What you believe and trust can change. Life situations can require a rethink. Perhaps you find yourself in difficult situations, or recognize them among your family and friends. This can turn the current understanding of life on its head. Everything changes and that is often not pleasant. What to do?

Those who see their previous understanding of life questioned are often forced to rethink. You can look backwards and see yourself as a victim, or you can look forwards and ask how you can achieve a better understanding of life. Those who see themselves as victims stagnate in life. Those who see themselves as challenged, on the other hand, can find new ways. This requires courage, often perseverance, until a new security is found. Sometimes this works excellently, sometimes less well. But all of this is part of the experiences we can have as human beings.

This also applies to questions of faith. When loved ones become terminally ill, when friends die, when families go through great hardship, when you yourself are in existential distress, you find yourself in extreme situations. These experiences may also question previous beliefs. What then? Does your faith community, does your understanding of faith include a help or outlook for people in your situation? This can lead to a break with a previous religious community. This happens when the current life situation has no place in the ideas of the community. If the community allows no doubt, allows no resignation, allows no divorce, allows no incurable illness, allows only very narrow ideas about how to live “properly”, people will be pushed out of that community.

Those who turn around, think radically new, take responsibility for their own lives and courageously set out on the path to a better future need support, understanding, not condemnation or helpless inaction. I have noticed these contrasts time and again, and they are a challenge for all people who find themselves in them.

But what if you embrace life and simply move on? What if you discover that doubt is part of faith? What if perhaps these or those thoughts could also be viewed differently? What if your previous understanding reaches its limits, but someone opens a door for you? Do you dare to walk through it? What if you walk through but no one follows? Then you find yourself in a new situation in which some of the past is no longer accessible. This can be painful and cause consternation. However, it is possible to move from disorientation to a new orientation.

This is not about the right or wrong doctrine, about certain ideas that must be rejected or accepted. It is about humanity that wants to be supported by spiritual-minded people. Just as the apostle Paul described this for the church, for example:

“Therefore, as God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, put on heartfelt compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, patience, bearing with one another and showing mercy to one another if anyone has a complaint against anyone else. As the Lord shows you mercy, so do you. But above all these things put on love, which is the bond of perfection. And let the peace of Christ be the arbiter in your hearts, to which you were called in one body, and be thankful for it!”
Col 3:12-15