Lord, have pity on my son, who is a lunatic and suffers severely;
often he falls into fire, and often into water.
Sin takes away our ability to think clearly and act rationally. It darkens our minds (see Romans 1:21) in such a way that we can fall into the fire of our passions again and again without understanding why we are getting burned. We can find our spirits submerged beneath the waters of worldly concern without realizing why it is so hard for us to breath, without realizing what is triggering our panicked survival instincts.
I brought him to your disciples, but they could not cure him.
The disciples tried to help, but had insufficient faith. One approach that wouldn't work would be to merely instruct the boy, 'This is fire. It hurts', or 'This is water, it can drown you if you aren't careful'. This is a rationalistic and legalistic perspective, but it was not enough for the boy. He already had a good basis to realize these things but could not realize them because of the condition of his darkened mind. He was trying the same things again and again but expecting different results, which is still a common definition of insanity today.
“O faithless and perverse generation, how long will I be with you?
How long will I endure you?
Bring the boy here to me.”
Our own souls are like this man's son. They don't immediately intuit the causal link between our wrong thinking, our sinful action, and the negative results we experience. We are many times more likely to blame our upbringing, or circumstances, of other factors beyond our control when we find ourselves getting hurt. And fair enough, we do suffer in this world even though we ourselves may be blameless. Yet we so prefer to think of ourselves as without fault that fail to recognize those times when we are the ones hurting ourselves.
Jesus rebuked him and the demon came out of him,
and from that hour the boy was cured.
It's hard for us to accept, but a careful analysis of the problem will not reveal the solution. There is a short circuit in our mental hardware that prevents us from seeing things objectively. We may take steps like building fences around areas of danger. But the part of us that desires those dangers is good at climbing fences and surmounting obstacles, and is highly motivated to do so. In order to really be safe from these things we need Jesus to treat the root cause in us, so that we can reevaluate our relationship to them with the renewed mind that he gives us.
Why could we not drive it out?”
He said to them, “Because of your little faith.
Faith will allow us to see the deceptions of the world as they are. It will allow us to recognize the false promises of our passions and the dangers of being submerged in worldly thinking. It will do this by giving us a new center from which to orient ourselves. It will be for us a new compass or north star allowing us to find our way.
What is this new central reality that underlies every consideration of the renewed mind of faith? It is just what Moses said to the people:
Hear, O Israel! The LORD is our God, the LORD alone!
Therefore, you shall love the LORD, your God,
with all your heart,
and with all your soul,
and with all your strength.
The command of God through Moses to Israel was a command to love. And our response is only possibly as a response of faith to the fact that he loved us first.
This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins (see First John 4:10).
The LORD has done all that is necessary for us to be free, to thrive, to have lives marked by joy and peace. He has given us cities that we did not build, houses full of spiritual goods that we did not garner nor earn, cisterns of living water that we did not dig, vineyards of sacred wine that we did not plant. Because of this generosity on the part of God we are called to love him in return and to be on guard, lest his blessings make us complacent, that we "take care not to forget the LORD". He brought us out of the place of slavery. But only by remembering him can we remain free.
Praised be the LORD, I exclaim!
And I am safe from my enemies.
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