Faithless

Have you ever come up short, surprised by how people see you or, maybe more to the point, how they don’t see you?

I am a person whose faith has become stronger and stronger over the decades. I see myself that way. I was an ardent and whole-hearted Baptist, convinced of the truth that God, whose attention went to the smallest sparrow, was also intent on me. I was convinced of my sinfulness and God’s willingness to sacrifice himself out of love to reconcile the gap between me and him. I accepted that grace. The wonder of it made me laugh in joy. My faith made me want to hone my life to truth and whittle away falsehoods and inconsistencies.

I studied and taught the Bible and surrounded myself with a fellowship of like believers but I also questioned and prodded to refine what I believed was true. Over the years my faith has become more solid and my joy and wonder deeper. But, in the process, the object of my faith has been gradually but profoundly adjusted. The object of my faith has changed to something more solid, to something material and yet so much more expansive than it was decades ago. So, I see myself as being true to my beliefs. I see myself as a believer, a person of a hard-to-come-by faith that has been honed and tempered. I know what I believe and why.

What brings me up short is that others see me as a nonbeliever and as one who has lost her faith. Even some friends who have known me for years are blind to how important my faith is to me. They seem to think that, if I no longer believe as they do, I must believe nothing. Where they would be respectful if they thought they were addressing someone of a different faith, with me they do not even recognize the need for respect. I feel invisible at those times. When I am invisible to those I thought knew me, it hurts. It feels like a betrayal of faith.