Dave Brisbin 1.26.25
The story of Jesus walking on water has become shorthand for divine power. We naturally focus on the literal, but all Jesus’ miracles have spiritual meaning, and since most of us will live full lives never walking on water, the spiritual meaning is more relevant. Especially when Peter asks Jesus to bring him out on the water, and we can suddenly see ourselves as participants in miracle making.
But Peter gets out a few steps, sees the waves, and starts sinking. Jesus puts him back in the boat saying, you of little faith, why did you doubt? How many times have Jesus’ words been aimed at us when we’ve expressed the least bit of existential uncertainty? But is doubt as uncertainty really what Jesus is rebuking? The word translated as doubt can mean twice or again, so we can understand it as second guessing ourselves, wavering in resolve as we ruminate.
The boat is our little island of rational thought floating on a chaotic sea of unconscious mystery. We take a breathlessly non-rational step out of the boat, a leap of faith, then immediately start thinking rationally again, fearing again. It’s our human cycle of surrender and refortification to embedded thought that limits our ability to follow Jesus to truth that liberates.
We don’t have little faith when we stop thinking we mentally believe. We have little faith when we start thinking again and stop acting. Faith is not thought. It’s acting as if what we say we believe is true enough to carry us on the surface tension of uncertainty. The nonrational ability to act in the presence of doubt, step out of the boat of all our very good reasons why not.
Little faith is not much doubt. It’s the need for much certainty. Keeping the faith is not steely-eyed adherence to mental concept. It’s the embrace of uncertainty, accepting we will never have enough information to step out of our boats. We just do. Over and over. Until trust replaces certainty.
A faith community and recovery ministry, theeffect is a community of imperfect people working together to find the physical and emotional recovery and spiritual transformation that is theeffect of God’s love by unlearning limiting perceptions, beliefs, and compulsions, and engaging a first century Jesus in a non-religious and transforming way.
