He’s been a Christian for 20 years but can’t believe in the Bible anymore. He hasn’t told his friends or family and still sits, uneasy, in church each Sunday.
“I feel like I’m lying,” he tells the woman on the other end of the phone. “I’m pretending to be a person that I’m not.
“But what if I’m wrong?” he asks. “Will I go to hell?”
“Hmmm…” the woman says, after stumbling through an awkward answer. “I thought you weren’t going to make this hard.”
If this call had been real, the woman says, she would have dissuaded the man from falling for Pascal’s Wager, the argument that it’s better to believe in God because — well, hell is an awfully hot place to spend eternity.
But the call wasn’t real. The man and woman are volunteers training for 1-844-I-DOUBT-IT, believed to be the country’s first help line for people wrestling with religion, suffering from a loss of faith, or confused about why their son or wife seems to have suddenly embraced atheism.
Founded by the group Recovering From Religion and cobbled together with a small budget, the help line launched on Friday. Nearly 100 volunteers are ready to field calls 24/7 on the weekends and from 6-12 Central Time on weeknights.
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As they practiced mock calls, the volunteers — who were from Seattle, Maryland and Montana — seemed to find some of the rules easier to follow than others. One volunteer caught herself offering advice to a woman who wanted to have a secular wedding against her mother’s wishes.
“You’re trying to fix this problem for them,” Tilbrook gently admonished the volunteer agent after the mock call ended. “You have to let them fix it themselves.”
Tillbrook encouraged the volunteers to write the caller’s name on a sheet of paper and draw a circle around it, a reminder that the conversation should center on the person, not the problem.
Earlier, he had taught the volunteers how to ask questions without seeming like an interrogator, wrap up rambling diatribes without speaking harshly, and sound sympathetic without stooping to condescension.
In an interview the next day, however, Tilbrook admitted that he hadn’t mentioned one of the hardest aspects of help line work:
A volunteer may have an intense conversation with a caller, walking with him through stressful situations and growing emotionally invested in the outcome. And then, after the conversation ends, the two will likely never speak again, with the volunteer left to wonder how the caller’s ordeal ended.
It’s like watching a movie, Tilbrook said, and stopping it midway.
