Trust the science! Suspend disbelief.  Stop asking hard questions.  Dismiss critical thinking.  Believe what non-scientists tell you is “The Science.”  Just do what the unscientific tell you “The Science” is telling you to do.  Our modern compliance mantra is a study in paradox.  The word ‘science’ is Latin for ‘knowledge,’ but we’ve all been taught that science is more verb than noun. A pursuit, more than a thing.  A process of discovery more than settled knowledge.

We know the scientific method.  Observe, hypothesize, test, theorize.   Only when a theory is unassailable does it become scientific law.  The bar is high.  And at any time, the scientific method may unravel the science we are supposed to trust.  Furthermore, to view ‘The Science’ as a unified knowledge of everything is the pinnacle of hubris.  If someone says, “trust the science” a good question might be, “which science?”  “Whose science?”  Just who is to speak authoritatively on behalf of science?  To command this new faith?

‘Science’ is the science of well-organized skepticism, of never-ending evidentialism.  Hardly the proper object of anything we might call ‘faith.’  For faith is not a quality or quantity of belief resident in the believer.  It is not sincerity.  It is not ardent zeal.  It is not an intellectual assent.  It is neither blind nor unqualified.  No, the reality and depth of faith does not reside in our natural capacity for belief, but in the faithworthiness of faith’s object, revealed and demonstrated to be ‘faithable.’

To command faith is to commend the object of that faith. And faith must go beyond mere evidentialism.  As Jesus noted, it is a “wicked and perverse generation that always demands a sign.”  Faith is a divine gift, ordinarily given through the means of divine revelation.  And that revelation reveals the proper object of our faith.  

In Mark 4 and 5 we encounter four remarkable miracle stories.  Nature is stilled.  A legion of demons cowed.  Incurable disease cured.  And death overturned by resurrection.  Miracles, impossible for any mere healer, charlatan, or magician to conjure.  And the hanging question in each is not, “how did he do it?” but “where is your faith?” 

The last two of these stories, the healing of a woman with an incurable, chronic hemorrhage and raising Jairus’ daughter from the dead, are intertwined and juxtaposed.  Their relationship is no mere literary device.  Their twelve-year timeline is a clue that we are to compare and contrast them.  To wrestle with the many challenges to faith they present.  And to learn that faith is not in methods, merit or overcoming misgivings, but must rest wholly upon the person and works of the Lord Jesus Christ.  When a delegation of Jairus’ friends arrives saying, “your daughter is dead. Why trouble the Teacher any further?” Jesus ignores the report and commands Jairus, and us, “Do not fear, only believe.” 

What are you afraid of?  What waves threaten to capsize your life?  What ravaging demons refuse to leave?  What chronic pain has exhausted all your resources?  What comfortless grief has gripped your heart?  No method, no merit, no change in circumstances, no mere optimism that ‘things will be ok’ will move these mountains.   But there is one who rebukes winds and demons, who stops the bleeding and wakes the dead.  He is the object of our stories.  He is the only object of our faith.  “Do not fear, only believe” is not just for Jairus, but for you as well.

Join us this week as we examine Mark 5:21-43 and consider a faith that can save.  We meet Sundays at 10:30 am on the square in Pottsville, Arkansas right next to historic Potts’ Inn for worship.  Get directions here or contact us for more info.  Or join our livestream on YouTube.