Help My Unbelief

Abby examines the role of belief in her life, especially as it relates to life after death. She suggests that in bringing her focus away from a literal interpretation of the Word, and by applying the Word to her inner life, she is better able to connect with a belief in an omnipotent God. This is the third essay in our series on doubt, the opening essay is available here. -Editor

Between reading Jennica’ s article and hearing a sermon about belief I have been thinking a lot about faith, doubt, and what it means to believe in God. How does my belief in God affect my life? How does it change it on a day to day basis? How do I change my life (habits and behaviors) because I believe in God?

I don’t have answers to these questions. I have had some thoughts over the past few weeks that were helpful, but still most of the time I am left wishing that I had more answers. I have some solid rocks that my faith, simple though it seems to me, is built on. One of those rocks is the same as Jennica’ s: marriage, explained by many teachings in the Writings of the New Church. Another is a belief in the life after death that settled in for me after my mom died. I still have questions about both of these, but I also feel calm and sure in the essentials of these beliefs.

And while both of those rather large rocks do affect my daily life and life choices in obvious ways, I still wonder about my faith. Being married to a minister can make me feel that I need to seem confident and sure in my understanding of the Word and the Writings, and like I have no questions about whether or not the atheists in the world are more on the right track than I am. But I have come to realize that it is more helpful to myself and the people I interact with in my husband’ s congregation if I am honest about the questions I have, and my wish to have a deeper and deeper faith. It seems like this could be a useful part of my process in building my foundation and reaching the kind of confidence that Jennica described.

The sermon that I mentioned earlier helped along my desire for a deeper faith through a passage from Apocalypse Explained 815:5 which excerpts these verses from Mark:

Jesus said to the disciples, when they were unable to heal a certain man's son who had a dumb spirit; to whom Jesus said, If thou canst believe, all things are possible to him that believeth; the father of the boy crying out with tears, said, Lord, I believe, help thou mine unbelief; and he was healed (9:17, 23, 24).

The passage then explains the meaning of these verses:

There were three reasons why faith in the Lord healed these; first, because they acknowledged His Divine omnipotence, and that He was God; secondly, because faith is acknowledgment, and from acknowledgment intuition; and all intuition from acknowledgment makes another to be present....

For me the most significant part of the passage is this last reason:

The third reason was, that all the diseases healed by the Lord represented and thus signified the spiritual diseases that correspond to these natural diseases; and spiritual diseases can be healed only by the Lord, and in fact by looking to His Divine omnipotence and by repentance of life. This is why He sometimes said, ‘ Thy sins are forgiven thee; go and sin no more.’ This faith also was represented and signified by their miraculous faith; but the faith by which spiritual diseases are healed by the Lord can be given only through truths from the Word and a life according to them; the truths themselves and the life itself according to them make the quality of the faith.

I have struggled with the argument I have heard from several people that, based on stories in the Bible such as this, if I were deathly ill today the Lord would miraculously heal me if only my faith was strong enough. Implying that if I die, I just must not believe hard enough.

This passage helped me in a couple of ways. I want to believe implicitly in an omnipotent God. A God who could heal any physical ailment we might have while on earth. But I can’t reconcile my understanding of how the natural world works with the idea that if I just had a strong enough faith I would be healed. This has been a holdup for me in my developing faith, especially when it came to my mom’ s failing health, cancer, and death, despite her firm belief. But this passage does reconcile these things, and confirms again for me my rock that there is a life after death, and this is where we can be healed from all our ailments.

This passage is one that helps to build my foundation of a belief in the life after death. I can and do believe in an omnipotent God who could interfere on the physical level, but chooses not to because it would go against His order. And I can and do believe in an omnipotent God who provides miraculous healing on the spiritual level. It connects with me on a deep level that, by going to His truths from the Word and making an effort to live accordingly, my spiritual diseases can be healed by the Lord. I can latch on to that, understand it, and believe it. I can see the connection to the spiritual world, and the eternal work that we will do there to improve ourselves and believe more completely in the Lord.

So while I still have my doubts, and a plethora of questions, this passage is an example of why I am choosing to continue in an effort to deepen my faith through the Writings. One relatively short passage can shift a frustrating question into an understanding that assures me that the Lord knows what He is doing.

Abigail Smith

Abby has recently moved to Westville, South Africa with her husband Malcolm. She has a nearly 9 month old baby girl that she likes an awful lot and hangs out with most of the time, and who keeps Abby busy with all of her attempts to eat bugs.

Comments

[Lawson]

Thanks for your essay, Abby. My mom also suffered a lot from disease for a lot of years. Once a NC minister even told her that it was her fault that she had such pain, because diseases correspond to evils. He did not seem to allow for the possibility that it was hereditary evil, rather than her own actual evil, that had allowed the disease to take hold. But now that she is in the spiritual world, it is so nice to think of her being free of pain and young again, or at least growing younger.

Another passage that relates to the absence of plainly miraculous healings at this day is SE min. 4724:

WHY MIRACLES TOOK PLACE IN THE TIME OF THE APOSTLES, IN ORDER THAT THE CHURCH MIGHT BE ESTABLISHED.
I spoke with angels concerning the miracles of the time of the apostles, also that they spoke with other tongues, and that they manifestly perceived the influx of the spirit. [I said] that this was the case, for the reason that it was entirely unknown everywhere that the Lord who saved souls [anima] had come into the world; and that it would never be received by anyone without miracles, and neither would it be so received by any such as worship idols, or men after death; in which case idolatry would have been the worship. For these reasons, miracles took place; but, now, when doctrine is received, they no longer occur. The inrooting of truth and good among the gentiles, is by external evidences; but, with Christians, who are in the knowledge of internal things, the case is otherwise.

In other words, although the Lord cares a lot whenever someone hurts physically or psychologically, and would very much like to ease the pain, He always keeps His eye on our eternal salvation (= healing) and our eternal freedom from pain as the priority, and obviously it's a wonderful thing that He does.

[Karin Childs]

This is a lovely essay, Abby. I like how you seem to be finding answers that help you, but also to be finding peace with the fact that you still have questions. If true wisdom is, as Swedenborg writes, the acknowledgment that everything we know is just a drop in the ocean compared to all there is to know, it seems to me a good idea to become peaceful about always having more questions! As far as physical diseases go, I do believe that there is a connection between spiritual healing and natural healing, but I also believe that healing involves so many levels, and so for some that healing will involve physical recovery and for some it's in providence that the the next step in healing is to go to the spiritual world. Therefore, it's not a failure if one is unable to physical recover from a disease. Every path is carefully guided and cared for by the Lord.