Help My Unbelief

 

Help My Unbelief

March 20, 2021

 

The Scripture quotations contained herein are from the New Revised Standard Version Bible, copyright © 1989 by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the U.S.A. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

 

There has been a sharp difference of opinion among people of faith over the admissibility of doubt in a life of faith. Two giants of twentieth century Protestant theology differed vociferously over the question. Paul Tillich insisted that doubt is inherent in faith and is a necessary part of it. Karl Barth once said would someone please tell Tillich that doubt is inconsistent with faith and is the negation of it. I come down on Tillich’s side of that divide, but then I come down on Tillich’s side of most every divide. Faith is not knowledge. Faith is not certainty. Faith is trust that certain things are real, things like the reality of God and the divinity of Christ. Trust means precisely that one lives as though we knew that these things are true when we actually don’t know that they are at all. Because we don’t know that they’re true, because we aren’t certain that they are true, there is always an element of doubt in our trust, in our faith. Doubt is unavoidable about anything about which we lack absolute certainty. That doubt doesn’t or at least doesn’t have to destroy out trust, destroy our faith. We just live with it, though most of the time we just ignore it.

There is one story in the Gospel of Mark that affirms out doubt. It’s the story of Jesus exorcizing a spirit out of a boy. You’ll find it at Mark 9:14-29. In that story a man from among a crowd of people tells Jesus that he has brought his son to Jesus because the son “has a spirit that makes him unable to speak, and whenever it seizes him, it dashes him down, and he foams and grinds his teeth and becomes rigid….” Mark 9:17-18. The father had asked Jesus’ disciples to exorcize the spirit, but they had been unable to do it. Whereupon the spirit seizes the boy as the father had described. We’d probably say the boy had epilepsy or some other seizure disorder. The ancient world of this story said the boy had an evil spirit. The father says to Jesus, “if you are able to do anything, have pity on us and help us.” Mark 9:22b. Jesus replies to the father, “If you are able!—all things can be done for the one who believes.” Mark 9:23. Then we read, “Immediately the father of the child cried out, ‘I believe, help my unbelief!’” Mark 9:24. Whereupon Jesus exorcizes the spirit out of the boy.

The NRSV says that the father spoke of his “unbelief.” We can I think take unbelief here to mean what we mean when we speak of doubt. The father believes in Jesus but apparently not to the point where he had no doubt. So it is, I think, with all of us people of faith if we’re honest with ourselves. We might work to convince ourselves that we never doubt the truth of our faith, but can any of us ever honestly say that we don’t? I don’t think so. I have been what I have called a professional Christian, referring to my status as an ordained minister of the gospel of Jesus Christ, for years now; and I can’t honestly say that. I know that faith is not certainty. There have been times in my life when God and Jesus Christ have been very real and present to me. I thank God for those times. They are wonderful even when they happen during very hard times in my life as indeed they have. But there have also been times in my life when God has seemed more absent than present, when God has not felt all that real to me. In other words, I am a man of both faith and doubt just like in the father in Mark’s story.

So what did Jesus do with this man who had just confessed both his belief and his unbelief? Did he say that since the man had both belief and unbelief there was nothing he could do for the man and his son? Not at all. Jesus says to the spirit possessing the boy, “You spirit that keeps this boy from speaking and hearing, I command you, come out of him, and never enter him again!” Mark 9:25. Jesus had the power to make this boy well, and he didn’t let the father’s unbelief stop him from doing it.

We learn that God does not reject us because our belief is mixed with unbelief. God does not reject us because our faith is mixed with doubt. God doesn’t require or expect perfection from us, not in our actions, not in our faith. God knows that we are creatures, indeed God’s creatures, not gods. God surely knows the nature of human faith better than we do. God surely knows that faith without doubt is just not possible for most of us humans. God doesn’t reject us because we doubt. Rather, God enters our doubt with us and seeks to lead us out of it to the extent that we are able to move beyond it. So with the father in this story I say I believe, help my unbelief. I hope that perhaps you can say that too.