A man in the crowd answered, “Teacher, I brought you my son, who is possessed by a spirit that has robbed him of speech. Whenever it seizes him, it throws him to the ground. He foams at the mouth, gnashes his teeth and becomes rigid. I asked your disciples to drive out the spirit, but they could not.”
“You unbelieving generation,” Jesus replied, “how long shall I stay with you? How long shall I put up with you? Bring the boy to me.”
So they brought him. When the spirit saw Jesus, it immediately threw the boy into a convulsion. He fell to the ground and rolled around, foaming at the mouth.
Jesus asked the boy’s father, “How long has he been like this?”
“From childhood,” he answered. “It has often thrown him into fire or water to kill him. But if you can do anything, take pity on us and help us.”
“‘If you can’?” said Jesus. “Everything is possible for one who believes.”
Immediately the boy’s father exclaimed, “I do believe; help me overcome my unbelief!”
Mark 9:17-24 (TNIV)
People love a good conspiracy theory.
Whether it’s contained in the latest Hollywood blockbuster, bestselling novel, or being propagated by talking heads in the mainstream media taking decidedly partisan decisions – we devour stories of intrigue and collusion with an insatiable appetite. It seems that people will believe anything they are fed if it lines up with a preconceived worldview that they have. In the past month we have (for all reasonable people) laid to rest one such theory and opened up another.
On April 27 United States President Barack Obama finally laid to rest the ridiculous speculation that he wasn’t born in the USA by publishing the long form birth certificate from the hospital in Hawaii where he was born. It was ridiculous for people to believe that somehow a foreign national (and illegal alien) had somehow rose to power against the constitution of the country that had elected him to office. But there was a whole identifiable demographic out there called “Birthers” who were convinced that conspiracy was afoot.
Then less than a week after we put that conspiracy to bed the news was leaked (before the President’s official announcement) that a US Strike team had killed Osama Bin Laden in Pakistan. Conspiracy theorists didn’t even wait for the President’s press conference before calling shenanigans on the whole affair and the decision to not publish photos of the body have only served to fuel the fire (notwithstanding the fact the groups that would have the most to gain by keeping the spectre of Bin Laden alive have also confirmed his death).
Whether it’s alien presidents, dead terrorists, UFO cover-ups, Men on the moon, the Kennedy assassination or something as mundane as vote rigging on your favourite reality TV show we are always looking for conspiracy in the shadows. For some reason we have a hard time believing things that are plain and truthful.
At the same time we are a people who desperately want to believe in something. We build shrines to a dead princess whom we never knew when she was tragically killed in a car accident in 1997 – despite the fact that she was divorced out of the royal family and had been pursuing her own illicit affair with a man who wasn’t her husband when she was killed.
We rally around charismatic leaders like they were the a new incarnation of the messiah - putting all our faith in their panache and sparkle to bring us out of the mire of life among fallen humanity and to lead us into a golden age.
We cheer and weep over professional sports teams thinking that our common affinity for a club or a franchise will help us overcome our differences and lead us into a new type of community where the hazards and difficulties of normal life no longer apply.
And we diligently put aside money and resources for a retirement that one day we hope to enjoy – looking forward to our “golden years” when all of our hard work will give way to a prolonged season of freedom and bliss. We are a people who want to – yea, need to believe in something. We need to hope for something. Yet for some reason we find believing the truth so very, very hard.
Unfortunately, this isn’t a product of our 21st century sensibilities. This is not one of those issues that we can lay at the feet of a post-enlightenment, post-Christian, post-modern society – this is a problem that goes back all the way to the beginning, when a serpent in the garden was peddling conspiracy theories to Eve – asking her to believe that the truth was somehow obfuscated by paranoia in the Divine. Eve bought into the lie and bit into the fruit, and ever since that day believing the truth has not been something that humanity has excelled at.
That’s why for so many, the resurrection becomes just one more conspiracy amongst many; one more lie for the gullible to buy into; one more attempt by the powers-that-be to pull the wool over the eyes of the masses and keep us from seeing the stark cold reality of our hopeless existence.
The story, quite frankly, is unbelievable yet for some unexplainable reason the world still wants to believe.
This Sunday we begin with the prayer of a world that desperately needs to overcome our distrust of God.
“I do believe; help me overcome my unbelief!”
See you on Sunday,
Chris
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