What Mark 9 Means to Me
The Bible study is over; it went well, even to the quantitative tastes of my dear leading friend. This time, we had each person share her favorite passage, character or story from the Bible. And, though I usually cringe at the phrase "what does it mean to YOU?", that was to be our primary focus. It is a well-meaning and usually harmless question, but I dislike the possibility that such an inquiry would rule out the possibility of its meaning the same thing to everyone. It would be quite shocking if it DID in our gray season of post-modernity.Choosing my favorite was impossible. I don't do favorites very well in general, as I find pleasure in many things based upon the appropriate situation in which to enjoy them. You can imagine the ordeal it must be to fill out "Secret Santa" surveys.
I opted for a passage which only recently gave me greater than general comfort, encouragement and guidance. Mark 9:14-29 tells the story of the father whose son is possessed by a demon. He is at his wits' end and has undoubtedly tried hundreds of things to heal his dear child before he hears of Jesus. I can hear the near-insane desperation in his voice as he cries, "I do believe; help me overcome my unbelief!"
Huh. So this guy, like all of us, I conjecture, who are honest with ourselves and God, can muster a grain of belief alongside a plethora of doubts. He can believe just enough to ask Jesus to free him from the weight of the doubts--to throw himself at the mercy of this man he's never seen before, just because he might be able to heal his little boy.
Jesus does what he asks, driving the spirit out. The boy collapses and looks dead. Imagine what the father must feel: I trusted this man, gave my son into his hands, and look what he has done to him! But after a few painful seconds, Jesus reaches down and raises the boy, freed from the spirit, to return him to his father. "This kind can come out only by prayer," he says to his wondering disciples.
I have learned to pray the prayer of this father, and this story gives me a spark of understanding into what might happen when I bring my dearest hopes and desires--my "children"--to Jesus. When I have a hard time believing in him, it is to him that I must turn for help. Indeed, the Spirit intercedes when I don't know what to pray. Though the process is not pretty and they might even appear to die, God will be faithful to heal my hopes and desires and restore them to what he originally created them to be.
I was afraid I might not be able to articulate these ideas at our gathering, but the Lord helped my unbelief. I enjoyed discussing a variety of passages and ideas with the girls. There seemed to be a common theme to it all: trust the Lord. Considering the theme of the Scripture itself, I would be very surprised if that theme did not continue for the duration of our gatherings.
posted by Lynn @ 6:12 AM
2 Comments:
Since no one posted on this one--you probably sent them running in the opposite direction with the length of post (tee hee)--I must comment. And, since you did direct me to this one in particular, I'll comment for that reason as well.
Reader-response criticism has that "interpretive community" to keep some of the craziness in check, yes? (Please tell me if I'm misrepresenting this stuff, which is hazy at best to my memory.) Wasn't that something Fish came to conclude after some time? (I'm thinking back to Dr. Young's class, of course.) So, the church, being the interpretive community in this case, will do something to rein in some of the more radical subjectivity that goes into certain individual readings of these texts.
Ever remember coming across the Medieval ways of reading scripture? There were four levels of meaning to the scripture in the Middle Ages, as I understand it: the literal, the typological (looking for OT "types" in NT narratives or NT foreshadowings in OT narratives and texts), the moral (how does this apply to the reader here and now?), and the anagogical, which deals with the last things.
You have simply given, as I see it, a valid moral reading of the story.
I for one have always liked that statement: "I believe; help thou mine unbelief." No one who does believe and yet maintains he or she has never doubted is a liar, and the truth is not in him or her. : )
I keep coming back to this one, don't I? :)
I read this last night, and thought immediately of this post, the reasons for which will appear readily enough:
"Like so many American denominations (the Mormons included) the Southern Baptists affirm the priesthood of all believers, leaving to the preachers the prime function of exhortation." [Though some leave more than others, of course. But that's true in all sects.] "Soul competency is remarkably like erotic competency (if I may be allowed that splendidly outrageous term), since there is no room for a third when the Baptist is alone with Jesus. Even as each of us must define eros for himself, so the Baptist must define his own soul competency. As John Doe subtly remarks, 'Everyone is competent to understand soul competency as she or he sees fit.' His further ruminations constitute the most brilliant and revelatory exegesis of Southern Baptist soul competency that I have been able to find:
'I only know to think of soul competency in practical terms. To me it means the individual Christian is unassailabe in her interpretation of Scripture and in her own understanding of God's will for her life. It means that when someone says, "This is what the Bible means to me," I cannot tell her she is wrong. I can merely say that her understanding is meaningless for me. Only the preacher's understanding of Scripture is expected to be generally meaningful for the whole community, and it is up to each individual to decide whether the preacher's words are useful or not. Soul competency means to me that anything I understand to bring me closer to God is true and cannot be taken away from me, because my life is unique and there is a way of understanding Scripture that is unique to me. ...'"
--from The American Religion by Harold Bloom
If that isn't consonant with this post, I don't know what is. The idea of "soul competency," that the soul is sufficient in and of itself to commune with God apart from mediation (e.g., Catholic dogma, etc.) is apparently a uniquely Baptist term for it, but the seeds of that idea are certainly within Protestantism -- and in American ideas of democracy -- more generally.
I don't know what all this means (hehe), but it's nice to take that step back from the workings of our minds as they approach spiritual matters, something you've done well in this post.
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