The Winter Experience of Faith: Empirical, Theological, and Theoretical Perspectives

Recent research regarding the religious experience has suggested that a circumplex model may describe important features of the religious experience. Specifically, Beck (2006) observed that Complaint (e.g., disappointment, frustration, lament, doubt) toward God can coexist with Communion (i.e., active engagement) toward God. This interface of Complaint and Communion is a little understood phenomena. The present article is an attempt to describe this interface-the Winter faith experience-by drawing on both psychological and theological research. It is a curious fact that the church has, by and large, continued to sing songs of orientation in a world increasingly experienced as disoriented ... It is my judgment that this action of the church is less an evangelical defiance guided by faith, and much more a frightened, numb denial and deception that does not want to acknowledge or experience the disorientation of life ... Such a denial and cover-up, which I take it to be, is an odd inclination for passionate Bible users, given the larger number of psalms that are songs of lament, protest, and complaint about an incoherence that is experienced in the world ... I believe that serious religious use of the lament psalms has been minimal because we have believed that faith does not mean to acknowledge and embrace negativity. Walter Brueggemann, The Message of the Psalms (1984, pp. 51-52) For many decades psychology of religion researchers have intensively studied the Christian believer's relationship with God. Some recent work in this area has borrowed from object-relations (Hall, Brokaw, Edwards, & Pike, 1998; Hill & Hall, 2002) and attachment perspectives (Beck & McDonald, 2004; McDonald, Beck, Allison, & Norsworthy, 2005; Rowatt & Kirkpatrick, 2002) regarding the love relationship with God. In a recent synthesis of this work, Beck (2006) observed that many believers report struggles and disappointments in their relationship with God. Interestingly, these struggles were not indicative of a lack of communion or engagement with God. Rather, for many participants, disappointment with God was expressed within the faith relationship. How could this be? How could negativity be a feature of faith? This article argues that this aspect of faith-called the Winter faith experience-has been generally overlooked in the psychological literature. This may in part be due to the fact that negativity is often perceived to be a symptom of unfaith. However, it will be argued that the Winter faith experience typifies many Christian believers and that this population of believers presents unique challenges to church leaders, Christian therapists, and pastoral counselors. More importantly for psychology of religion researchers, a circumplex model of faith will be proposed that offers unique predictions regarding the religious experience. Summer and Winter Faith In the quote at the start of this article, the influential Old Testament scholar Walter Brueggemann suggests that the church has tended to banish negativity-protest, lament, complaint-from the faith experience. This banishment may in part be due to a simplistic bipolar model of faith. This bipolar model is depicted in Figure 1A. In this model faith and complaint are perceived to be at opposite ends of a continuum where a "high" degree of faith involves increased conviction, lack of complaint toward God, and positivity. Thus, a "lack" of faith is characterized by disappointment, complaint, and doubt. In short, negativity is viewed as a loss or attenuation of faith. As Brueggemann (1984, pp. 51-51) notes, the lament psalms have not been featured in faith communities because many assume that such psalms are expressing faith problems: We have thought that acknowledgement of negativity was somehow an act of unfaith, as though the very speech about it conceded too much about God's "loss of control"... The point to be urged here is this: The use of these "psalms of darkness" may be judged by the world to be acts of unfaith and failure, but for the trusting community, their use is an act of bold faith . …