Why are people leaving the church or their faith behind? Some answers boil down to platitudes, like a supposed desire to pursue a sinful lifestyle. But apologist Lisa Fields has found the reasons to be much more complex.
Fields, founder of the Jude 3 Project, which equips Black Christians to know what they believe and why, has sat across from many people leaving the church. During these “exit interviews,” she’s discovered that somewhere in nearly every story lurks the specter of personal disappointment with God or Christianity. She addresses this thorny issue in a new book, When Faith Disappoints: The Gap Between What We Believe and What We Experience.
CT national political correspondent Harvest Prude spoke with Fields about walking with God in the midst of a broken world and our own disappointments.
Something from your book that really struck me is when you talk about unanswered prayers. How do we navigate times in our faith when we’ve sought out God for something and we feel overlooked because he doesn’t seem to answer?
For me, when God doesn’t answer my prayers, I have to have a real conversation with him about what he has not answered. My relationship with God is very open. There are times where I’m angry, and I have to get those feelings out of my mouth and out of my heart—because when I don’t voice my frustrations, I end up filled with bitterness and resentment.
There’s a quote from Tim Keller where he says—and I’m paraphrasing—that if we knew what God knows, we would want our prayers answered the way he answers them. I’ve had this experience in my own life. I remember a time when I wanted to connect with a particular person, a major donor who could help my ministry. But I didn’t have enough extra income to get to New York City, where he was based. I remember being frustrated, feeling like there were all these obstacles to networking and getting ahead. Only later did I learn that this person had just gotten arrested for embezzlement.
Sometimes, in your disappointment, you realize that God is letting you see things that you wouldn’t see otherwise or protecting you from dangers that you didn’t know about. In the book, I talk about a man I had been dating for almost four years. In the middle of our relationship, he got married to a woman he had been involved with behind the scenes for most of the time. This other woman had been married herself during most of the affair.
That whole time, I had been praying that God would make this man my husband. But I didn’t realize that he was actually protecting me from someone who had poor character, despite being a preacher. In the middle of my disappointment, I voiced my frustration. Then I gave myself time to ask what God might be trying to protect me from. What different direction was he trying to push me in?
In the book you talk about doing exit interviews with people who are leaving the church. As a reporter, I cover the intersection of faith and politics. How do you think political conversations have impacted people’s relationship with faith?
I think the political climate in America has really impacted how people there think about faith. Christians often go to rhetorical and ideological extremes in the name of faith. Recently, I noticed a group of faith leaders on social media saying that if you’re voting for Kamala Harris, you can’t be a Christian. Rhetoric like that, I think, creates this confusion gap for many in our culture, where they don’t understand what we’re talking about. Because the Bible doesn’t tell you which political candidates to vote for. In fact, it doesn’t even speak about voting in any conventional way, because the world of the biblical writers was a world ruled by kings and emperors.
When there’s a gap between what the Bible says and what some believers claim it says, for political reasons, it makes a lot of people want nothing to do with the church, especially when political leaders hijack the church for their own gain. And it makes believers look like hypocrites, which creates a problem for those who want to be part of something genuine.
In your conversations, how often do you find that people leaving the church are struggling with its failures and flaws? And how often, by contrast, do they seem motivated more by a desire to live without moral restrictions or guilt?
I think both answers can be correct, sometimes at the same time. Church disappointment can have so many layers. Perhaps we’re disappointed with God. Or we’re disappointed with God’s people, or people in general. And then there are certain things we just desire and want to do in our flesh.
There’s always a multiplicity of factors. When I’ve done exit interviews with people leaving the church, I’ve seen that it’s never just one thing. It’s layers of things that rock them.
If you could design a toolkit of practices for being a faithful witness to those who are struggling with the church or their faith, what would you include?
The first thing I’d encourage is to live out what you believe as best you can. And that doesn’t mean perfection, but it does mean progression. If I hold to the Bible being the Word of God, then I obey the Word to the best of my ability.
Because we all fall short, though, we have to be honest about when this happens. If I portray myself as living a sinless life, I’m actually undermining the authority of Scripture, because Scripture tells us we’re born and shaped in iniquity. Living out our faith means acknowledging our sins and committing to repent of them.
Another essential habit is loving people well. In The Message Bible paraphrase, there’s a passage in Philippians that I post every Valentine’s Day, where Paul is saying, don’t just “love much” but “[love] well” (1:9–11). That really struck me when I read it years ago, because there’s a difference between loving somebody much and loving somebody well. I want to be someone who tries to love people well. That means listening attentively and holding space for their doubts and frustrations.
Third, I think we need to practice being merciful. Like Jude says, “Be merciful to those who doubt” (v. 22). Remember what it’s like to have doubts of your own, and treat others who doubt accordingly.
And finally, remember to pray with people. With my own friends, I’ve been enjoying a beautiful season of us praying together. I can’t give any prescription on how to do it right. It’s not like we’re doing anything grand. We simply share our frustrations; I pray, they pray, and healing has taken place. And it’s not like my friends are well-known spiritual leaders. But that’s just a reminder that you don’t need somebody to be a spiritual leader for their prayers to make a difference in your life.
You write about the importance of forgiveness to any process of healing from faith disappointment. How do we respond well when a fellow believer has hurt us or broken our trust?
In my own life, I was having trouble trusting someone who had sinned against me and claimed to have repented. My therapist said, “I’m not asking you to trust them. I’m asking you to trust God.” And that has helped me a lot.
I enter into relationships that have been broken, knowing that the person, being human, could break that trust again. But I’m aware that I’ve probably caused hurts myself and I could do it again. And because I want grace, I know I need to give it as well.
That doesn’t mean it’s easy. I spoke earlier about the man who cheated on me during our relationship. It took me years to get to this point, but by now I’ve seen him many times since he got married. By the time he apologized, I was able to accept his apology. I was able to trust that it was sincere because I had done a work in my heart to forgive him.
Sometimes, you have to give yourself time. Years ago, I read a book on forgiveness. It said there are occasions when we tell people we’ve forgiven them too abruptly because we don’t know the full impact of their actions. If we announce forgiveness too soon, we’re only forgiving the initial impact when we don’t yet know all the layers. How will these actions affect me a year from now? I might have to forgive again, but at least I’m choosing forgiveness. I’m choosing not to treat you like you owe me because you hurt me.
When Christians face disappointment, you argue, a sort of syncretism can creep in. They might seek out New Age practices, for instance, if they feel that God has failed them. How should we approach apologetics in a culture marked by intense interest in alternative modes of spirituality?
Before criticizing the what in these alternative approaches, try to find out the why. Perhaps you know someone who uses crystals or consults horoscopes. Well, what’s behind that? Figuring out the why will help you get to the root of the issue.
Maybe this person was going through a difficult time and heard from a friend about something that could help manage the stress. And so, okay, so that’s how you got into that. Maybe this person had tried prayer and Christian faith but, for whatever reason, didn’t find them adequate. You can help someone walk through these deeper issues. For me, this is a far better approach than simply saying, “Don’t use crystals—they’re demonic.”
Love is a better draw than fear. As a pastor’s kid, I used to go to youth conferences around the country, and there was always an element of fear in the way we were encouraged to give our lives to Christ. And so everybody gave their life to Christ at every event—the same people every year. I “became” a Christian probably a million times as a teenager because I was scared.
But when life disappointed me, that fear wasn’t what was holding me. It was God’s love. I believe in a real hell, and I believe that Jesus is the only way to eternal life, but we can communicate that with love, rather than fear, as the motivator. Because the fear will always wear off. Fear will never be your keeper.
