Show Notes
What happens when the foundational beliefs of your faith meet deep personal suffering? For many believers, major life wounds, like childhood church hurt or the loss of a close friend, make a good and powerful God feel distant. When the anchor meant to hold you steady seems to give way, the spiritual crisis makes all other suffering worse.
In this episode of Nuance, host Case Thorp welcomes back Catherine McNiel and Jason Hague, co-authors of Mid-Faith Crisis, to discuss the personal origin stories behind their book. Catherine shares the difficult experience of being shunned by her church family at twelve years old. Jason discusses the grief of his children’s severe health diagnoses and the loss of a close friend, leaving him preaching sermons he was not sure he believed. Case also shares about trusting God’s providence during his wife’s battle with cancer and a recent stroke.
Catherine and Jason offer practical steps for surviving dark spiritual valleys, like practicing honest lament and using contemplative prayer to calm the nervous system. They explain how taking your anger directly to God and finding a safe community can lead to a mature faith.
📚 Episode Resources:
Mid-Faith Crisis: Finding a Path Through Doubt, Disillusionment, and Dead Ends by Catherine McNiel and Jason Hague: https://www.ivpress.com/mid-faith-crisis
Catherine McNiel’s website: catherinemcniel.com
Jason Hague’s website: jasonhague.com
InterVarsity Press: https://www.ivpress.com/
Episode Transcript
Case Thorp
Every book has a backstory. And when the subject is faith in crisis, well, the author’s journey matters for sure. Well, so today we continue a conversation that we started last week with Catherine McNiel and Jason Hague, turning our attention from the architecture of their book to the very lives that shaped it. You know, here on Nuance, our emphasis is most often how our faith animates our work and our cultural work. But today we’re going to lean back on this faith side of the equation, because belief forms vocation. So I think it’s important to look at what they are writing about and thinking about so that our faith is stronger and more mature. So, Catherine, Jason, welcome back.
Jason Hague
Thanks, Case.
Catherine McNiel
Great to be here again. Thank you.
Case Thorp
So their book is Mid-Faith Crisis: Finding a Path Through Doubt, Disillusionment, and Dead Ends, published by InterVarsity Press. If you maybe didn’t hear the former episode, hit pause, go and learn more about their book and their theological and scriptural pastoral approach. So this week we’re going to get a little more personal, and Catherine and Jason know this is coming, and I appreciate you being willing participants to talk about this. Catherine, talk to us about a moment where your faith felt, I don’t know, insufficient maybe for what you were going through.
Catherine McNiel
Well, I can tell you kind of the origin story that I write about in this book. One thing that I really appreciated about writing this with Jason is that we had very different faith crises at very different times. Mine unusually happened in my early teen years because when I was 12 years old, I had grown up in a pastor’s family, everything very abruptly changed for me when I was around 12 years old and the church that we had been in, it felt like the only family I had known in my life. They were in every way my extended family. I couldn’t recall living anywhere else. This was my hometown. The people who had raised me and the culture that I had been formed in just decided that our family, my dad, was being fired but the best way that they felt to do that was to make sure that we were immediately invisible and then out of town within two weeks. Yeah, it was, yeah, I’m not gonna get into the grownup parts of why this happened or what laws or policies should be in place to do it differently. The impact on me as a 12 year old is that literally every human that I knew in the world declared me and my family rejectable and unknowable and no one stood in the gap or came to rescue or gave me a minority report or another version. And I associated, well, I associated these folks with everything but also with the church. And lest you think I’m exaggerating, I was uninvited from my sixth grade piano recital. So zealous were they that we would not be seen again after this decision was made. To say that I have spent a lot of time since then trying to understand what my faith is based in and who and what I can trust if anything and anyone is an understatement. So that’s the origin story that I start unpacking a little bit of in this book.
Case Thorp
Catherine, I’m so sorry.
Well, I really appreciate you sharing that, and my heart goes out to you, and I think about my three children. One of my biggest fears in seminary was that my kids, because of my position, might not lean into their faith in the Lord’s call in their life, and on top of that may reject the church. This beautiful, broken, wonderful bride that I love and you know, i love the snarky old ladies and the youthful energy of 24 year old guys that think they know everything and the men and I love all aspects but so far so good. Maybe I’ll find out later in their journey but I know that that experience is real for many.
Catherine McNiel
Yeah, thank you.
Case Thorp
Jason, any particular experience in your walk of faith?
Jason Hague
Yeah, I think it’s adulthood.
The, you know, I had a much different experience and you know, my parents were in ministry and I did outreaches every summer and I was on the 700 Club when I was eight. So that was like my claim to fame. I got interviewed, you know.
Case Thorp
My goodness, we have Christian movie stars now, fame here, famous people, that’s great.
Jason Hague
That’s right, that’s right, yes. So yeah, people are always telling me, man, God’s gonna do big things through you and it’s gonna be great. Man, you know, and the future was gonna be bright and I was gonna just always walk closely with God. And I hit just sort of a series of things. I had a son who was diagnosed with a heart condition and another one was diagnosed with severe autism, non-speaking autism.
And so I, you know, I had hit all of these things, but I was still holding on, I was still holding on. And then in my early 40s, I lost a dear, dear friend who was like a sister to me, to cancer. And that really threw me for a loop that I just wasn’t expecting. I think sometimes we think because we’ve overcome A or B, then we’ve got it, we’ve got C, we’ve gone through it all, we’ve seen it all. And…that I hadn’t felt this much. It was like, it felt like betrayal almost, you know? And it suddenly, all the answers, I mean, I even wrote a book previously about unanswered prayer. But when I hit this particular unanswered prayer, it just felt new and it was a huge gut punch. And I started to really question, Is God here? Is God walking with me for real? And it was a…you know, and then there were other family crises I don’t write about in the book that just compounded it in some very, very personal ways. yeah, it left me wondering, what do I do? I’m suddenly wondering, I’m a pastor, I’m writing a sermon. And while I’m writing the sermon, I’m not sure I believe it. What do you do when you hit that? And that’s where I found myself.
Case Thorp
I’m curious what each of you would say. What is uniquely difficult about suffering from the faith journey as opposed to health journey, vocational journey?
Catherine McNiel
I would say that the faith journey encompasses all of those. There’s not an aspect of our lives or our identities or our relationships or even our bodies that our faith does not somehow inform. And if you are someone who has turned to God or to Christian community as kind of that bulwark, that anchor in the storm, either if you lose sight of your anchor, it just feels like the storm is no longer survivable. And so it’s the crisis that compounds all other crises. You may be going through a health crisis, but if that is eroding or creating havoc in your faith, then you have so much more suffering. It’s compounding.
Case Thorp
I see that in pastoral visits to the hospital with those that are finding the joy of the Lord in the moment by moment journey of suffering. And it’s so very different than that visit with someone who is crying out, is God right now? Why am I here? It really, really is a night and day experience.
Jason, what about for you? How is suffering from your faith different than other ways?
Jason Hague
Well, I would echo what Catherine said, to me faith is, you know, I see all of life through that lens of faith. The particular, the hard part is that if you believe that God really is good, and you believe that God really is powerful, then, and those are like your cornerstones, the goodness of God and the power of God, you would think, well, then I should be good. And then when you see things happen, wait a minute, things are not good. And when you feel the devastation of losing someone or walking through a kid’s diagnosis or something, you’re like, well, wait a second, I feel like we just violated some sort of contract. Like, you love me, I’m your son, remember? And I’m following you, I don’t understand, shouldn’t this be different? And I know there can be wings of the church, you can look at the prosperity gospel and things that explicitly try to promote the opposite idea, but you don’t even have to be in those circles to have some of those preconceptions. Like, it shouldn’t be this way. There should be some reason, and if I do good things, then I should be at a different place. And I think that, to me, is the particular trouble. If you don’t believe that God is good, you’re going to, I mean, that’s going to be a big bummer for you, but you won’t have that specific problem. If you don’t believe that God ever intervenes, you won’t have that specific problem. You might be comfortable with the fact that life is just going to be misery. And again, that’s a whole other set of problems and I don’t want those problems, but this is unique to those who believe that God really is active and God really is good.
Case Thorp
Right. I love what you’re saying because I’m a big theology nerd. You can see all the books behind me. So your theology, what you believe really does inform then how your daily faith walk happens. I don’t know why. I’ve never had anger towards God. Look, I’ve had a lot of shortcomings and still do. But that has never been one that’s just naturally emerged in me. And it took me a while to realize, okay, somehow in my early formation at Conyers First United Methodist Church, east of Atlanta, I internalized grace in a way that I think has kept me from going there in my emotions. Catherine, related to your journey, I’m curious, were there any big ideas about God or theological doctrines that helped you stay close to Him?
Catherine McNiel
You know, there, and I do write about this throughout the book, but there was a, it was a long journey with lots of upheaval. It wasn’t, you know, one wound and then a quick stay in the spiritual hospital and then I’m fine. It’s been a long road. And one thing that I, I assure people that I am walking alongside now is that I, 40 years down the road, can look back and see a lot of things about God that helped me, but I couldn’t necessarily see them at the time. So, and it’s taken, I guess 40 years is an exaggeration, but decades, 30 and more. What I think about now is how God likens himself as the shepherd that’s going and seeking the one that has been lost or abandoned, willing to leave the entire flock and go find that one. And as I look back now, I can see that God was coming and finding me and carrying me back on his shoulders. Again, I want to assure the hurting, brokenhearted, desperate, disillusioned listener, I didn’t feel like God was carrying me on his shoulders day in and day out, not at all. But looking back now, I can see that God was. And I am always, always pulled back. We talked in the previous episode about my love of the seasons and how I survived the terrible Chicago winters because of that thrilling moment when I see spring and new life coming back. We really thought everything was dead. We thought we were all going to, you know, despair.
But then suddenly, suddenly everything is new and alive again. And I have seen God do that in my life. And again, not over the course of hours or days or months or years. We’re talking decades in darkness at times. But I have seen new life come from all that is most dead. And I have seen Jesus come and pull me off of the cliff and with the crook of the shepherd’s staff and carrying me back on his shoulder. And I can’t unsee that, you know? I can’t unsee the things that were done to me, but I can’t unsee the way God has brought me back to life.
Case Thorp
Catherine, that’ll preach. That’s beautiful. So I hear the theological doctrine of Providence, of His plan, His way of meeting the sin that runs into us in life. I was so moved by my wife when many years ago she stood up at the mother’s preschool luncheon as the guest speaker and she gave thanks to God for a miscarriage followed by a molar pregnancy, which the miscarriage was a molar pregnancy followed by cancer. This is a very, very rare situation where a molar pregnancy can lead to uterine cancer and so you have to go right on chemo.
And as hard as that journey and that time was, my wife would not ask for it again, I imagine, but she can look back and see all the blessings and the way in which God showed up and just loved on us in a powerful way.
For our listeners and viewers, Catherine and Jason were so kind to make space on their calendar last Fall for this conversation. And we had to move it because my same wonderful, beautiful wife had a stroke in October. Thanks be to God, she’s doing very, well. The journey has been hard. She’s still working quite diligently on her aphasia, which is this condition of getting the words that are there in your brain, but getting them out through the mouth and inner speech. We’re not, well in some ways I can point to God at work already, but we’re too close to it. We’re still in the midst of the darker side of the moon, I think. And I can’t wait in, I don’t know, 2027/8/9 to be able to look back and go, wow, Lord, look what you did, not that you caused this, but look what you did because of it.
And that takes, it’s a journey.
Catherine McNiel
Yeah, absolutely. It’s the journey of a lifetime.
Case Thorp
What would you, Jason, say to someone who might be in a mid-faith crisis right now? What have you learned from your life and your experiences that would encourage them right now?
Jason Hague
I think I would say it’s okay. It’s okay to not have the answers right now. It’s okay to feel disoriented. You know, God walks with us on this journey. Yeah, I, Catherine had mentioned the imagery of the 23rd Psalm and I think it’s funny no matter how advanced, you know, and nuanced we get in our theology, we never outgrow the 23rd Psalm. And we come back there time and again. The Lord is our shepherd. And He doesn’t just guide us through the easy times. He guides us through the most difficult times. In His presence, He’s always walking with us. And I would just encourage people, hey, that hasn’t stopped. That hasn’t stopped. Continue on the journey. Keep going.
And not that everything’s gonna be resolved, it probably won’t. It probably won’t. But you’re not alone. There’s a whole lot of us that have walked this. There’s a whole lot of us that are still walking this. And so recognize that. Look around and recognize just how many people are there with you.
Case Thorp
Your book encourages me because it asks us to look forward and to mature our faith, to adopt new practices or ways of encountering God. So can you point to a new spiritual discipline or way of practicing your faith that you now have because of where you’ve been?
Jason Hague
I can right away. I think the practice of lament is a very significant one now. I think back in the day, I was afraid to take something to God. I was afraid to sort of like take my anger or my, you know, the really hard things. I couldn’t dare tell God this thing. But then I started reading the Psalms in earnest and seeing this is…
Case Thorp
It’s all over the place. Yeah. It’s the norm.
Catherine McNiel
Yeah.
Jason Hague
It’s everywhere. It’s everywhere through the scriptures. Some of God’s best friends were those who were willing to be most honest. And so I have many times, as things have started to build up, I said, okay, I’m going to go out and we’re going to have it out. And I’ve done that at the beach before. I’ve done that in a city park. I’ve just been like piling it up. Okay, Lord, I’m upset about this. I’m upset you didn’t answer this prayer. I’m upset that I thought you were leading me and this has not turned out the way it is. I’m upset because I feel so distant and I feel so much pain and I feel so stuck and this does not seem like what we agreed upon. And it has been a wonderful practice and I feel like there’s so much more grace for me than I thought there was. And so many times after I load those things up, it’s just like that I’ve realized that was the separation. It was my resentments that I had piled up, where the separation, that was creating that distance. And so just being able to tell God how angry I was, ends it up just like, okay, now we can begin, now we can begin to commune together and work through some of these things.
Case Thorp
To get them out.
We have an episode actually on lament, if anyone’s interested and wants to go back and find that. I spoke to a wonderful professor at Wheaton that had looked at it scripturally and then personally. Jason, I have grown so much on the lament side of things. I have a wonderful colleague here at First Presbyterian Church of Orlando. I call him our “millennial pastor.”
And he’s so much more than just that. But I lift that up because he’s so wise. He is far wiser than his years suggest. And in learning about lament from him, I realized that in my family of origin, there wasn’t really example of or space for getting it all out.
You know, it was more of an understanding of, yeah, it’s in there, but we’re gonna talk about concrete ways to fix and be healthy and move forward. And that’s what it was. But I’ve just found the value in sitting in the mess and sitting in the mess. And don’t be so much in a hurry to get to the fixes.
Jason Hague
Absolutely. It really is a journey. It’s such a cliche, but it really is a journey. I think, I mean, I’ve experienced this in my growing up too of like, you want to say the good things. If you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say it at all. And so that even translates to our prayer life. But this is a journey and it’s okay to be where you are and it’s okay to have these. And moreover, God sees all the stuff in our hearts. So the idea that we can suppress them and hide them is silly in the first place, so you might as well just get them out.
Case Thorp
And if we don’t have a full scriptural understanding of who God is, we can tend to think that He is a formal gentleman on a pedestal for whom we must be measured and appropriate. And yes, our God is deserving of our awe and our reverence, but He’s also is clearly evidenced in the Scriptures. One who’s in the pit with us and…Can he can take it? He really can. Catherine, what about you?
Catherine McNiel
I think some of the practices that I’ve learned on the other side of faith crisis and to help me through faith crisis, because it’s not a one-time experience. We have consolation and desolation, but are some of the more contemplative practices. I too am a pretty heady person. I love to read books and study theology.
It’s delightful for me to realize that there are ways that I can pray, for example, or spend time with God where I’m not just sort of repeating back to God what I believe about God, but instead allowing my nervous system to be calmed and quieted while also allowing that same practice to put my eyes on God and remember that God is present with me. Just even simple things like a breath prayer or praying the prayer of examine where if you or your listeners are familiar?
Case Thorp
We’re big fans. But tell us, and not everybody may know.
Catherine McNiel
Well, in the simplest form it’s an invitation to just invite God to the moment that you’re in to look back at what has been worrisome or troublesome to look at what needs to be forgiven or repented of and then to look forward at where we’re going and just inviting God intentionally to all of these places and asking God to show us where He’s been there. And I find that these kinds of practices I think are helpful to people who have had spiritual trauma, because they are soothing to our nervous systems. They are not unlike what a therapist or even a physical therapist might prescribe for us. But they are in the meantime reminding us of God and pointing us to God and reminding us that God’s light is shining on our faces and that God’s breath is in our lungs. For me, most, the biggest hurdle is to remember what I already know and believe.
And so it’s these gentle practices of self-compassion and receiving compassion from God and then remembering that I can have compassion for others.
Case Thorp
And you can have compassion on 12 year old Catherine, right? You can go back and tell her, this sucks. And it’s gonna get better, but not before it gets harder. The word remember, it’s all over the Bible. My goodness. I should do a little chatGPT search on how many times is the word remember in the scriptures. And it’s there because we don’t.
Catherine McNiel
Exactly, we do. Yeah, we repeat those same patterns over and over again in one lifetime and in a thousand lifetimes.
Case Thorp
We forget we’re so hard-headed.
Case Thorp
Yeah, yeah, for sure. I’ve gotten to the point at 49 now where, when a bad thing happens in life, not just necessarily faith related, but in relationships or work or society or whatever it might be, health-wise, I’ve gotten to where I can think, okay, on the other side of this, God’s going to have shown up or I will have learned more about myself than about Him. And for you 25-year-olds listening, let me just encourage you, it takes three or four or 10 of these journeys to begin to go, wait a minute, I think I see a pattern here. And you know what, that’s why our 80 year olds are wise, right? Why couldn’t I have started out with my grandmother’s wisdom at 20? Why did I have to go through the walk?
But that is kind of what we’re talking about, right? Like, the walk of faith and it’s maturing, shaping and molding. What would you say, I don’t know if either of you have children, what would you say to an 18 year old or maybe one of your own children?
Jason Hague
Who’s going through a crisis of faith or just in general?
Case Thorp
Just who’s 18, right? It doesn’t have to be a good or a bad time, but just this is what to expect in the road ahead.
Jason Hague
I would say you don’t have to do this perfectly. You can’t do it perfectly. But the more you try to do it alone, probably the more mistakes you’re gonna make.
Case Thorp
Very good point.
That’s great. I just, in the last five years, realized, wait a minute, I want some mentors. And I identified three men. I’ve known them for the 21 years I’ve been here in Orlando. And I thought, I’m pursuing them, and I’m gonna make them my mentor. And it’s been wonderful. And then I think, man, if I had done that 20 years ago, I could have gleaned so much more than I have already.
Catherine McNiel
Well, I also have children, not only children, but teenagers. So I talk to them a lot. And one thing that I’ve been saying to them since they were literally babies in my arms is that life is full of suffering. It’s full of joy. It’s full of conflict. It’s full of beauty. And God is with us in all of it. And just keep looking for God. Keep looking for people who are with you and keep going.
Case Thorp
Keep going. Thank you so very much, Catherine and Jason. Not only, of course, I appreciate your time, but I just appreciate your vulnerability and your wisdom. So thank you for this book. Friends, go out and get it. Don’t go out. I guess we don’t go out anymore for books. Go online and get Mid-Faith Crisis: Finding a Path Through Doubt, Disillusionment, and Dead Ends by my guests, Catherine McNiel and Jason Hague.
Catherine McNiel
Thank you.
Jason Hague
Thanks for having this, Case, appreciate it.
Case Thorp
You can learn more about their work, about their other wonderful writings at CatherineMcNiel.com and JasonHague.com.
Well friends, please share this episode. Give it to someone and encourage them in their own walk. Share it on your social media. Help us reach even more with the good news of the gospel.
Thank you for your time being with us. If you’ll hop right over to our website, wecolabor.com, give us your email and we will send you a copy of Zeitgeist, our journal on faith, work, and culture. Many thanks to the Canaparo family for making this episode happen. I’m Case Thorp, and God’s blessings on you.
