Jesus said the size of our faith ISN'T the problem

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Mark 11:19-25

In a prayer meeting this morning, I read Mark 11:19-25, which include Jesus saying, "if anyone says to this mountain, 'Go, throw yourself into the sea,' and does not doubt in their heart but believes that what they say will happen, it will be done for them."

Afterward, a friend texted me saying, "I've always thought about that... (in my simple-minded way) that most people have faith the size of an atom so faith the size of a mustard seed is BIG."

The following is my response to his comment:

I completely understand where you're coming from. Unfortunately, its an interpretation perpetuated in the Western Church that really doesn't withstand exegetical rigor.

Actually, in Mark 11:22-25, Jesus doesn't say anything about a mustard seed. The only qualification of "believe" (which is the same word as faith in the Greek) is not doubting. He says nothing about the size of the faith. Now, you said "in my simple-minded way," but in fact we come to the conclusion you stated not because we're simple minded but because we're trying to reconcile seeming inconsistencies without all the relevant information, which is actually a very complex and difficult mental process to resolve.

Mark only uses mustard seeds in Mark 4:30-32, and there he makes the point that it is the smallest seed known. If mustard seeds where used as a synonym for the smallest thing imaginable (because it is the smallest thing in its category) in the same way we commonly use atoms to indicate, then it makes no sense to understand Jesus as saying the disciples' faith was smaller than than that. And actually, rabbinic writings from the time also use the idiom of a mustard seed that way. So it doesn't seem to be an illustration Jesus came up with. It was a common expression for indicating the smallest thing imaginable. Jesus would have used it that way, and the original readers of the Gospels would have understood it that way.

This means the original readers would have read Mark 11:22-25 exactly as it reads, not only because Mark doesn't reference the size of the faith but because when Matthew and Luke do, it would have indicated that even the smallest amount of faith would move a mountain (moving a mountain was also an idiom used in rabbinic writing, and it indicates something impossible to do).

In reality, our problem is that our Western, rationalistic worldview simply does not allow for a world in which simply believing and not doubting would actually affect a physical change in the world around us. So, when Jesus says, in stark terms, "whatever you ask for in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours," we simply disbelieve his words. We don't, of course, say that Jesus was wrong or that he was lying. Rather, we say that the plain meaning is not that actual meaning, but that is not justified by either the context or by full canon of Scripture.

The problem is not that the words in Mark 11 don't mean what the purport to say. This is a case where the plain reading is the best one. But the implication of that is that unanswered prayers are the result of our inability to believe and not doubt. Specifically, in my case, it is with my inability to believe and not doubt. Jesus said believing and not doubting is all that is needed, and we also see him conveying the same truth in Matthew 17:19-21, Luke 17:5-6, and John 14:12-14.

I know this is a hard pill for us to swallow, but that is what the text says.

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