PASTOR’S COLUMN January 22, 2012

Dana Tierney is an atheist, but not the sort who feels proud of her unbelief. She once wrote in the New York Times Magazine, “Over the years I’ve come to feel I’m missing out. My friends and relatives who rely on God have an expansiveness of spirit. When they walk along a stream, they don’t just see water falling over rocks; the sight fills them with ecstasy. They see a realm of hope beyond this world. I just see a babbling brook. I don’t get the message.”

   Dana assumed that her atheism had stranded her 4-year-old son Luke in the same spiritually arid place, but she found out differently. Her husband went to Iraq for several months, and one evening she found her son watching the nightly news with his eyes closed and his fingers steepled. She asked him what he was doing, and he said, “I was saying a little prayer for Daddy.” She asked little Luke when he first began to believe in God. He said, “I don’t know. I’ve always known he exists.”

   Dana’s husband did return from Iraq, “but if something had happened to his father, Luke would have known Dad was in heaven, waiting for us. He doesn’t suffer from a void like the anguished father in Mark 9:23, 24: ‘Jesus said to him, if thou canst believe, all things are possible to him that believeth. And straightway the father of the child cried out, and said with tears, Lord I believe; help thou my unbelief.’

   “For Luke, all things are possible. At the end of his life, he will be reunited in heaven with his heroes and loved ones, Mom and Dad and George Washington, his grandparents and Buzz Lightyear. Luke’s prayer can stretch to infinity and beyond, but I am limited to one: help thou mine unbelief.”

   Dana said some things that reflected poorly on the church. She implied that the church was no help. But what if she has it wrong? What if the nature of Jesus’ church is to welcome, encourage, and help those who are trying to believe? After all, even Dana would have to admit that’s what Jesus did in Mark 9:23,24. -DJ