“I don’t believe in God,” writes Julian Barnes, “but I miss him.” Unbelief is a yearning. It leads you away from believing in certain things, but not in all things. It leads you to believe in many other ways and in many other things that are to it more believable than God.
“I don’t believe in love, but I miss it,” is the self-confession of many in the heartache of another broken and lost, deep and meaningful relationship. Though they vow, “Never again”, they long for love more than ever before. So they will search for, or create, or force new ways to be loved. With a mixture of faith and doubt they knock, hoping to be invited in, and if not, to invite themselves in.
Saul of Tarsus didn’t believe in Jesus, but he had a passionate, violent yearning for God's love. Restlessly, tirelessly he pursued it and found it exactly where he wasn’t looking, where he was convinced it wasn't, where he had sought to in (un)belief destroy it. "And he said, 'Who are you, Lord?' And he said, 'I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting.' " (Acts 9:5)
“I believe; help my unbelief!” (Mark 9:24). Jesus meets and helps me when and where I barely or partly believe, not when and where I fully and completely believe. Because belief or faith is not a work that earns and deserves anything from God. It is that which knows in some small, child-like way that I can’t and don’t have to earn this; I can’t and don’t have to be deserving of this; I can’t and don’t have to go out and get this on my own; here it is and it is mine. Perhaps a child believes suddenly that they are all alone. Whatever the cause, that belief just as suddenly effortlessly rises up from the heart and races to call out, “Mom? Dad?”
Unbelief and belief wrestle with each other in my heart and my mind, and that's ok. Sometimes I can’t sleep and I wrestle with my thoughts, pinning one only to be lifted by another. It disturbs my wife’s sleep. And I wonder, would she sleep better with my wrestlings and turnings or with my complete absence?
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