|
“Immediately the father of the child cried out, “I believe; help my unbelief!”
–– Mark 9:24
A father is exhausted, frazzled, despairing, and spent. For years he has been vigilant in caring for a son tormented by frequent and unpredictable seizures. “Teacher, I brought you my son; he 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 … From childhood. It has often cast him into the fire and into the water, to destroy him.” Transcending time, it is an experience to which many families can relate. The uninterrupted 24/7 vigilance demanded to monitor vital signs, avert dangers, clean soiled bodies, provide treatment, navigate diet restrictions, provide medication, make regular trips to the ER, coordinate doctor appointments with physical therapy sessions and scheduled infusions, always diligent but seeing no progress and finding few answers. It is not surprising to hear the note of disheartened resignation in the father’s voice when he approaches Jesus –– “if you are able to do anything, have pity on us and help us.”
Watching his son’s continued suffering, collapsing late at night exhausted, having found no answers or relief, doubt becomes the unwelcome visitor who refuses to leave. “if you are able to do anything, have pity on us and help us … I believe; help my unbelief!” Frederick Buechner famously said, “Doubts are the ants in the pants of faith. They keep it alive and moving.” It is usually unwise to trust someone who is a bit too assured about their faith. In fact, many saints of faith have pointed out that doubt is not the opposite of faith, certitude is. Faith is believing in that which we cannot see or control, so inevitably there are going to be places in our journey where our wifi seems spotty when it comes to God’s signal. We are finite and limited, so we are always going to be a bar or two short of a full signal, and some days your faith is going to feel like a dropped call.
In a recent interview with the New York Times, the revered theologian and former Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams addressed the experience of his own doubts –– “There have been periods, especially of personal loss and personal awareness of struggle and uncertainty, where it’s been not so much I doubt that God exists but I don’t know whether I’m connecting with what’s there — and I don’t know how to.” Williams said working through those periods was largely a matter of doing the next thing, doing what you can do, and he lifts up a character from an Iris Murdoch novel who, while intensely religious, had just experienced a traumatic shock to everything he believed in. Williams observes, “He’s living next door to a convent, and all he can do is to go to Mass every morning. And I thought, ‘Yes, I see what’s going on there. He’s doing the next thing.’ He’s treading water, you might say, but also he knows something can be done — not to keep the darkness at bay but to keep breathing, to keep moving, to keep open to something.”
The walk of faith involves movement, continuing to walk even when you don’t know quite where you are headed; even when the why of the walk is a bit murky. Taking the next step. Praying the next prayer. Reading the next scripture. Asking questions to the locals you meet along the way. As the old spiritual commends, “Ain’t nobody gonna turn me around…” Keep walking and God will find you there.
| 
