Help me not to doubt

It's been a hard couple of days. I am working this weekend and was inundated with duties and responsibilities yesterday, and could not write about what I wanted to write about yesterday. After reading today's sections, I decided to go back and write about yesterday's. Most of the topics raised in today's reading, I have discussed with the reading of Matthew.

In yesterday's reading, Mark 9:17-24, there is a man who asks Jesus to remove a stubborn demon from his child. He asked, if it is possible, please do it. Jesus' response was that anything is possible if a person believes. The father then replied to Jesus, "I do believe, but help me not to doubt."

I think it is this struggle which tends to paralyze me. I try to continually renew my faith in Jesus, God, and the entire Christian discipline, but I suffer doubts, which lead me astray. In the assessment of deconstructionist thought to the Bible, I wonder how much of it is not divinely inspired, if any, and if so, how much of its relevancy can be re-interpreted based on cultural evolution. And depending on the degree of re-interpretation, how far away from the original, divinely inspired intent, are we progressing? Does Christian doctrine lose relevancy if the cultural norms to which verbiage was applied at the time no longer exist? Is epilepsy still a "demon" or is epilepsy now "epilepsy" and we have lost power over it?

When the intellectual pursuits of life crowd in, doubts crowd in. It's not that I don't believe. I do believe. But I find that I must seek to renew my faith, even in the setting of not losing my belief. Its the process of doubt that causes my faith to lose vibrancy. And so, I often ask God the same thing. I believe, but help me not to doubt. Help my faith to grow.

I have no deconstructionist or legalist viewpoint on this section. This section spoke to me personally, in the setting of the interplay between belief and doubt, and asking God for help with doubt. It's a position I find myself in most minutes of the day, constantly asking for help not to doubt.