A Transparent Blog Post

After nine years of private Christian schooling, I entered the doors of a public high school, sheltered, naïve, and nervous. The last class of a long but exciting day was physical science. The instructor was Shehrever Masters—a fastidious wealth of knowledge, who demanded perfection from his students. So high were his standards, they cost him his job. By the end of the year only a third of the original students remained, I was one of them, and I had achieved a perfect score. In fact, Masters had requested that I take the stand in court as his advocate as he battled Toledo Public Schools over legitimacy of his firing.

That first day was one of the most memorable days of my life; not because of the situation, the change, the thousands of new faces, but because of one statement that Mr. Masters made. His rich, distinctly middle eastern voice, cut through the room, and my heart as he said, “The first thing I must teach you all in this class, is that there is no God.”

What conviction! What unassuming assuredness bolstered the power of his statement! This moment will never leave my memory, for this was the first time (of many to come) in fourteen years I had ever doubted my faith, my salvation…my life.

As I recollect, I could almost feel sad. My sweet bubble had been burst. But I respect Shrehver Masters, for he taught me to love knowledge, and even more importantly, not to blindly believe anything.

The older I get, the more knowledge I accumulate. I read more books, attend more lectures, and meet more people who challenge what and why I believe. Even in the past few months I have felt as if a few bricks in the foundation of my world view have crumbled, and in those moments I doubt. It is not that I doubt goodness, God’s existence, or the validity of Jesus Christ as son of God; rather, bits and pieces entwined in the story of those things come into question and set my mind and emotions spinning. I feel like such a failure: weak, fickle, ignorant, unsure, and quite temporary.

Then I read an article in Time on the struggle of faith experienced by the world’s most beloved humanitarian, child of God, and modern day Saint, Mother Theresa, and I am comforted. I am not masochistically pleased that the Albanian nun suffered anguish as she doubted the nearness of God, but I am assured that I am not alone, and that even in my doubt, I can be used mightily by God.