Since coming to university, I've encountered several Christians who claim to be on "spiritual hiatus" - that is, while they haven't completely walked away from their faith, they've decided to take a break from it.
They stop reading their Bibles, attending church and small group, and really, they stop praying altogether. They don't necessarily go through a dramatic spiral down the road to drugs and alcoholism - in fact, a lot of the time, their lifestyle and surface values don't seem to change at all - but they just stop making the effort to center their lives around Christ, despite knowing that He's there. They don't renounce Christianity, become atheists, or reduce Jesus from God into a "good man" - they just don't want to deal with it.
As someone who's gone through a number of dry periods and struggles, I can understand the appeal of such an action. I liken it to getting a separation rather than a divorce or to avoiding an frenemy instead of cutting her out completely. Hypothetically, it's not as if I would reject God (or His existence) completely, I'd just be giving Him the cold shoulder until I found the heart to renew that relationship.
While I'm often tempted to take a break from God, I've never really been able to. I tell myself it's because there's a part of me that's still persevering, but to be honest, I don't think I actually have the guts to just bail, even temporarily. I go through long periods of time where I don't feel motivated to pursue God, be Christly, or to pray at all, but at the same time, I'm afraid of what would happen, and what I would discover, if I lived on my own. I don't know if I could live feeling as if I were alone in the universe or that there is no plan for my life anymore. I like knowing that God is in control, and that I will never be forsaken, but I often feel tempted to "take a break" because my walk feels extremely insincere.
I've always chosen to just persevere, but the older I get, the easier it becomes to just feel bitter and frustrated about my insincere efforts. Now I wonder if taking a break is really wrong - I mean, don't you take a break while exercising, studying, or writing a paper? Aren't breaks good for a refresher? Then again, perhaps the whole concept of taking a break applies differently to relationships, as it's never fun to hear "I want to take a break" from anybody. You don't take a break from being someone's child or parent; nor do you usually hear a friend say he/she wants a break from a friendship.
In the end, I find the idea of taking a break from God problematic as I can't reject, even for the time being, how God has worked in my life. God's revealed Himself to me over and over again in worship and prayer - well, not consistently - but enough times for me to acknowledge Him as a personal presence in my life. To reject God even after He's revealed the truth to me feels like blasphemy. At the same time, those good memories start to become fuzzy when I'm stressed out about things going on in my life now. Where is God now? When did my relationship with Him become less personal?
I once heard a pastor give a sermon about why we continue our walk at all, despite all the hardships. We shouldn't pursue a relationship with God out of mere gratitude for what He has done for us in the past, or what He did for us on the cross; we pursue God because we have faith in what's ahead. While I do feel grateful for how God worked in my life during better days, I know that memory isn't enough to sustain my spiritual life - I need the faith that God is there despite my comparatively dry spirituality now, and I need the faith to believe that He will eventually bring me out of it.
Would you ever take a break from your faith? Can this help one's spiritual life, or is it dangerous to risk walking away and never coming back?
