There are a lot of thoughts that have been running around in my head, but for this post I wanted to focus on a short scripture story from Mark chapter 9. In it, a man brings his son, who is afflicted with seizures that threaten his life, to Jesus to be healed. The man explains to Christ that he had previously brought the boy to the disciples of Jesus, but they were unable to heal him. He begs Christ to heal the boy, and Christ responds, "If thou canst believe, all things are possible to him that believeth." The man, desperate for his child to be healed, cries out, "Lord I believe; help thou mine unbelief."
This scripture has always been meaningful to me. There is power behind the father's desperate plea for Christ to help. But this scripture became even more poignant when I watched the video Finding Faith in Christ. The video illustrates several scripture passages, including the story from Mark 9, but it adds a crucial detail that the scriptures don't include. I'll get to this detail in a bit; first I want to break down the beginning of the passage.
If thou canst believe, all things are possible
The man who brings his son to Christ is desperate. He has already brought his son to the disciples of Christ, the men who have healed others before, but they are unable to help. Christ is his last hope. He comes before Him, telling about the difficulties that his son has faced, and Christ responds by telling him that if he can only just believe, then all things will be possible. How often, in our desperation, do we come before the Lord and beg Him to help? We've tried everything we can think of. We've asked opinions, looked for the solution in books, consulted the professionals, even searched the all knowing Google. Yet the peace that we need, the comfort and healing, continue to elude us. So we go before God, we pray in desperation for His help, and He tells us that we just need to believe. Such a simple answer, that how can it be right? How can it be that basic? Yet it is. When the brother of Jared believed, his faith was so complete that he saw the Lord in the flesh. The Lord tells him, "Because of thy faith thou hast seen that I shall take upon me flesh and blood" (Ether 3:9). Jared believed, and made all things possible.
Simple vs easy
I'm fond of saying, "Just because it's that simple doesn't mean it's that easy." We often confuse the word "simple" with the meaning of the word "easy". But those two words are not the same. For example, threading a thread through a sewing machine can be somewhat complicated. There are a lot of steps to follow to get the thread from point A to point Go-Through-the-Dang-Needle. But it's pretty easy once you get the hang of it. It remains complicated, detailed, but it becomes easy. However, riding a bull is pretty simple. You just have to hang on. Sounds easy, right? Think you could do it? Just because bull riding is relatively simple doesn't mean it's easy. Christ's advice to the father in this story is that he only has to believe, and all things will be possible. Such a simple task. How easy is it, though, to believe? When your life is falling apart? When your healing doesn't come? When others hurt you? When you lose a loved one? When your country is at war? How easy is it to keep believing then? Just because something is simple doesn't mean it's easy.
I believe!
So now we come around to the scene from Finding Faith in Christ. When the man brings his son to Christ and begs for him to help, Christ tells him that if he believes, all things are possible. The desperate father then exclaims emphatically, "Lord, I believe!". Christ looks at him, eyebrows raised, as if to say, "Do you really?" So much meaning is conveyed in that simple expression. "You want to believe. You have tried so hard, for so long, to believe on your own. You have walked the path of obedience, you have done everything that was asked of you. But one thing is still missing." How often do we do this? We go before God, we lay down our case, and we declare without hesitation, "Lord, I believe!" And we want to. We want so desperately to believe. We want to know without a doubt that God is there. But when we rely on ourselves, on our own knowledge, on what our own brains can learn, we are still missing something: the witness of Christ that we receive by letting Him into our lives, fully and without conditions.
Help
In that moment, when Christ looks at this poor father as if to say, "Do you really believe?", the man humbly bows his head and declares in a soft voice, "Help thou mine unbelief." And in that moment, I can hear my own voice in this man. We cannot do this alone. I live in New England, a land of "I will do it myself". We don't want your help. We want you to let us muddle through it ourselves and the mistakes were just things we meant to do, dagnabbit. Sometimes our independence hurts us, though, and never more so than when we refuse God's help in our lives. If there is one thing that we need, one thing we cannot do without, it is divine assistance. We can try as hard as we can to learn everything there is to know about Christ, but until we let Him into our heart, and let Him help our unbelief, we cannot truly know Him.
In the end, Christ heals the man's son of his affliction. He is made whole and well. And although the scriptures do not give us any more insights, I would like to think that the father was made whole as well. In his despair, he learned that he could not do it by himself. He learned to turn to Christ, and ask for the help that He was always willing to give. He never leaves us. He never lets us go. He stands there, arms outstretched, waiting for us to look up and see Him standing there, and accept His offer to help our unbelief. In the words of Elder Dieter F. Uchtdorf, "God sees you not only as a mortal being on a small planet who lives for a brief season—He sees you as His child. He sees you as the being you are capable and designed to become. He wants you to know that you matter to Him."
