Unbelievable

Confident faith in a sceptical world

Malcolm Duncan

• Publisher: Monarch Books
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9780857215352
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Teologia e religione
• Subtopic: Riferimenti biblici

Christians face a tough task. In a world without consensus, all truth claims are regarded dubiously.

The Gospel does not change, but what aspects should be highlighted in our rapidly changing culture? How do we speak 'into' the culture, instead of just mirroring that culture? Malcolm Duncan constructs his case around the core statements of the Apostles' Creed. If we believe in as God as Creator, what does that mean about our treatment of His creation? If we accept Christ as Saviour and Lord, in what sense are we rescued, redeemed, remade? If we accept the Holy Spirit as Guide, where are we going and what are we here for?

We face an unbelievable task: playing our part in the world's regeneration. But God has confidence in us. If we can be confident of what He has done for us, then we can also be confident of what He wants to do through us.

Chapter One

Lord, I believe; forgive my unbelief: The power of honest faith in a sceptical world

“I do believe, but help me overcome my unbelief!”

The words of a desperate father to Jesus
Mark 9:24

I believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun has risen: not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else.

The words of C. S. Lewis, who described himself as the most reluctant convert in all of England

Is theology poetry?

The small chapel of rest was still and quiet. My father’s remains lay before me, peaceful and lifeless. It was too early for the traffic on the Belfast street outside to be ramping up, so there was little noise to distract me.

My dad was dressed in his best grey suit, with his hair brushed and his hands folded across his chest. He was gone, and I was devastated. In a few hours, I would stand before the gathered mourners and conduct his funeral – the hardest thing I have ever had to do in my life. I’d wear two hats. The more important to me was that I was a son, his son. For the purposes of the funeral and the mourners, I was also the pastor, the “man of the cloth” conducting the service and guiding the congregation through the words of farewell and committal. I’d come to spend a few moments in quiet and to strengthen myself – and to say goodbye to him. I was confused, heartbroken, and bereft, but I knew I needed to do this. I loved him.

Why had God let this happen? No chance to say goodbye. No chance to hold his hand. No opportunity to thank him one last time for providing for me. No assurance that he had discovered God’s love for him and made peace with his Creator. No assurance that I would see him again. The one single prayer I had consistently prayed lay in ashes before me – colourless and lifeless. I had asked God every single day for sixteen years to bring my father to a personal place of repentance and faith in Jesus. I had dreamt about serving him Communion. I was convinced it would happen – yet here I was about to conduct his funeral and I had no idea whether God had answered that prayer or not. Nothing to hold on to. Nothing to assure me of my dad’s destiny. Just a dead body and a commitment to “do him proud”.

So I wept over his body. I held on to the side of his coffin and I sobbed. Alone, with no one watching but God, I let my heart break. My tears fell on his corpse. My hands shook. My head ached and the questions began to erupt from my heart like a round of artillery fire at God. Why did You let him die? Why did You do this? Why didn’t You answer me? Why didn’t You do something to help? What are You going to do now? What do You want from me? Where are You? Don’t You care? The bullets just kept firing. Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang!

Then it subsided. I ran out of ammunition. I had no bullets left to fire, so I stopped. The sobbing continued but the purpose changed. Now I was sobbing and saying to God, I can’t take another step without You. I can’t get through this day without You. I need You more than I have ever needed You and I feel You less than I ever have.

The contradiction was stark. One minute I was shouting at God and wondering where He was, and the next I was telling Him I could not get through the day without Him. How does that make sense? I guess it doesn’t, to many people. Either you believe or you don’t. Either you trust God or you don’t. But I don’t really see it that way. I both trust God and struggle with Him. I believe in Him and I wonder where He is. The two things sometimes exist side by side in my head and heart.

As they placed the lid on my father’s coffin, I stood like a sentry beside them. I still remember the sound of the turning clasps as they locked the lid to the coffin. Locking away my daddy. Locking away any last chance. It seemed like the sound of hope being locked away.

I turned and walked out in front of his remains. Outside were my darling mum, my three older brothers, and my older sister, Anne. None of them were Christians. Through the course of the day each of them helped me. My eldest brother literally held me up at the graveside when I struggled with the words, “Earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust, in sure and certain hope…”. I didn’t struggle with the first words, but with the last. Sure and certain hope?

Sure?

Certain?

Hope?

Hundreds of other mourners gathered, and the funeral went well. They said things like, Good job! You did well! Your daddy would have been proud of you, so he would! I don’t know how you did it, Malcolm! God bless you, son; thank you so much. Of course I was grateful for the love and the support, but I don’t think any of them knew how much I was struggling to keep it together and at the same time how utterly reliant I was on God to help me.

It was a struggle that would continue for months and months and months. Eventually I discovered a way through. I realized that I didn’t have to understand God to trust Him. That helped me. It hasn’t taken away my questions and it hasn’t answered all my struggles; I have just realized that I can be honest about my questions. I don’t have all the answers, and I don’t care whether people think that makes me a good Christian or a bad one. I’d rather be honest than false. I am not going to pretend I understand God when I don’t. I don’t need to be perfect; I need to be authentic. It’s only as I struggle that I grow.

I struggle with my faith.

That’s OK.

There are times when the idea of “God” doesn’t make any sense to me at all. I have questions that haven’t been answered and some of the answers I have discovered are less than comforting to me. Some are about me, some are about the world, and some are about other people.

Why did God not stop the Boxing Day tsunami of 2004 that devastated so many lives?

Why (at the time of writing) is Robert Mugabe still in power?

Why does faith sometimes not make sense?

Don’t misunderstand me – I can give you a theological answer. I can talk about the impact of sin and the power of choice, and the ultimate promise that God will put all things right. I can explain that evil is prevalent in the world, that we all have a natural propensity to selfishness and greed. I can answer the question with the same rigour as many others. I believe all those answers with all my heart – but I still struggle with God sometimes.

As a pastor, I find myself asking God why I have had to bury so many people whose whole lives were snatched away from them when they had barely begun. I get confused about that. I feel helpless trying to support mums and dads and sons and daughters who are mourning. I don’t have the answers so I just weep with them, walk with them, love them. I’ll gently point them to Scripture, help them say whatever they need to say to God, and suggest some of the biblical, spiritual, and pastoral things that will help them through this time, but I still do not always get God.

As a preacher, I ask myself how I can make a text that spans thousands of years and many different genres and addresses hundreds of different cultures make any sense whatsoever to the people I engage with today. There are bits that seem to fit well and others that don’t seem to make sense or help at all. I don’t always get God.

As a son, I wonder why my father died so suddenly in 2002 and why I never got the chance to say goodbye. As a father, I wonder why my son has had to struggle with illness for so many years. As a husband, I’ve watched my wife bravely battle illness and setback after setback and wanted to shout at God, “Enough already!” As a man, I’ve battled my own demons, faced my own illnesses, and struggled with my own doubts, weaknesses, and failures. I don’t always get God.

Is it just me?

I don’t think I am on my own in my struggles with my faith. I think millions of Christians struggle with God. I’d go as far as to suggest that if your faith is ever going to be real and lasting and genuine then you are going to have struggles. You’ll face your own crises and fears. You’ll have your own dark moments. I think we often want God to be God in ways that are not the ways of God at all. We want Him to make us feel indestructible instead of learning to trust that He is invincible. We want Him to remove pain from our lives instead of allowing Him to teach us, in the words of the old Welsh hymn, that faith can sing through days of sorrow; all will be well. I think we struggle with the God who is there because we want Him to be a different kind of God. We want Him to be a panacea and we’d rather reinterpret Him than reorientate ourselves. We’d prefer a nicer God, a safer God. We’d like to make Him more like us, because then people might like Him more. We think that because pain is present, God must not be. The reality is, however, that God is not absent from the pain of the world; He is present in it. Listen to the words of Deena Metzger:

God is the most fragile, a bare smear of pollen, that scatter of yellow dust from the tree that tumbled over in the storm of my grief and planted itself again. God is the death agony in the frog that cannot find water in the time of the drought we created. God is the scream of the rabbit caught in the fires we set. God is the One whose eyes never close and who hears everything.

Deena Metzger, Ruin and Beauty

We forget that it is in the midst of our flesh-and-blood life that we meet God. He never comes in a vacuum. He always speaks into history from eternity and therefore we meet Him in the reality of life. It is in the midst of the messiness, the sadness, the pain, the joy, and the celebration and in actual living that we meet Him. We can do all things through Christ who strengthens us, Paul said to the Philippians. Paul did not suggest we could avoid the hard bits of life or its questions and uncertainties; he said we could face them.

Christian faith is not a highly developed avoidance technique

We Christians can end up thinking that “belief” and “doubt” are at opposite ends of the spectrum. It’s easy to think that because we have questions, we cannot be “good” Christians. That’s a false dichotomy. The story of the man who wanted his son to be healed by Jesus, recorded in Mark 9, helps us to understand that:

When they came to the disciples, they saw a great crowd around them, and some scribes arguing with them. When the whole crowd saw him, they were immediately overcome with awe, and they ran forward to greet him. He asked them, “What are you arguing about with them?” Someone from the crowd answered him, “Teacher, I brought you my son; he has a spirit that makes him unable to speak; and whenever it seizes him, it dashes him down; and he foams and grinds his teeth and becomes rigid; and I asked your disciples to cast it out, but they could not do so.” He answered them, “You faithless generation, how much longer must I be among you? How much longer must I put up with you? Bring him to me.” And they brought the boy to him. When the spirit saw him, immediately it threw the boy into convulsions, and he fell on the ground and rolled about, foaming at the mouth. Jesus asked the father, “How long has this been happening to him?” And he said, “From childhood. It has often cast him into the fire and into the water, to destroy him; but if you are able to do anything, have pity on us and help us.” Jesus said to him, “If you are able! – All things can be done for the one who believes.” Immediately the father of the child cried out, “I believe; help my unbelief!” When Jesus saw that a crowd came running together, he rebuked the unclean spirit, saying to it, “You spirit that keep this boy from speaking and hearing, I command you, come out of him, and never enter him again!” After crying out and convulsing him terribly, it came out, and the boy was like a corpse, so that most of them said, “He is dead.” But Jesus took him by the hand and lifted him up, and he was able to stand. When he had entered the house, his disciples asked him privately, “Why could we not cast it out?” He said to them, “This kind can come out only through prayer.”

Mark 9:14–29

The words of this desperate father hint at where the real dichotomy lies in Christian living when it comes to faith. In verse 23, the father cries out to Jesus, “If you are able to do anything, have pity on us.” Jesus’ reply to the man is that all things can be done for the person who believes. At this stage, the man cries out to Jesus, “Lord, I believe; help my unbelief.” He doesn’t put “faith” and “doubt” as the opposites that are creating tension in his life. He puts “belief” and “unbelief” at opposite ends of the spectrum. It is as if he is saying, “I am believing as much as I can – I come as honestly and openly as I can; I am giving You both my belief in You and my unbelief in You, so do something with the belief I have and deal with the unbelief that I have.” That is a very different thing from saying that his doubts somehow stop God from moving or lessen God’s power. Perhaps if we come before God with honesty, vulnerability, and transparency, we offer Him a space in which to move and work. Perhaps He can do more with our authenticity than He can with our perceived “strength” of faith.

Like the father in this story and like me, many of us struggle with belief and doubt. We live in an age of deep scepticism and questioning in which we want reasons and explanations for everything. For many decades now, from perhaps as early as the beginning of the seventeenth century and the birth of the Enlightenment, reason and logic and rationality have been trying to push concepts such as “faith”, “trust”, and “truth” into the shadows. We have fallen into an intellectual elitism that suggests that if we cannot understand something, then we should not trust it. This increasing desire for “certainty” and “verifiable” answers is not at all wrong, but it can lead to a wrong place. It can lead to an over-defensiveness on the part of Christians and an over-dismissiveness on the part of non-Christians.

I wonder where we get the idea that Christians have to be certain about everything. Isn’t it acceptable to say, “I am not sure”? Does God demand of us that we have absolute certainty about everything? I think not. I think we are allowed to ask questions. We are allowed to be honest. We are allowed to be authentic. Over the years of my Christian faith, I have discovered that I have less faith than I thought. I once thought my faith was like a mountain and the challenges it faced were like mustard seeds. I now think I have faith like a mustard seed and that the challenges I face are like mountains. At the same time, I have been heartened by the reality that Jesus told His followers that if they had faith as small as a mustard seed they could tell a mountain to move (Matthew 17:20).

I think I now have less certainty but more faith. I no longer feel the need to answer all the questions people put to me; instead, I know that there are a few deeply important questions that I must be able to answer and that my faith shapes my convictions about these things – and this somehow enables me to let go of the constant need to have answers. Let me give you a few examples.

If I am asked how God made the world, I can give you some suggestions, but I don’t really know. Yet I am utterly convinced that He did.

If I am asked why God allows suffering, I’ll point out some general principles that I think help, but I can’t really...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Praise
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Foreword
• Acknowledgments
• 1. Lord, I believe; forgive my unbelief: The power of honest faith in a sceptical world
• 2. Anchored, not drowning: The truth of the Gospel in a changing world
• 3. Confident, not arrogant: The impact of hope in a despairing world
• 4. The Apostles’ Creed: Unbelievable faith in a sceptical world
• 5. Unfathomable: I believe in God, the Father Almighty…
• 6. Unbeatable: I believe in Jesus Christ, His only Son, our Lord…
• 7. Unstoppable: I believe in the Holy Spirit…
• 8. An unbelievable task: The call to change the world
• About the author