BELIEF AND UNBELIEF
Mark 9:14~31
February 23, 1969
Communion Meditation

It's a difficult time in which to believe. That is one of the new
realities of the 1960's. Religion continues to be popular. But in this rapidly
changing, revolutionary age when nothing stays the same very long, authentic belief,
in the traditional sense is becoming a very difficult task.

Some men greet other men with the question. "What do you know for
sure?" and today the honest answer to that is "Not really very much" There are,
in fact, very few absolutes. The more we learn about the world, about man, the
less we seem to know that is absolutely and irreversibly true.

In the next.several weeks, I am going to be talking about what we can
believe, but this morning I want to focus on the difficulty inherent in the act
of believing itself. And I would begin with the assertion that one of the new
realities with which everyone of us has to cope is that it is a very difficult
time in which to believe.

Our time is very secular, and although that is not a bad state of affairs,
it does have a great deal to do with this matter of believing. Let me explain.

The word secular, contrary to some of the things you may have read, does not

mean decadent, godless, paganism. The word refers rather, to an evolutionary
process by which mankind has slowly come to assume more and more of the res—
ponsibility for its own destiny and welfare. The process, we are told, is now
culminating in our time.. Dietrich Bonhoeffer described it as "Man coming of age";
and Leslie Newbigin describes the new, secular man as follows: "Today he knows how
to control the powers of his environment. He does not pray to be delivered from
disease or from draught; he gets himself inoculated or he builds irrigation works."
(p. 31, Honest Religion for Secular Man)

That rather simple analogy defines quite adequately what we mean when we
use the word "secular". Man is in charge; no longer is it possible to blame fate
or evil spirits or God for the conditions in which men live; rather the respon=-
sibility is ours. In this sense, secularism is a good thing: when men acknowledge
their responsibility for their own welfare, good things begin to happen. Dams are
built, vaccines are developed, better methods of farming are cultivated and organs
are transplanted.

It needs also to be noted that secularism is one of the goals for which
Christian missionaries have struggled in other cultures. For instance, in India,
the caste system, the untouchables, the practice of Temple prostitution were all
based on religious assumptions and convictions. And not until the religious
assumptions were either decimated - or at least removed from a position of power
could India begin to cope with the very real problems of hunger and disease and
poverty — conditions actually perpetuated by religion.

In our culture, some people oppose blood transfusions on religious
grounds. Fortunately ~- in this area we are totally secular - and make our
decisions on the basis of human need and the solving of an immediate crisis. That
is secularism in its best sense.

Nevertheless it is difficult to believe in a secular age. If man, not
God, is calling the shots, what does pyevor mean? What about worship and all the
other traditional forms of piety? Why bother? These are just a few of the problems
raised by secularism - snd it adds up te a difficult time in which to believe,

There ave other rencons, cf courses. It's a busy world . harboring
a knowledge explosicn that makes the Fuoyclopedia Britannica obsolete before the
ink is dry.

And the snd result is 2 feeling of schizophrenia on the part of many
Christians. For six kdays a week a man lives in a busy, totally secular world.

And then on Sunday, he is confronted with ancient creeds, vague concepts, rituals
that have lost their meaning. And if he is able to believe at all - it is a well
insulated believing that begins as he comes through the doors of his Church and
ends as he goes out through them one hour later.

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_ Probably he is aware of the dilemma he is in. Probably there are moments
when he thinks longingly about how simple it must have been to live one hundred
years ago. Probably he feels very uneasy about trying to be a believer - and a
little guilty because there are times when he just can't believe. (rots. be

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Probably he thinks wistfully about other
people he knows who scom to have no problems in this area at all ~ people of
strong faith -— true believers.

Part of the problem, I believe, is that somewhere the idea gained currency
that Christian faith is synonomous with the believing of certain doctrines. That
is - to be a Christian means intellectually accepting certain creedal statements
as the truth. In this definition there is no room for doubt - or growth - in
fact there is precious little room for thinking. Christian orthodoxy is measured
by the amount of doctrine a man can swallow - and the best way to play that game
is simply to stop thinking.

I can remember the great trauma of experiencing my first authentic
religious doubt. Perhaps you can, too. In my case, it came at the point when a
Freshman course in Geology confronted my Sunday School theology of creation.

I survived it -— but the point is that for years I had poured into me the idea that
faith - or belief -— is incompatible with doubt. Now, no one put it in those
words: no one ever sat me down and said, “You must never, never doubt." Never-
theless, that is precisely what had come through.

There are, of course, a lot of people who still operate within this system.
Perhaps you are among them. And if you are - or if you feel guilty or uneasy
because you are not - allow me to suggest that faith in God, or Jesus Christ, is
nt the same thing at all as intellectual belief in certain doctrines. Allow me
to suggest that faith is trust - and that faith actually frees a man to doubt,
to live in the tension of his own unbelief. Let me take it a step further and
suggest that honest doubt may be a far more accurate indicator of faith - than
rote acceptance of doctrine. And finally that perhaps the healthiest thing you
and I can do is to confess our own occasional unbelief.

One man put it this way: "When faith is open to the most terrible dark-
ness, it will be receptive to the most redemptive light. What can the Christian
fear of darkness, when he knows that Christ has conquered darkness, that God will
be all in all." ‘The writer is Thomas J. J. Altizer, and he gaid that in- of all
places - an essay on the Death of God. (Radical Theology and the Death of God,

Pp. 20=21)Does anyone really, honestly believe - 100% = a the time? 1 think
that is a legitimate question to ask.

A man had come to find Jesus. He had brought his young son ~ a lad who
ann-rently had enilency = one of the most dread diseases in the ancient world.
uc wad Lo... ” -.use he had heard Jesus could heal. He wanted to believe that -
put he found Jesus' disciples, and they tried, and they failed. A crowd gathered,
a crowd of cynics who took delight in the humiliation of the disciples. An argument
ensued. The father and his young son stayed.

When Jesus came, he discovered the problem - the fact that the boy had
not been healed. The father, in a moving confession of his love for his son,
and his own inability to help him interrupted - ". .. if you can do anything,
have pity on us and help us." Jesus respon°ed ~ "If you can: all things are
possible to him who believes." And the desperate father cried out: "I believe."
And then, in one of the most importcnt sentences in the Bible: "Help my unbelief!"
And the boy was healod. i

I believe that is an cxtromely relcvnt confession. " I believe: help
my unbelief." Both were going on -+ the same time. The man wanted desperately to
believe that Jesus could heal his son. He did believe. But his reason told him
it couldn't happen. Others had tried: he couldn't believe. Both at the same time -
belief and unbelief, together expressed in the ory for help. ;

I think that speaks “to men and women who live in a secular ages That
meets us - where we are, at the very point of tension between what we want to

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believe and what we find we cannot believe.

I can't improve on the way Frederick Buechner puts it in his book, The
Mognificent Defeat (p. 35) - so I will use his words: "There is something in me
that recoils a little at speaking so childishly and directly. . . I am saying just
this: go to him the way the father of the sick boy did and ask him. Pray to him,
is what I am saying. In whatever words you have. And ifthe little voice that is
inside all of us. . . says 'But I don't believe, I don't believe’ don't worry
too much. Just keep on anyway. ‘Lord, I believe: help my unbelief', is the
best any of us can do really, but thank God it is enough."

There is a lot of that believing-unbelieving father in everyone of us.
Let's acknowledge it - let's confess it - let's bring that along with us as we
come to the Lord's table.

This is the first Sunday in Lent, and we begin today to follow our Lord
as he walked slowly to his death. The importance of that death is that it was for
you and for me, for all those who have gone before us and all those who have come
after us. It was for us ~ and nothing about us, our belief or unbelief, alters
that fact. We begin our following at his table-— at the place where he calls us
to be - in followship with him. That is the incredibly good news of the Christian
faith.

Lord, we believe: help our unbelief. Amen.