Jesus and Belief or Gnash Your Teeth No More

Can Jesus (or anything or any one) give you belief? My saintly mother says, "yes" and provides the follow story from the gospel of Luke in support. (I have used the old King James version).

Chapter 9 - The Gospel According To Luke

11And they asked him, saying, Why say the scribes that Elias must first come?

12And he answered and told them, Elias verily cometh first, and restoreth all things; and how it is written of the Son of man, that he must suffer many things, and be set at nought.

13But I say unto you, That Elias is indeed come, and they have done unto him whatsoever they listed, as it is written of him.

14And when he came to his disciples, he saw a great multitude about them, and the scribes questioning with them.

15And straightway all the people, when they beheld him, were greatly amazed, and running to him saluted him.

16And he asked the scribes, What question ye with them?

17And one of the multitude answered and said, Master, I have brought unto thee my son, which hath a dumb spirit;

18And wheresoever he taketh him, he teareth him: and he foameth, and gnasheth with his teeth, and pineth away: and I spake to thy disciples that they should cast him out; and they could not.

19He answereth him, and saith, O faithless generation, how long shall I be with you? how long shall I suffer you? bring him unto me.

20And they brought him unto him: and when he saw him, straightway the spirit tare him; and he fell on the ground, and wallowed foaming.

21And he asked his father, How long is it ago since this came unto him? And he said, Of a child.

22And ofttimes it hath cast him into the fire, and into the waters, to destroy him: but if thou canst do any thing, have compassion on us, and help us.

23Jesus said unto him, If thou canst believe, all things are possible to him that believeth.

24And straightway the father of the child cried out, and said with tears, Lord, I believe; help thou mine unbelief.

25When Jesus saw that the people came running together, he rebuked the foul spirit, saying unto him, Thou dumb and deaf spirit, I charge thee, come out of him, and enter no more into him.

26And the spirit cried, and rent him sore, and came out of him: and he was as one dead; insomuch that many said, He is dead.

27But Jesus took him by the hand, and lifted him up; and he arose.

28And when he was come into the house, his disciples asked him privately, Why could not we cast him out?

29And he said unto them, This kind can come forth by nothing, but by prayer and fasting.

Now, first things first: we have the nasty scribes involved here, and, more importantly, Jesus didn't really save anyone or raise any one from the dead. Miracles are silliness. They are pagan. They are blasphemy and an obstruction to what Jesus was all about. (More on that later.) But these stories are like lovely works of art that are obscured by years of dirt and soot. The pagan miracles are the obstruction.

The question of belief is all about this: how can we believe in God when its very shape is impossible to see clearly - indeed! hard to see at all -- and, moreover, our very act of contemplation changes the God shape? That is the difficult bit.

Okay - back to the story. So, in outline, Jesus is off talking about something (interestingly, a doctrinal dispute with the scribes/pharisees where Jesus says, "If doctrine says something must happen first, then I say it has already happend!"), comes back and finds the evil scribes, some of his disciples, and a crowd disputing about something. Jesus appears -- good old Jesus! -- to challenge the scribes, but soon the father with the afflicted son puts himself forward. Can you save my son, he asks? Jesus says, where is belief? The man says, can you give me some? Jesus gets peeved and then cures the afflicted son. Finally, he says to the disciples (who had tried to cure this son and, likely, had been in a doctrinal dispute with the scribes about the proper way to do this) just prayer and fasting boys, which is a bit odd, as no prayer or fasting appears to have been involved in the cure that Jesus himself performed. Narrative consistency goes out the window where the pagan miracles are involved. (Can't you see the later writers adding this on to the basic texts saying to themselves, and maybe each other, "well, dude, he was the son of God - like he could do anything!")

Now, on the textual point that this story is put forward for, that is, Jesus can give you faith, he doesn't actually do that, he doesn't give anyone faith. This is not a story about a man who needed faith to do a miracle, asked Jesus for faith, was given faith, and then did the miracle himself. No, the man asks for faith, which provokes Jesus to lose his temper, and then, in a fit of anger, Jesus cures the son himself. (A few minutes later, having regained his composure, he says to the disciples, "not to worry boys")

And why did Jesus do this? Well, leaving aside the pagan bits about miracles, it is very clear that you can not give belief or faith to anyone. You must discover it yourself, create it yourself. No doubt it was this request that made Jesus lose his temper. (Well, Jesus lost his temper earlier in the story but, really, it is all a bit jumbled.)

So the point is this: the father with the afflicted son is essentially saying to Jesus, as he was saying to the disciples and the scribes minutes earlier, "I will do the ritual if it will give me what I want. I believe in the ritual and if the ritual is that I must believe, then make me believe, I will submit to that part of the ritual." In response Jesus just turns away. True contemplation of the God shape is not, and cannot be, a matter of ritual. That is, in my view, the true import of this particular biblical story.

But the real theme here (as it is everywhere in the four gospels) is the narrative character of Jesus battling with the narrator. The narrator continually forces the miracle paganism and other mumbo-jumbo onto the narrative. Jesus, the real Jesus, must duck and dodge all the blasphemy, but he generally does. Good old Jesus.