Help My Unbelief

We often resort to clichéd religious expressions when we cannot find the right words for an occasion. I see this most often at funerals, where when confronted with someone's deepest despair and grief, we murmur words of sympathy that don't bring comfort to either the speaker or the bereaved: "things will get better" or "your mother is in a better place." These well-meaning phrases are our feeble attempts to deal with our own discomfort about the certainty of death.

And while most of our clichéd expressions are well-meaning, some have become so embedded into our collective psyche, that it prevents us from having a more authentic relationship with our selves, our neighbors, and the Divine. In trying to comfort a grieving family in the middle of a senseless tragedy, I heard someone exclaim: "who are we to question God?" This person meant this remark as a comfort, wanting to affirm that bad things happen to good people, and pointing to the futility of trying to question one's fate.

But this phrase is contrary to everything I believe about an authentic faith walk. Who are we to question God? My response is that we must question, seek, demand, and ask...even as we believe and obey. When we echo the words of a disciple, "Lord, I believe, but help my unbelief," we dare to ask questions and we dare to acknowledge that doubt, real doubt, is actually an essential part of faith.

Our tough questions, usually birthed in pain and sorrow, do not diminish God. As rational beings, asking questions, looking for evidence, and demanding answers are all part of our humanity. In the Lukan gospel, Jesus calls little children to Himself and chastises those who would attempt to keep them away. Little children specialize in asking questions. They are hungry for answers, thirsty in their quest to know more and understand more. They begin their day with questions about the blue sky, and they go to bed at night with questions about the stars.

If we are to humble ourselves as little children, then asking questions - no matter how tough those questions may be - is an essential part of our relationship with God. I have cried unto God with my questions: where is God in the face of injustice? Why is God silent when I most need comfort and strength? I have walked in doubt, even as much as I have walked in faith. I can only imagine the questions that my slave ancestors have cried unto God. It wasn't blasphemy that led my ancestors to question, "How long, O God?" but it was belief that God would hear their faintest cries.

Like an "examined" life, it is an "examined faith" that asks questions and allows space for doubt and unbelief. When we move away from clichéd expressions, from thinking that it is heresy to ask God questions, we move into a place of a real relationship: where our hopes and dreams, as well as our fears and doubts, are laid bare. So who are we to question God? We are the children of God, made in God's own image, with a nexus of faith and doubt and questions coded into our DNA.

© Yolanda Pierce