by Br. Leven Harton
“Sensations, feelings. What you want is a sign, a real sign . . . The Lord speaks to prophets personally and He’s never spoke to you, never lifted a finger, never dropped a gesture.” So speaks the devil to the protagonist (Young Tarwater) of Flannery O’Connor’s novel The Violent Bear it Away. O’Connor articulates a deeper spiritual experience, one that can afflict any Christian: the suffering of doubt. When our faith convictions begin to crumble under the pressure of doubt, it can be traumatic and scandalizing. Could it be that what we have believed is simply not true? Are the decisions we’ve made based on our faith tradition simply a waste? Are we really secure in the providence of a loving God? Is it not difficult to believe in such a comprehensive view of reality (there are so many other perspectives!)? We often speak of doubt as rational skepticism, the feeling that I don’t have enough evidence for what I believe; like the traditional representation of “Doubting Thomas.” However, it is important to observe the tactic employed by O’Connor’s marvelous depiction of the devil. This devil is not concerned with logical arguments and physical proof—he is interested in Young Tarwater’s experience. Specifically, the devil aims at distorting Tarwater’s understanding of what he experiences in his interior. The protagonist’s sense of a Presence toward him, a connection with his Creator, is what the devil chooses to attack, and his method is subtle: he belittles Tarwater’s experience. The temptation to doubt, in this case, is not a purely rational threat. Rather, it shames the person through a kind of taunting suggestion that faith is different than what one has experienced, much grander and (certainly) more obvious than one’s “sensations” and “feelings.”
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Kansas Monks
This method of attack is insidious, for it is to turn our most sacred hopes against us. Tarwater’s (and our) lofty expectations of the encounter with the Lord are not misguided. Jesus has said in no uncertain terms that He is the Way, the Truth, and the Life—we should expect nothing less. This magnitude of desire is unavoidable in the human heart and it spurs us (if we listen to it) to pass by lesser goods, seeking that which does satisfy. Following this desire with patience and perseverance, our relationship with God grows and blossoms into a foretaste that is full, a suggestion that is complete, a true correspondence. But the devil in The Violent Bear it Away has expertly arrested this following for Tarwater, he has distorted the holy expectation to make it a device that produces shame. This characterization of doubt is a helpful meditation for Christians today. Few people in our culture have much patience for faith; many voices are liable to repeat in various forms the devil’s accusation against believers that all we have for our convictions is “sensations, feelings.” These voices challenge us to abandon the path to joy. I think it is justifiable to call these accusations what they are: shaming tactics that reach beyond the accuser’s own realm of experience into our own, inviolable hearts. The only one having my experience of God’s nearness to me, after all, is me. The type of doubt that arises from thinking that my own experiences are so meager and common, so silly and trivial, is really not worth following at all. We can have confidence in our own experience of
