Help thou my unbelief (Mk. 9:24)

This story is full of tricky things! The father of the demon-possessed boy famously says “I do believe. Help my unbelief.” That’s a good translation: the first pisteuw is a verb, the second, the negation, is a noun. And it’s a wonderful declaration of the human condition: we don’t always want God, but we want to want God.

Again, though, I’ve run into difficulties because of my prior decision to translate pisteuw as trust rather than faith or belief. I still think it’s a good decision, it just isn’t the easiest to work with. English has no word for untrust: both mistrust and distrust are actively negative, unlike unbelief, which just indicates a lack.

But in any case, “help my unbelief” strikes me as intolerably awkward English. “Help my lack of trust” is slightly less odd, but still not good. I’m resorting to something like paraphrase here:

Jesus: “Everything is doable for the one who trusts.”

The man: “I have trust and I don’t have trust; help me.”

It’s recognisably English, but I’ve sacrificed the verb-noun contrast, and the object of the help as the unbelief rather than me. And yet it does highlight the profound internal deadlock between trusting and not trusting and the need for God to break that deadlock.

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