Help My Unbelief
“All things are possible for the one who believes” (Mark 9:23). No doubt Pastor Andrew will help us get a clearer handle on this incredible declaration of Jesus as he preaches on Mark 9:14–29 this Sunday, but I suspect two things are true of most of us reading this Friday Letter: first, we believe that Jesus is able to do all things and, second, we struggle to believe this without hedging—“if you can,” as the father in this passage says to Jesus (v. 22). We know this father’s anguished prayer from the inside: “I believe, help my unbelief!” (v. 24).
I get to teach apologetics, among other courses, at Puritan Reformed Theological Seminary. Apologetics is the branch of theology devoted to faith’s response to the questions, objections, and counter-stories of unbelief. Faith certainly encounters unbelief wherever the church, as the community of faith and hope in Christ on earth, meets the ambient world of unbelief (and misbelief). Faith encounters unbelief within the church too. We are, after all, a mixed community of those who believe and those who have not yet believed.
More to my point here, faith confronts unbelief in every believer’s own heart and mind. We don’t have to look far to find our unbelief: embedded in every sin, for example, is a false belief in the lie that our happiness lies in that direction and thus unbelief in the sufficiency of God for us in Jesus Christ. The struggle of faith overcoming unbelief is first and foremost internal: “I believe, help my unbelief!”
The most effective apologists, it seems, are those well practiced in contending with their own unbelief. There is much to say on this, but the ironic statement of this father before Christ spotlights a tension that pilgrims of faith live with. I see it wherever I go, and as a seminary professor I get around. As you read this, I should be wrapping up a trip to Korea and will soon, Lord willing, be off to Chile. And, wherever I go, my students pepper me with questions that reflect the struggle of faith overcoming unbelief. It is as if they are asking, “help my unbelief!”—not because they do not believe, but because they do and want to grow in the grace and knowledge of Jesus Christ.
But here is a secret of sorts. One of the ways unbelief lurks in me is in a thought that sometimes flits through my mind: Is the gospel too good to be true? This question arises from the strange combination of how wonderful the gospel is and my temptation to doubt that God could love me, the wreck of a human being—the sinner—I am. And, one of the great helps God has given me are my students. These brothers and sisters throughout the world who believe the same gospel, confess the same faith, walk in the same hope, know the same Lord, and worship the same God as me. When I stand in class and open Scripture with them, I know my faith is not in vain, and neither is theirs, and neither is yours. Jesus is indeed everything Scripture claims he is.
The same is true each Lord’s Day as we gather by the wooded gulch to worship the living God. I doubt we ever fully appreciate, this side of that gulch, how great a help our believing, singing, and praying together is to one another. “All things are possible” for our crucified, risen, and ascended Lord, whose love for his people cannot be defeated. I look forward to meeting you by the gulch this Lord’s Day. Come, believing, and you will see what Jesus means.