controversy

Jesus used controversy to engage the religious elite. It’s odd that some of us who aspire to follow Jesus sometimes (often?) fall into the same sort of closed-system thought that afflicted the Pharisees. Perhaps paradoxically, following Jesus involves an ongoing openness to changing ones own current opinions about what it means to follow Jesus!

overcoming unfaith

In the 9th chapter of Mark’s Gospel, a helpless father desperately implores Jesus to rescue his son. He stands uneasily yet candidly at the crossroads of belief and unbelief. Jesus meets him there.

This kind of faith is not an unquestioning allegiance to ideology. It isn’t reflected in bumper-sticker quips like, “God said it, I believe it, that settles it.”

The simple, soulful confession of this kind of faith is, “Lord, I believe, help thou my unbelief.” This kind of faith exhibits the virtue of skepticism.

In the field of philosophy there are (at least…) two types of skepticism: Academic and Pyrrhonian. Academic skepticism asserts the impossibility of truly knowing anything. Its fatal flaw is its own logic: i.e., How can we truly know that it is impossible to truly know anything?

But Pyrrhonian skepticism accommodates an open-minded pursuit of truth. It acknowledges the severe difficulty of apprehending ultimate knowledge while allowing the possibility of knowing truly.

“Christian faith in God is not a naïve basic truth. It is unfaith that has been overcome” Jurgen Moltmann


Copyright Scott Burnett 2006