The young adults are wrapping up a good series of discussion-based classes on Sunday morning, going over a variety of topics that Christians often wrestle with. Recently the discussion was on doubt and, among the many Bible texts we looked at, two stand out. They are related texts, but not in any obvious way…
For he taught his disciples, and said unto them, The Son of man is delivered into the hands of men, and they shall kill him; and after that he is killed, he shall rise the third day. But they understood not that saying, and were afraid to ask him.
(Mark 9:31-32)
This is one of the many times when Jesus made it very clear what was going to happen to Him: He told them He would be taken and killed, and that He would rise on the third day afterward. There really is no way to miss the meaning, but I say that with the benefit of hindsight. You can imagine, having sat and listened to the Lord tell many parables, the disciples might have thought He was speaking metaphorically.
What’s clear is that they did not understand what He meant. What they should have done is asked but, as Mark writes, they were too afraid to do so.
So it’s no surprise, later, when He rises from the dead, that the disciples do not believe He was really alive again. Had they previously asked and had it explained to them, they might have believed more readily. Instead, the questions lingered in their mind and, when confronted with the news that seemed too good to be true, they chose to believe it wasn’t true. They planted the seeds for their eventual doubt a full year before Jesus was ever killed, simply because they refused to ask, to seek, and to understand.
The lesson to learn is this: Faith and Knowledge are not meant to exist in opposition to one another.
There’s a popular saying today that has no basis in reality (I’m 99% sure Joel Olsteen has tweeted it): Faith begins where knowledge ends.
The person who coined that phrase believed that the more you learned the less faith you would have. That’s absolutely untrue. A statement like that implies God is a myth and the more we learn, the more the “truth” is revealed to us, and therefore the less we believe. That’s balderdash.
Faith does not begin where knowledge ends; on the contrary, DOUBT begins where knowledge ends. Faith is actually what reinforces the knowledge we have. When we ask, seek, and learn, our faith grows. Why? Because God is real, and His truth is ever-present. As our knowledge increases, so too does our faith. Even if what we learn is “I don’t know the answer to the question, and in fact I can’t know the answer to the question, but I know that God knows it” we still have learned that much.
Never be afraid to question, to ask, or to seek more information. God made all things. The more you learn about all there is, the more the hand of the Creator will come into focus.
~ Matthew