A Father In Anguish
Then one of the crowd answered and said, “Teacher, I brought You my son, who has a mute spirit. And whenever it seizes him, it throws him down; he foams at the mouth, gnashing his teeth and becomes rigid. So I spoke to Your disciples, that they should cast it out, but they could not.” (Mark 9:17-18 NKJV)
Jesus said to him, “If you can believe, all things are possible to him who believes.” Immediately the father of the child cried out and said with tears, “Lord I believe; help my unbelief!” (Mark 9:23-34 NKJV)
To a parent, there is no greater horror than a seriously ill child. The sense of helplessness, of hopelessness, of despair is unimaginable. So, it is easy to identify with this anguished father of a possessed son, and with his searingly honest, “help my unbelief!”
There are times when belief, when faith itself, is stretched to the breaking point. Times when no passage of scripture, when no words of a hymn, when nothing exists in the human heart but overwhelming despair. The death of a loved one. The unexpected loss of a job. The world is turned upside down. And everything you believed, everything you held dear, everything you thought you knew seems useless, shallow, and cruel. There is nowhere to run. There is no place to hide. Your beating heart has been ripped out and trodden upon. And at such times, doubt gets a foothold.
I see terrible things, and I ask how can You allow this suffering? I hear of atrocities committed, and I ask how can You permit such cruelty to exist? I am a chronic human being. I have questions. I have fears. I have doubts. And at such times, doubt gets a foothold.
And my doubts make me ashamed. If I have doubts, doesn’t that mean I lack faith?
No, not really. The opposite of faith is not doubt but certainty. Certainty is missing the point entirely. And Certainty is never attainable, except in mathematics. 2 + 2 will always = 4, never just “3 and a bit.” Doubt embraces, even celebrates, Uncertainty.
In his essay, “7 Strategies for Dealing with Doubt, the Rev. Martin Thielen writes, “faith is never absolute, black-and-white, and unwavering. According to Ann Lamott (who credits Paul Tillich), ‘The opposite of faith is not doubt but certainty. Certainty is missing the point entirely.’ Ann Lamott is absolutely correct. Genuine faith always includes questions, mystery, ambiguity, and plenty of doubts” (https://www.umc.org/en/content/7-strategies-for-dealing-with-doubt). To me, “plenty of doubts” = Uncertainty.
Uncertainty makes us ask questions, seek answers, find solutions that work. They may not be perfect, but they work. The great Greek Philosopher Socrates famously said that the unexamined life is not worth living. Socrates believed a life without critical reflection, self-awareness, and questioning of one's beliefs, values, and morality is not truly human or worth living, as it lacks purpose and true understanding. In other words, a life without doubts to be examined was not a human life at all. Doubt is what makes us fully human. Our capacity to doubt, and to believe, is what makes us what we are. And what we are is truly human.
Lord, I believe. Help my unbelief.
Lord, I doubt. Help my doubt.
Yeah. That works.
Jerry Lipscomb
