A couple of Christmases ago, my children bought me the gift of Storyworth. Each week, a question appeared in my email for me to write about my life. One day, the question was Have You Ever Doubted Your Faith?

 I fall into the third group. I grew up in a Catholic family and attended Catholic schools from first grade through high school. My mother was a Roman Catholic, and my father was raised in the Byzantine Catholic tradition. Our family attended Mass every Sunday and on Holy Days, prayed together before meals, and at other times. As a child, I believed that the stories in the Bible and of the saints told to us by the Franciscan sisters at school were literally true.

During seventh grade, I discovered Collier’s Junior Classics and read them enthusiastically. My favorite volume was Myths and Legends. It slowly dawned on me that the stories in the Bible were also myths. Now, the word “myth” is generally thought of as a story that is untrue or fictitious; however, when I use the word “myth,” I am using it in the academic sense to mean that the story conveys some important truth or moral, whether it is factual or not. Mythic stories always serve some societal, psychological, or spiritual purpose. Catholic priest and mystic Bede Griffiths once said that all religious stories are myths or symbolic expressions of truths that cannot be fully expressed in any other way.

Early in our relationship, my wife, Wendy, and I watched the PBS television series The Power of Myth, in which journalist Bill Moyers interviewed author and professor of mythology Joseph Campbell. Watching this series led me to read more books on mythology, theology, spirituality, and world religions.

Throughout all my reading and exploration, I continue to be drawn to the teachings and life of Jesus, and I have found that Christianity is more than a set of dogmas or doctrines for me. It is the faith of my ancestors, my cultural heritage, as well as a religion. It is the spiritual home in which I am most comfortable, a part of my spiritual DNA, as it were.

When I was preparing to be ordained as an Orthodox Catholic priest, I struggled with the requirement of professing my belief in certain statements in the Apostles’ Creed during my ordination. There were parts of it that I couldn’t literally believe. I shared this dilemma with Sister Lois, who is here at St. Scholastica Monastery and with whom I had come to respect and like very much. She recommended that I read the book In Search of Belief by Joan Chittister. Sr. Joan’s in-depth reimagining of the Creed, grounded in the Scriptures, theology, and her own mature spiritual study and practice, enabled me to profess the Creed in good conscience and in faith.

One of my favorite stories from the Jewish Book of Genesis is the story of Jacob’s experience the night before meeting his older brother, Esau, whom he feared would kill him because Jacob had cheated Esau out of their father’s inheritance years earlier. The story tells us that when Jacob was alone, a man (angel) came and wrestled with him all night long. At daybreak, the man told Jacob to let him go, but Jacob said he would not let him go until the man blessed him. The man then said, “You shall no longer be called Jacob, but Israel, which means one who wrestles with God, because you have wrestled with God and men and persisted.”

This is the way of the third group I mentioned at the beginning of this reflection: to continually wrestle with the Scriptures, various theologies, and spiritual ideologies, evolving in one’s thinking and faith.

Maybe our faith in relation to the Mystery we call God, or the Universal Christ, isn’t about “believing” at all. Carl Jung wrote that the authentic religious experience is not based on belief, but on a personal encounter with the transcendent. So I pray that we will all become like Jacob, ones who persist in wrestling with God and human ideas.

So, have I ever doubted my faith? Yes. And I hope to continue to doubt it regularly, and I invite you to join me on this journey.