I Believe; Help My Unbelief


November 9, 2025

Father, I believe; help me with my unbelief.

Most honest thing anyone ever said to God. This father with a sick kid, desperate, saying yes and no in the same breath. That’s it. That’s the whole deal.

The story’s simple enough. God comes down, walks around, dies, comes back. Believe it and you’re saved. Done.

Except what’s “believe” mean? You can say it. Say it every Sunday. Live the other six days like you never said it at all. That doesn’t track. Then you crack open the Bible—all those rules stacked on top of rules, God angry then loving then angry again—and simple gets complicated real fast.

So you close the book. Go back to zero.

Zero’s where you land when you lose the plot. Empty. But not nothing. The Mayans had it right, drawing it like a shell, like a closed fist. One thing ending, another starting. Both at once.

We’re always looking for patterns. Signs in the chaos. Maybe that’s the point—the looking, not the finding. The universe runs like a pocket watch, all gears and springs, exact. Crazy thing is, it’s wild too. Ticking in time, outside time. Both.

Paley had this example I always liked. You’re walking through the woods, find a watch in the dirt. Look at those springs, those gears—too organized to be random. Someone made it. Had to. The universe is way more complex than any watch. So how’s it just here? There’s a watchmaker somewhere. Has to be.

Everything breaks down simple if you let it. Yes or no. Zero or one. Except maybe it doesn’t. Maybe belief and unbelief aren’t on the same line at all—not opposite ends of a scale where more of one means less of the other. Maybe they just exist together. Grey, not black and white.

Here we are with our alphabet and numbers, sticks and stones we’ve arranged into words, trying to talk about the thing that breathed the universe into being. Little presumptuous, right? Using our pocket-watch logic to explain the watchmaker.

But that father didn’t care about the logic. He just said both things out loud. I believe. Help my unbelief. Held them both in his hands at once.

The Mayans’ shell. Paley’s watch. The sick kid who got healed. All pointing at the same thing—nothing and everything in the same spot.

The story bends so far from believable it comes back around, touches it again. Circle meeting itself. Zero.

I believe. Help me with my unbelief.

That’s where you find it. Not in picking one or the other. Not in the grey becoming white. Just there—in admitting we’re trying to describe infinity with twenty-six letters and ten numbers.

In saying both things and meaning both things.

In the gap we can’t close.

7 responses to “I Believe; Help My Unbelief”

  1. I have never felt the need to say I Believe about anything that I was convinced existed. The very fact that the only way one can honor this kind of God is by testifying to believe in something that cannot be proven to exist- and no living man will ever see- and that just never sat right with me. But I am a firm believer in everyman’s right to choose so I say do whatever rings true to you.

    Liked by 2 people

    1. Thanks Violet always look forward to your point of view.

      Liked by 1 person

  2. Personally for me, when doubt sets in which seems to happen more than I would like to admit, I bring everything to God and kind of dump it at his feet , especially the moments that I find it hard to fully believe. Because I have never been good at pretending and in theory God, source, the universe ( whatever name you use) Knows our heart and feelings already. The beautiful part about this is God always shows up.

    Liked by 1 person

    1. Amen to that! thanks JAM

      Liked by 1 person

  3. I love this post, especially
    “in admitting we’re trying to describe infinity with twenty-six letters and ten numbers”
    And
    ” That father didn’t care about the logic. He just said both things out loud. I believe. Help my unbelief. Held them both in his hands at once.”
    And, best of all,
    “The story bends so far from believable, it comes back around, touches it again. Circle meeting itself. Zero.”
    This is a wonderful and thoughtful and thought-provoking piece. Thank you so much for posting.

    Liked by 1 person

    1. thanks so much Lisa, appreciate all the commentary and feedback.

      Liked by 1 person

  4. Parallel lines of belief and unbelief. I am reminded of Mark Helprin who writes in A Winters Tale that the past, present and future are all happening simultaneously. One line. And Bill Bryson in A Short History of Nearly Everything, who says that at the atomic level, for all their devoted attention to keep us alive and aware of life, atoms don’t care about us personally, they don’t know us as us; they don’t even know they are are there, keeping us alive. A parallel point of view. Insightful work again here.

    Like

Leave a comment