted to be dead—literally. I wasn’t at the point of killing myself. I just I wanted it all to be over.

If you have ever been in that place, or maybe if you are in that place right now, you know what I’m talking about.

Very slowly, I started to be okay. And then, after a while longer, I was more than okay. In fact, I began to feel at peace. Life began to feel meaningful again, in fact more meaningful than it had ever felt when I was a Christian. It’s not that I found answers. It was because I faced up to the fact that I didn’t have answers and began to learn to live with without them.

I’m sharing my story because I suspect I’m not alone. If you’re a person whose faith has shattered and you’re wondering what comes next—maybe you’re in that terrifying place—I hope you’ll find encouragement here maybe even friendship.

When I went online in this state I found a lot of sites that were eager to deconstruct Christianity, to blow it up. I had already done that. Also, I wasn’t angry at anyone except myself. I wasn’t looking to chop off this part of myself. I was looking for a bridge from who I was to who I am. So my question was, “What comes next?” I was looking for life beyond belief.

There’s a little poem that I share. It’s not in some brilliant poem or anything but it came to me as I was going through this and it really does describe my journey.

I was a preacher,
a professor,
a Godsplainer
a Rock.

Then my high pulpit crumbled.

I thought I would land,
but just kept falling.

So I traded my firm foundation
for a set of wings
and made my home
on a rush of wind.

So when I say facing up I mean it in two senses. The first is just facing up to the facts, like truly admitting that I have questions that don’t have answers. I have longings I can’t satisfy. I do not understand why this world is so predatory and why people can be so horrible. I don’t understand all those things but I face them. I don’t hide. I I face up to the world that I’m actually living in.

But I also mean facing up in the sense of looking up. In the face of all that, I choose life. I choose to look up, as opposed to giving up or facing down. That’s why I call it life beyond belief.

Thank you for listening all the way to the end of this. I hope you enjoy my story and I hope that one day I get to hear yours.