Kintsugi Kid

An emo theology of doubt

Jesus Christ, I'm alone again/So what did you do those three days you were dead?/'Cause this problem is gonna last/More than the weekend. I pulled into a parking spot at physical therapy as these lyrics (Brand New’s “Jesus Christ”) played. Not exactly the pump-you-up song that you’d expect going into a gym session, but what can I say, I’m emo. And I’d been doubting a lot of things recently. Was everything I was doing for my health worth it? Was I spending my time wisely? Was my time and health precious? Did this make a difference for my family? For me? Was I worthy of self-improvement, even at the expense of house chores and other people's time? Doubt trickles in. It always does. And this time, I wondered if it was okay to doubt.

This song is part of a playlist I put on when I’m feeling this way (the playlist)*. These songs are all about doubt, self-examination, and unbearable tension. They don’t offer answers, they just keep going…and so do we. Life keeps going whether you're okay or not. The question is: will you keep going too? The best thing you can do is to keep going and make art from the wound. Because doubt isn’t a problem to solve, it’s a spiritual practice. And emo music has been doing the theology of doubt for decades, whether or not it uses God-language.

What is the emo theology of doubt? It’s a self-examination that doesn’t immediately lead to change. Isolation as both wound and chosen identity. Other people as mirrors showing you what you may not want to see in yourself. Escape as possibly futile but definitely necessary. To stick with Brand New, they ask in the same song: Jesus Christ, I’m not scared to die/But I’m a little bit scared of what comes after. Say Anything begs, I want to know your plans and how involved in them I am, because self-doubt is unbearable. The others do similar things in their songs. They all sit in the tension, name the wound, keep going anyway, and make art from the pain. Because doubt isn’t the opposite of faith, but one element of it.

Traditional Christianity, especially evangelicalism and Catholicism in America, tends to treat doubt as a failure. You’ll hear, “Pray harder,” “Have more faith,” “Trust God’s plan,” a lot. Doubt is treated as a lack of faith which, in turn, is treated as a sin. Doubt is seen as a deficiency and, therefore, needs to be fixed. The goal, then, is certainty, resolution, and answers. The problem with all of that is that it gives you the illusion of control; doubt exists to remind us that we’re not the ones in control, God is, and some of His ways are truly beyond our understanding. What if living the questions is faithfulness? What if doubt is prayer?

So doubt isn’t a problem to solve but a tension to hold. Doubt is where you live. “Jesus Christ” never resolves whether the narrator is saved, it just asks the question again and again. “I’m Not Okay (I Promise)” actually amps up from I’m not okay to I’m not o-fucking-kay! The narrator stays not okay and that’s okay! This isn’t nihilistic. It’s not saying nothing matters and nothing comes after and there’s nothing to live for. It’s saying, honestly, that there are a lot of questions that don’t have answers yet but are worth asking. A priest prayed over me once and said, “You have a lot of questions. That’s good. Not all of your questions have answers…yet.” That “yet” is the tension God asks us to live in.

The spiritual greats know this, just look throughout the Bible. Many of the Psalms don't resolve—they end in lament, in unanswered questions, in darkness. And these are prayers, these are Scripture, these are valid worship: “Because of you friend and neighbor shun me; my only friend is darkness” (Psalm 88:19). “Awake! Why do you sleep, O Lord? Rise up! Do not reject us forever! Why do you hide your face; why forget our pain and misery?” (Psalm 44:24-25). “Where are your former mercies, Lord, that you swore to David in your faithfulness?” (Psalm 89:50). Job gets blessings from the Lord in the end but never an answer as to why it all happened in the first place. Even Jesus expressed doubt in the Garden of Gethsemane: “Father, if you are willing, take this cup away from me” (Luke 22:42). Mary stood at the foot of the cross and watched her son die, not knowing if he would rise. The Resurrection doesn't erase the Crucifixion—both are true. Both are held simultaneously.

Doubt is a way of being faithful! Faith isn’t the absence of doubt, it’s choosing to keep going with the doubt. Keep going, keep failing, keep going some more. I live this tension everyday. I deconstructed but hold the Eucharist as absolutely true. I love the Church and name her as abuser. I raise Catholic kids while preparing to leave, just in case. They aren’t contradictions to resolve but tensions to hold.

This self-examination is the beginning of the work, not the end. The Get Up Kids in “My Own Reflection” show that you can’t change what you won’t look at. Say Anything’s “I Want to Know Your Plans” shows naming your desperation is the first step. “Cigarettes and Saints” by the Wonder Years shows that measuring yourself against better people means you WANT to be better. These are about the painful work of beginning to be better because starting something new is always painful and scary.

There’s a misconception around Christianity that it promises instant transformation: you pray, you repent, you’re fixed. People want a linear progression they can see and control: problem → prayer → resolution. But that’s not how it actually works. The reality is circular, not linear. See the problem, name it, work on it, fail, see it deeper, name it more honestly, work on it again, repeat. It’s not a failure to circle back. You don’t solve “I’m a loner” once and it’s done. You visit it at 16, 25, 35, at 40 and each time you understand it differently because each time you’re a little different than you were the time before. The process leaves you different each time you engage it.

There’s all kinds of parallels to this in the Bible. Jacob wrestled with God all night and got a new name out of it! But he limped forever afterwards. Peter denied Jesus three times and then was asked, “Do you love me?” three times with different actions attached. It wasn’t in punishment that Jesus asked, it was part of Peter’s healing process and forward action. Paul’s thorn in the flesh didn’t get removed but he learned how to live with it differently. The Israelites circled the wilderness for 40 years and when they finally entered the Promised Land, they weren’t the same people who left Egypt. I deconstructed, rebuilt belief by belief, I’m still rebuilding while preparing to leave, I still question myself most days, and I still do the work. This is the journey of doubt to understanding. Fides quaerens intellectum. Faith seeking understanding. Doubt is part of faith and it seeks to understand God ever more deeply and, therefore, seeks to understand the self ever more deeply, because by knowing God, you’ll know yourself.

What doubt, and these songs, don’t offer: resolution, certainty, linear transformation, hope (in the traditional sense).

What they do offer: companionship in the darkness, permission to not be okay, knowledge that you’re not alone in the tension, and the insistence that you keep going anyway (good ol’ perseverance).

This is the theology Job became very familiar with: no answer, just presence. Crucifixion theology, that the darkness is real and we don’t bypass it but we march through it, crying and screaming. There is hope. Not that it gets better (although it will) but that you keep showing up, that you keep making art and beauty from the wound, that doubt itself is prayer.

Apple CarPlay started when my vehicle roared to life after physical therapy that night and I was dropped into the middle of a song. Anyway, I didn’t wanna be/The topic of conversation/What’s to say?/I’m gonna have to speak /To the man in my own reflection. The Get Up Kids’ “My Own Reflection”. It starts with me. Me questioning, me not being okay, me still going. As I drove home listening to these songs, they became a liturgy for my doubt, prayers sung, screamed like a broken hallelujah. An invitation for God to meet me in the cracks and make me into some beautiful kintsugi.

Faith doesn’t resolve my doubts, faith doesn’t even make them bearable. But it makes them valuable. That’s prayer. I’m not okay, and maybe that’s the point. Keep going, keep failing, keep going. That’s the theology.

*The playlist includes: "My Own Reflection" and "I'm a Loner, Dottie, a Rebel" by The Get Up Kids, "Jesus Christ" by Brand New, "I'm Not Okay (I Promise)" by My Chemical Romance, "Cigarettes and Saints" by The Wonder Years, "I Want to Know Your Plans" by Say Anything, "Topeka" by Ludo, and "Existentialism on Prom Night" by Straylight Run.

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