“Open Door for Those Who Doubt”
Mark 9: 14-29
February 5, 2012
R. Keith Stuart, Ph.D., Minister
High on my list of favorite Bible verses is “I believe; help my unbelief!” It is certainly one of the most relevant for people who live in this bewildering time when traditional religious beliefs seem to be challenged on all sides, from sophisticated intellectuals espousing a new atheism to fundamentalist preachers embarrassing the rest of us with their outlandish pronouncements about what God is up to in the world. “I believe; help my unbelief” is an important idea.
I have always identified with the man in the story since I became a father and discovered, among other things, that I didn’t know a thing about babies, hadn’t the foggiest notion of how to hold a baby, change a baby, bathe a baby. I also discovered a profound game change, a love I didn’t even know was in my heart: this little thing was now dependent on me and, thanks be to God, another person, my partner in the project, who knew a great deal more than me.
So I know this father who brings his son to Jesus. When your child hurts, you hurt. When your child is heartbroken, your heart breaks too. And when one day you have to turn your child over to surgeons and nurses and watch as he is wheeled into the operating room, that is about as empty and powerless and vulnerable as it gets. So I know this man.
The father is waiting for Jesus, and he is not there for spiritual advice. He hasn’t brought his son to have his soul saved. He’s there because he is desperate. He told his story to Jesus’ disciples to no avail, so he pushes his way through the crowd, pulling his son behind him until they find Jesus. His story pours out, in clinical detail. “My son has an evil spirit. When it seizes him, it knocks him down. He shakes all over, grinds his teeth, and foams at the mouth.”
“Bring him to me,” Jesus says. Then, in front of Jesus, the little boy falls to the ground. Jesus asks a diagnostic question, the question every physician begins with: “How long has this been going on?” “Since childhood…If you are able, have pity on us and help us.” Notice, that’s not exactly a ringing affirmation. “If you are able”—that’s an expression of skepticism born of a thousand failures. This father has tried everything, consulted doctors and faith healers, anyone who might help his son.
Jesus’ response makes me uncomfortable. It sounds a little judgmental. “If you are able! All things are possible for the one who believes.” Is the implication that the son has not been healed because his father doesn’t believe enough, that it’s his fault? Or is Jesus the one who believes and in whom all things are possible? In either event, this very vulnerable father cries out, “I believe.” I sense that what the father is saying is this: “All right! All right! I believe then. I’ll say whatever you want me to say if it will help my son. I believe.” And then in a pure moment of human integrity he adds, “help my unbelief.”
Jesus commands the spirit to come out of the boy. He is still in the throes of what sounds like an epileptic episode, and now he’s absolutely still. Jesus takes him by the hand and lifts him up, brushes him off, and pats him on the shoulder. And while the text doesn’t say it I believe the son falls into his father’s arms, tears streaming down the father’s face, and off they go, home, to a new and hopeful future in which everything is now possible.
Now, if we look closely at the story, we will see an internal contradiction. Jesus says first that healing the boy requires strong belief. Well, the father affirms his belief, sort of, but also acknowledges his unbelief. Jesus heals his son anyhow. John Calvin, careful, tedious scholar that he was, observed that “these two statements may appear to contradict each other, but there is none of us that does not experience both of them in himself.” Really? John Calvin? Both belief and unbelief existing in all of us, even in himself? Self confident, dogmatic old Calvin? Belief and unbelief?
Somewhere we got the idea that belief means no unbelief, that having a religion means having no unanswered questions, that faith means having no doubts at all. Religious certainty has caused a lot of tragedy in human history. If you have no doubts about the absolute truth of your religion, no unanswered questions, it seems logical to define someone who differs, who adheres to another religion, as somehow an infidel, an enemy. Thinking like that leads to the conclusion that it is a good thing to rid the world of the other, the heretic, to cleanse society by eliminating the doubters. Thinking like that motivates young men and women to strap explosives to their bodies and blow themselves up in a busy marketplace. And when that profound certainty creeps into politics, when ideological correctness is the sole criterion by which everything is evaluated and decided, civil political discourse ends, and the goal is to prove the other wrong at all costs.
Apparently Jesus can handle a little unbelief. In fact there are some very good things to be said about doubt and uncertainty. Psychiatrist Rollo May said, “The most creative people neither ignore doubt nor are paralyzed by it. They admit it, explore it, and act in spite of it.”
There would be no advances in science and technology if there were not courageous people willing to risk ridicule and embarrassing failure by doubting conventional wisdom. Steve Jobs’ genius was precisely his willingness to doubt the given in favor of the possible. Without honest, creative doubt, no one would ever have injected a lethal virus into a healthy person’s arm on the hope that it would immunize him/her from smallpox, measles and polio.
Doubt and faith are not incompatible. In fact, honest faith includes honest doubt. Paul Tillich said, “If doubt appears, it should not be considered as the negation of faith, but as an element which was always and will always be present in the act of faith.” Soren Kierkegaard added, “Your intellect, your reason, will take you only so far. You will never, so long as you are alive and honest, eliminate every doubt. Finally you must leap into the darkness—make the ‘leap of faith.’”
The last book William Sloane Coffin wrote before he died was Letters to a Young Doubter. In it he quotes German poet Rainer Maria Rilke: “Be patient towards all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves…You will live into the answers.” Coffin then adds his own encouragement: “Doubts move you forward not backward…religious faith despite doubts is far stronger than one without doubts. I suspect that no one so reveals an absence of faith as a dogmatist.”
I suspect everyone has doubts. When life strikes a particularly cruel blow, no one is immune to doubting the presence of a good and loving God. No one who has witnessed innocent suffering has not, in some way or another, lodged a complaint with heaven and asked simply, profoundly, “Why?”
I feel it is important to question God. I feel there is more honest faith in an act of questioning than in an act of silent submission. Questioning God is, itself, an act of faith. “I believe; help my unbelief” is an honest confession, a prayer, and an expression of ultimate hope. Friends, I have never had a word for the suffering of the innocent. I fall back on the notion that God has a lot of explaining to do. What I do affirm with my whole being is there is a God to complain to, to argue with; there is a God to question and doubt: “I believe; help my unbelief.”
The marvel is that the father didn’t really have much to bring to Jesus: his partial, flimsy faith; his concoction of belief and unbelief; his vacillation between a grateful faith one day and the next day, nothing. All he had to bring to Jesus was the deepest, most powerful, and holiest thing in his life, his love for his son, and it was enough.
Somehow the word has gotten around that if you have doubts you need to get them resolved before you go to church. Somehow the word has gotten around that if you have honest doubts about the truth of the gospel, the relevance of Christianity, the existence of God even, you don’t belong in a church. Nothing could be farther from the truth. If you’re standing outside because you’re not sure what you believe, come on in. There are plenty inside like you. If you have serious questions, bring them to church. You can sit down and have coffee with plenty of people who have the same questions. And here you will find a place where the questions are taken seriously, where people agree to consider them, talk about them, maybe even disagree about them and finally, in our life together, bring them to God .
Faith is not having no doubts but trusting God in spite of our doubts. And in the words of Douglas John Hall, “there is no more important responsibility for the minister than to say with regularity from the pulpit: ‘Doubters welcome here.’”
The wonder of this little story, and the good news, is that while the father didn’t have much to bring other than his love for his son, it was enough. That is what Jesus Christ means: You don’t have to have it all figured out. You don’t have to be morally perfect. You don’t have to have faith like the Rock of Gibraltar. You can bring what you have—your questions, your doubts, your fears, your hopes and dreams, and your deepest, holiest love. It will be enough. It will be enough. Amen.
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