No, I'm not, but apparently, a lot of people are. CNN did a story several months ago on the number of people leaving the church, and the theme of this month's issue of Mission Frontiers magazine was "Losing Faith: Is there a cure for this ongoing problem?"
First of all, I think it's awesome that the faced this issue head-on. Honestly, I felt a little threatened by the CNN story - just the idea of more and more people turning away from God for so many reasons. Feelings of insecurity with others' loss of faith was one of the issues Ruth Tucker raised in her story in the magazine called "Great is Thy Faithfulness: Some Reflections on the Loss of Faith." Ruth tells the story of a man who made the decision to turn away from God, and received a letter from his pastor that clearly showed how insecure and threatened he felt by James' disclosure of his disbelief.
"It is not his [the pastor's] responsibility to argue or to shame James back into his faith. He should not have reacted so sharply, but instead encouraged James not to make any final decisions right away. He should have urged him and Allison to allow the children to continue their church activities and for the whole family to continue sharing in social outings. And James, he might have said, we just can't get along without you playing shortstop again this year."
It just reminds me how easy it would be to just cut off ties with someone who had declared his or her unbelief. But that's not what God calls us to do.
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