By Jim Ludlow

My pastor recently stated that we cannot truly be believers in the scripture without also believing in spirits and supernatural intervention in human affairs. His sermon, like his others, was very studied and well delivered. Yet this statement struck at the heart of my lifelong struggle with religious teachings.

Spirits play very critical roles in perhaps every religion. Yet despite my determined efforts, I have difficulty making the leap to believe in them. At the outset, I want to affirm my belief in God. However, my struggle is not in questioning God’s existence but the role of spirits, miracles and supernatural signs. This is a journey I have been on for a long time. Where many hear facts, I hear metaphors. Where many hear the Gospel, I hear lessons for living well. I could just let this matter slide and passively go along with it all. However, I always feel uneasy doing so, keeping me on a self-examining journey to somehow reconcile this critical matter. I suspect many others feel the same way.

A broad reading of history reveals that others also struggled with this and often shared a similar perspective. I discovered a path many have adopted known as deism. It’s a belief in God as creator, coupled with a reliance on reason, science, observation and moral effort rather than the supernatural. Important thinkers including Isaac Newton and many of  America’s Founding Fathers wrestled with these same questions. They were not averse to religion. Like me, they were grateful for it. But they also believed that faith could be grounded in natural law, humility and civic virtue rather than certainty about miracles.

Throughout my life, I spent many Sundays in church pews listening to sermons, enjoying hymns and meeting kind people. Over the years, I have read with care the Bible, Quran, Torah and the scriptures of many other world religions. Doing this has been one of the most worthwhile parts of my life. Yet even after decades of study, I still find it challenging to fully adopt many of the faith claims at the center of those traditions and genuinely admire those who can.

Belief in supernatural interventions, divine voices or signs remains beyond my reach. While others around me are deeply moved, sometimes profoundly so, I find myself quietly observing, learning and seeking wisdom in my own way. Does this make me faithless? I hope not. History suggests no. George Washington rarely mentioned Jesus and prayed daily but constantly wrote of Providence. Thomas Jefferson famously rewrote the Bible to exclude miracles and kept only the moral lessons. Abraham Lincoln never joined a church, but his speeches were often deeply spiritual in nature. Benjamin Franklin doubted Jesus’s divinity. I believe they saw religion not only as personal worship but as a fundamental moral structure needed to shape societies and bind people together with accountability.

For my own life, I have chosen to live out faith not in certainty or blind faith but in effort. For example, every day I triage the world through a simple lens. I look at things as what is God-made and what is human-made. That distinction helps me see the natural world more clearly. It also reminds me that everything we construct originally comes from the Earth we inherit and are stewards of.

I continue to attend church not because I believe every word preached but because I believe in the value of seeking wisdom, listening with intention, helping others and striving to be better. To me the best sermons are not those that provide all the answers but those that ask challenging questions. I also view a key purpose of a sermon is to make you uncomfortable and many succeed. I am always impressed when the pastor can take a single verse and show how it speaks to life today helping me see something that was invisible before. Also religion is an essential source of teachings on morality. I always thought laws and regulations were only a required minimum standard of everyone’s performance. I’m always sad when the general discourse focuses only on laws. The bar and expectations of moral behavior should always be higher than the low bar of the law. Religion fosters this. I have relied on these moral lessons to help me define my duties to my wife, family and community.

I write this not to persuade but to hopefully reassure those who may quietly share my doubts. I believe there is space in the sanctuary for thinkers, questioners and seekers and that there is room for those who carry their faith not in feelings but in actions. I encourage everyone to find their path to faith. For my part, I will keep seeking. I will keep showing up. I will keep trying to live a good life. And if there is a God, and I believe there is, then I trust that such effort will be welcomed with grace.

This is a contributed opinion column. Jim Ludlow is executive producer of the Good Government Show Podcast and founder of the Good Government Institute, a nonprofit dedicated to fostering ethical leadership and civic engagement. He lives in Fogelsville. The views expressed in this piece are those of its individual author and should not be interpreted as reflecting the views of this publication.