J. Douglas Dortch, Jr., Ph.D.
First Baptist Church, Tallahassee, FL
“Belief in an Age of Unbelief”
Scripture: Mark 9:14-27
August 26, 2007
This is not a good time for faith. I don’t know that there’s ever been a good time, unless you consider the time when the Emperor Constantine converted to Christianity back in the early 4th century (and you would certainly get an argument from me on that point). Faith, at least since the Enlightenment, has been something of a whipping boy for all who would trumpet the priority of reason.
But I don’t know if there’s ever been a time when people have piled up on faith like they have today. I’m thinking in particular of the spate of books that have been published in recent months – Sam Harris’s The End of Faith and Letter to a Christian Nation, Richard Dawkins’s The God Delusion, Christopher Hitchins’s God is Not Great. And not only are such books being published, they’re being read, as virtually all of them have managed to find their way to the top of the list of best-sellers. We are seeing what may well be described as “the heyday of atheism,” where to the casual observer it may seem that the only people who still harbor any belief in God are the mentally deranged and emotionally flawed.
How then do we answer this challenge? My first impulse has always been to point out how the presuppositions of unbelief are also unverifiable. In other words, how can anyone prove that there isn’t a God, or that this God could not possibly have been disclosed to us through the person of Jesus of Nazareth? Of course not, no one can; at least not in the technical sense of the word. And while at one time that line of thinking left me with a smug sense of satisfaction; now it just sounds to me like a “grown-up” version of the old playground come-back, “Takes one to know one.”
Most of us don’t need a best-selling atheist to create doubts about our faith. They’re already there. We carry them around with us like personal effects. On one hand, we own them – somewhat reluctantly, but still we own them. But on the other, we don’t exactly care for them to be on public display. You know what I’m talking about. “Why do bad things happen to good people?” “Why her?” “Why him?” “Why that?” “Why now?” As someone has said, “There’s not a person alive who has 100% faith” (Barbara Brown Taylor, The Preaching Life, p. 1); most of us are curious mixtures of belief and doubt, with the bulk of the mixture flowing between the extremes, depending on the severity of the situation we may be facing.
This is not a bad thing, which may very well be our best answer to the challenge of the “new atheism.” So you have doubts. Big deal; so do the rest of us. That’s the meaning of the message that is before us this morning from this story in Mark’s gospel. It’s the same story that we looked at last week, where Jesus calls his disciples to trust him so that they might be able in his power to meet every challenge that comes their way. But Mark’s account of this story has a scene that is missing from Matthew’s account, only because Matthew was making one point and Mark was making another.
Both stories mention a concerned dad who brings his sick son to Jesus. He comes to Jesus, seeking a healing for his son that Jesus’ disciples could not effect. In Mark’s account, the father goes into greater detail as to the sickness from which his son suffers. “Ever since he was a boy,” the father explains, “this demon has more times than I can count thrown him into the fire or the water, doing his best to kill him. But if you can do anything, have pity on us and help us.” Notice carefully how Jesus picks up on that last part. “If you can?” exclaims Jesus. “All things are possible to him who believes.” And notice even more carefully the father’s response. It is one of the most honest confessions ever made. “I believe; help me with my unbelief.”
Embedded in that exchange is an important truth that can keep us faithful in an age of unbelief, if only we will embrace it. It is the emphasis on “help.” Look again at the dad’s initial question. “If you can do anything, help us.” In other words, the father already understands that he needs help as much as his son. It’s not just the son that is beleaguered by a demon. So is the father. The father in some way is just as fractured as his son. And when he makes his plea to Jesus, Jesus simply puts his finger on the problem. The problem is that the man’s faith is out of balance; specifically, his faith is not as strong as his doubts.
Sometimes in our efforts to acknowledge the reality of doubt and its place in the development of genuine faith, we give way too much credibility to doubt. Granted, life puts before us some tough questions that defy all pat and easy answers. Granted, sometimes the best thing we can do in the face of these tough questions is simply to learn to live with them. But what helps us to learn to live with them is faith. What helps us to learn to cope with them is nothing less than a deeper experience with Jesus.
And that is why when Jesus answers the father by stressing the possibilities that come to those who opt for belief in a situation of unbelief, the father pours out his soul in honest confession. “Help me with my unbelief.” In other words, “The only way I’m going to rise to this level of belief is for you to make it happen.”
Is there some doubt in your life that can only be answered by a deeper experience with Jesus? Is there some question or some concern that can only satisfied by that help which only Jesus can give?
Lawrence Wood is pastor of the Fremont United Methodist Church in Fremont, Michigan. In one of his expository articles, he tells the story of a friend of his, a medical doctor, who once told him how for years he had fought against the idea of a personal God who would come along to intervene in human life. Instead, he sought refuge in music; particularly Bach, whose music appealed to him because of the mathematical precision of the fugues.
Yet, all the while the doctor’s life was falling apart. His wife had left him. He had started drinking too much. One day as he was driving, he started pounding the steering wheel with his open palms and cried out in exasperation, “God, if you’re really there, you’re going to have to say something! And you know what kind of man I am! No messing around; you’re going to have to talk my language!”
And just then on the radio came Bach’s “Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring.” The doctor started sobbing and laughing over what an idiotic but wonderful word this was to him. And just in case he might try to explain away the moment by saying that Bach was probably often played on that particular radio station, a non-classical station, the next song to come on was “The Girl from Ipanema” (Lawrence Wood, “Living by the Word, The Christian Century, 12/26/06, p. 19).
You say, “I don’t believe that story.” Not everyone will. But there are many of us who know from our own experience that it is definitely not beyond God to confirm His Presence in ways that at times seem truly incredible. Any God who would manifest Himself in the form of a Crucified Nazarene is just liable to show His power in any place at any time, and when we least expect it, or are not fully certain of it, like at a Garden Tomb, which disciples found empty. In the end, it comes down to whether you choose to open your life to the God who loves nothing more than to help people believe so that they might experience the unimaginable.
Occasionally, if you watch the Discovery Channel, they’ll come out with a segment on some adventurous excursion like rock climbing. Why people climb rocks is beyond me. They say that there’s nothing like the exhilaration that comes from scaling the side of some mountain. But I don’t believe it. Just planting my feet on this Big Rock called Planet Earth is exhilaration enough for me.
Anyway, as I understand it, in rock climbing there is something that is called a “commitment move.” You’re tied to the ropes, and there comes a moment in the experience when you have to let go of the solid place where you are standing in order to move up to a higher place. You can imagine the trepidation. The climber must trust that what he’s tied to is much greater than the place on which he is standing (Lawrence Richards, The 365 Day Devotional Commentary, p. 911).
I see this father in this text as being in something of that position. His son is sick and has been that way for some time. He believes that a higher power is at work in Jesus but he needs help getting to the place where that power may be experienced in his life as well as in the life of his son.
And Jesus gives it, just as he promises to give his power to all who believe in him. The demons may shriek. They may even throw us around. But when we trust in Jesus, he lifts us to a higher and firmer place, where demons don’t exist and evil is no more.
If this morning, life has been throwing you around a good bit lately and the place on which you’ve been standing is not as firm as it once was – if this morning, you have your doubts, don’t be too hard on yourself, because God isn’t. Doubt is not always the opposite of faith, at least not when it reflects our desire to be lifted to a higher and more secure place in life. It’s only when our doubts reflect a closed hand and a closed heart that doubt becomes dangerous simply because it cuts us off from the help the every one of us so desperately needs.
Several years ago, Jayson Blair, a columnist for the New York Times, became infamous for fabricating and plagiarizing material in several of his articles. The public was shocked, and rightfully so. Whether you agree with the Times or not, that newspaper has been a bedrock of credibility for how the industry reports events that affect us all. The question that was on everyone’s mind was, “If you can’t believe the New York Times, then who can you believe?” It was a real crisis; not just for that one newspaper, but for the entire industry.
Jonathan Alter, a columnist for Newsweek, wrote a defense for the industry, though he was quick to acknowledge the trust that had been breached by Blair’s transgression. Readers had been deceived, and what Blair did was not good. But after acknowledging the breach and validating everyone’s doubts, Alter concluded with this sentence: “The only thing worse than believing everything you read in the papers is believing nothing” (Newsweek, May 26, 2003).
The very same thing could be said about God. God is not a delusion. God is most definitely great. Faith in God hasn’t come to an end or seen its last days. It’s just that some people have their doubts.
If this morning, you need some assistance with yours, let Jesus help you. “The only thing worse than believing everything is believing nothing.”