Her latest post on her Substack caught my attention. . . as so many other posts of hers have done: “Why We Doubt Everything: We didn’t love faith, we never learnt it.” U.K. writer Freya India is a bright and shining light on so many things for so many in her generation.
Her Substack is simply titled, “Girls,” and her mission is to “look into the lives of girls and young women today” in the hope that she can help them make sense of all the confusion so that “readers of all generations can come together to figure out what’s really going on, what it’s like for girls and young women today, and why so many of us feel like we are falling apart.” I have found that she raises issues that need to be addressed, while typcially offering advice rooted in common sense and truth.
In this latest post, which I encourage you all to read in its entirety, India offers this compelling paragraph which I’m sharing here. . .
Chronic doubt also makes you very vulnerable. Without faith the world can convince you that you are a bad person, in the wrong relationship, wasting your time, at any moment. Without faith you are prey to culture, to clickbait, to industries profiting from uncertainty. Prey to a world that can talk you out of the truth, can make someone who has everything feel that it’s not enough, can convince those who should be on their knees with gratitude to throw it all away.
And we have to ask ourselves, who is it we admire? Who do we want to be? Does anybody really admire doubtful people, or love stories of hesitancy and holding back, yet that’s exactly what we encourage? We celebrate lifelong marriages, we praise decades of determination, but keep telling young people not to do that. Don’t commit too young, don’t compromise at this age, you can never be too sure. We admire the milestone but discourage what it takes to actually get there. And this is cruel, I think, to warn young people away from the very thing we respect. What is love, if not faith and devotion when it seems safer to doubt? What is life, if not risk and courage when you have reasons to hold back? In romantic relationships you don’t commit when there are no obstacles, you commit because there are obstacles, because anything that lasts a long time will come with reasons to leave, because we are all hard to love, you commit to kill the doubt and start the adventure. And the people I admire most in my life are those who were dealt one tragedy after another, but even when the whole world conspired against them, when the cards were stacked, did not fold their hand but had faith. And it’s not luck to be that way, not fortune or privilege, but a disposition, an orientation, a habit, practiced, day by day, in the face of every reason to doubt.
Oh that we would teach our kids to have faith. . . to deepen their roots in the Christian faith through deliberate and ongoing catechesis. What would happen to our kids, our marriages, and our families if we did so? Thank you Freya India for calling us all to think about these things that matter.