In his autobiography, actor Alec Guinness tells a story that might keep every pastor and church school teacher awake at night. He was a teenager and it was the morning of his confirmation. The classes were finished. The students' heads had been filled full of Bible stories and theological doctrines. Guinness says HolyTrinityChurch in Eastbourne was crammed with confirmation candidates, their parents, friends, schoolteachers, and sponsors. At the appropriate moment, he notes, "The girls, mostly in grey uniforms, filed up to kneel at the Bishop's left hand and the boys, in blue serge, to his right. I remember white episcopal hands and shaggy black eyebrows. A pale, greenish light filtered through the window-panes, giving a subaqueous hue to the perspiring congregation." Then he adds, "At the age of sixteen, one early summer day, I arose from under the hands of the Bishop of Lewes a confirmed atheist ... With a flash I realized I had never really believed what I had been taught."

I don't know about you, but I am troubled by that story. I believe in Christian education. God's people are called to teach the Christian faith to children, teenagers, and adults. Sunday church school and confirmation classes are important educational activities. The church needs to do these things. And yet, here is the story of a bright, intelligent person who emerged from those experiences, and he did not believe a word of what he learned. As a professional church leader, as a Christian educator, that story bothers me. At a personal level, however, that story haunts me for another reason, namely, that it sounds surprisingly familiar. On a bright Sunday morning, it is easy to affirm what we believe. As the familiar verse we've heard today puts it, "God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but have eternal life." With sunbeams shining through stained glass, I can believe it. But late at night, after the lights are dimmed, sometimes I have my doubts, my questions, my lapses of belief. Perhaps I'm not the only one.