by Kathryn Kleinhans
“I believe; help my unbelief!”
These words, spoken to Jesus by the father of a child suffering from convulsions (Mark 9:24), have been my own prayer longer than I can remember.
I was raised in a loving Christian home. My parents brought me to be baptized when I was 17 days old. We celebrated baptismal anniversaries as well as birthdays every year. We read Bible storybooks at home and prayed at meals (even in restaurants). I honestly can’t remember a time when I didn’t know that I was a beloved child of God. In many ways, I would describe myself as a person of deeply-rooted faith.
And yet…
At the same time, knowledge has always been very important to me. Ever since I was a child, I’ve been surrounded by books. After college, I went on to seminary and then to graduate school to earn a Ph.D. in theological studies. I’ve been a college religion professor for 24 years now, inhabiting classrooms, interacting with students and still surrounded by books. I seek out information with the passion that the crew of the starship Enterprise had in its mission “to explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life and new civilizations.” I crave answers.
When I was a child, I decided that I should write a list of the questions that I would ask God when I got to heaven. Of course, I would need to carry the list with me at all times and review it frequently so that the questions would be fresh in my memory when I died. As someone raised in a faithful Lutheran home, I never doubted that heaven was my destination. But I wanted answers–and if I couldn’t get those answers in this life, I was determined that I would get them in the next! In some ways, I was a child-sized version of Job—not suffering like Job, not angry at God, but wanting desperately to understand. “I believe; help my unbelief!”
Hard questions
By now, the questions of childhood have been replaced with the questions of adult life. For some of my colleagues and friends, the big questions are the “How?” questions, the questions of fact. How did the world come to be? How do we reconcile the creation stories in Genesis 1 and 2 with scientific evidence about the history of life on our planet? For me, the big questions are the “Why?” questions, the questions of meaning. Why is there so much suffering? Why is there something rather than nothing? Why do humans treat each other in such inhuman ways? Why doesn’t God intervene to stop horrible things from happening? Why? Why?!
Then there are the deeply personal, existential questions, the questions of “What if?” What if I had made different choices? What if I’ve chosen to trust the wrong people? What if something happens to those I love? And—a really tough one for those of us who crave information and answers—what if I’m wrong? Especially challenging for people of faith, what if I’m wrong about God? What if what I’ve been taught, what I believe, turns out not to be true?
Martin Luther wrestled with hard questions, too. When he followed his call to enter religious life, his father asked him, “How do you know you’re hearing the voice of God and not the voice of the devil?” As his criticisms of the Catholic church grew, he asked himself repeatedly, “Is it possible that I can be right and everyone else be wrong?” Luther’s spiritual mentor, Johann von Staupitz, firmly and consistently turned Luther’s attention away from himself and his questions to the cross of Christ. Luther internalized this pastoral advice and later counseled others in the same way. In a 1519 “Sermon on Preparing to Die,” Luther encourages us not to be troubled by questions and doubts but to focus instead on God’s promises. “God’s Word,” Luther writes, “reveals and promises Christ to us with all his blessing.”
Of course, Luther recognized that this is easier said than done. Luther actually begins his explanation to the third article of the Apostles’ Creed with the words, “I believe that by my own reason or strength I cannot believe in Jesus Christ, my Lord, or come to him.” That’s why we need the Holy Spirit. We can’t do it on our own. So the Holy Spirit works faith in us, Luther says, and works faith in us precisely in the midst of Christian community!
Knowledge or relationship?
Luther grasped that the life of faith is not about answers; it’s about relationship. Faith is not religious knowledge. Faith is trust–trust that God is for me, for you, for us.
This is the genius of Luther’s Small Catechism. “What does this mean?” is intended to be a real question. Luther didn’t write the catechism five centuries ago so that we could make our confirmands memorize it today. He knew that people had real questions about the meaning of the Christian faith and about the presence of God in their lives. The Small Catechism was written to provide meaningful responses to those questions.
In his explanation of the Apostles’ Creed, Luther consistently pushes through the affirmation of who God is to the affirmation of who God is for me. All too often, when we talk about God as Creator, we get bogged down in unanswerable questions about what happened “in the beginning.” But for Luther, to confess God as creator is a statement about here and now:
“I believe that God has created me and all that exists; that God has given me and still sustains my body and soul, all my limbs and senses, my reason and all the faculties of my mind, together with food and clothing, house and home, family and property.”
Similarly, to confess Jesus as Lord is to claim that Jesus “…is my Lord, who has redeemed me, a lost and condemned creature, delivered me and freed me from all sins, from death, and from the power of the devil, not with silver and gold but with his holy and precious blood and with his innocent sufferings and death, in order that I may be his.”
In his explanation of the Third Article of the Creed, Luther connects the personal with the communal: “…the Holy Spirit has called me through the Gospel, enlightened me with his gifts, and sanctified and preserved me in true faith, just as he calls, gathers, enlightens, and sanctifies the whole Christian church on earth and preserves it in union with Jesus Christ in the one true faith.”
I cannot understand the mysteries of the Triune God. But in the Creed I confess that the Trinity is God for me, God for us, God in relationship. Although I can’t know God fully, I can trust that God knows and cares for me, for us!
In his book God & Human Suffering, theologian Douglas John Hall says that God does not give us the answers but becomes present with us as the Answerer. Hall draws on Job’s experience. Much of the book of Job consists of Job’s friends trying to explain his suffering to him. None of their answers or explanations help. In fact, the best thing Job’s friends do is sit with him in silence for a week (Job 2:13). Once they start talking, trying to give Job answers, they make things worse.
Job continues to question God persistently and passionately, and God actually validates Job’s questions as more honest than the explanations of his friends (Job 42:7). God answers Job’s questions with more questions, but in the end what matters most to Job is that God shows up. God becomes present with Job both in his suffering and in his questioning. Instead of receiving answers, Job meets the Answerer.
Living with questions
As for me, I still value knowledge, and I still want answers, but I’m learning to live with the questions.
Behavioral psychologists tell us that sometimes we need to act ourselves into new ways of thinking rather than the other way around. Partners in a marriage gone stale who choose to act toward each other in a loving way even when they don’t feel loving may find, over ime, that love is rekindled.
The early church had a similar insight. In the fifth century, theologian Prosper of Aquitaine wrote that “the rule of prayer grounds the rule of belief.” In other words, what we pray and how we worship shapes what we believe. So I pray, and I sing hymns, and I worship, and I receive communion not because I understand it all but because I was raised to love and trust the God who loved me first and who loves me still. Over time, the rhythms of the church’s language and actions became a part of me. And when I am struggling the most, when the questions are the hardest, then I ride the wave, trusting the prayers and hymns of the gathered community to carry me along when my own faith is weak.
In The Silver Chair, the fourth book of C.S. Lewis’ seven-book series, The Chronicles of Narnia, there’s a dramatic scene where Puddlegum the Marshwiggle and the children Eustace and Jill are confronted by the Queen of the Underland, who tries to convince them that Narnia is not real and that their faith in Aslan is an illusion. Under her sway, the characters begin to doubt their once-strong beliefs. Finally Puddleglum is able to break the queen’s spell. He insists that living in accordance with those beliefs, even if they are illusory, is still better than living in the stark world that the queen inhabits. “I’m going to live as like a Narnian as I can even if there isn’t any Narnia,” he proclaims.
Of course, I don’t mean to suggest that it doesn’t matter whether or not God exists and whether or not the Christian claims about God’s love for us, incarnate and active in Jesus Christ, are true. Of course it matters! C.S. Lewis knew that too. But on the days when it’s hard to believe, on the days when I want more answers than I’m given, it’s a comfort to stand beside Puddleglum the Marshwiggle and to act my way into believing. Living like a Christian, praying like a Christian, even when I don’t feel like it, even when I’m not 100 percent certain, helps shape me into a stronger, more faithful Christian.
So I keep on confessing that God is my Creator, that Jesus is my Lord, that the Holy Spirit calls, gathers, enlightens and sanctifies me together with all believers, because confessing the faith of the Christian community helps me to believe it. When I recite Martin Luther’s bold words, “This is most certainly true,” it’s not because I have God or my faith all figured out. It’s more like the prayer of the father of the child suffering from convulsions: Lord, I believe; help my unbelief!
The Rev. Dr. Kathryn A. Kleinhans holds the Mike and Marge McCoy Family Distinguished Chair in Lutheran Heritage and Mission at Wartburg College, Waverly, Iowa. She is the editor of Together by Grace: Introducing the Lutherans (Augsburg Fortress, 2016).