Pope Francis has admitted something rather extraordinary for a Pope, who is supposed to be above all that kind of thing. Questioned about faith by one of a group of recently confirmed young people, he said: "Looking back at some moments my faith diminished to the point that I could not find it and I lived as if I did not have faith."
And, he said: "The ups and downs of life can shake you up at times and cause you to lose a little faith, but with time you may find it again."
He doesn't say much more than that, but anyone who has sought to live as a Christian faithfully knows what he's talking about. In truth, the experience of spiritual dryness, intellectual disconnectedness and and emotional indifference to which he refers is more likely to be an issue in evangelical churches that explicitly prize personal commitment and experiential faith than traditions like Francis' own. There's a strain of evangelicalism that romanticises discipleship, as though it's about feeling – constantly needing to recreate the emotional high of the first months of a relationship.
In real life it's not like that. A relationship with Jesus is like a marriage, not like a love affair. That intense, obsessive adoration can't be sustained, no matter how sweet the music and gooey the lyrics ("Jesus, I am so in love with you", as one famous songwriter put it). And what keeps a marriage going is not feeling but commitment, through the dry times, the times when the other person is barely there or when their demands are unbearably irritating. Is it worth it? Of course, but most people find they have to go through it.
Evangelicals are very sniffy about people who just go through the motions when it comes to faith. I've heard lots of sermons aimed at people who just turn up Sunday by Sunday but don't have a deep, heart-felt relationship with Jesus. But in our relationship with Christ, there's an enormous value in perseverance when the emotional connection or the intellectual conviction isn't really there. It keeps us grounded. It retains us in the Christian community. It leaves doors and windows ajar for the entry of the Spirit of God. We have made promises, and we try to keep them. And usually, as Pope Francis said, though we may lose a little faith, we may find it again.
There are some kinds of evangelicalism that are really bad at dealing with dark nights of the soul, or even with the routine ebbs and flows of feeling that are part of spiritual life as they are part of life in general. I suspect it's because they are, for whatever reason, rather too performance-driven. The language is about growth, advance, learning and progress. We can all learn from that, but sometimes a message from Psalm 23 might not go amiss: that on the other side of the valley as dark as death there are green pastures and quiet waters, and that it's alright to stay there and sit for a while.
Follow Mark Woods on Twitter: @RevMarkWoods
