The Asterisks of Faith

I was embarrassingly old when I finally realized how asterisks work. I was probably even older when I learned they’re called “asterisks,” not “that star on the keyboard.” I’m certain some well-meaning teacher taught me about that cute little mark, but for whatever reason, I missed the lesson. You know when it finally all came together? With prescription drug ads.

Sometime during my high school years, advertising laws changed so drug companies were required to list all the possible side effects of their prescription drugs as well as promote the desired result of taking their drugs. TV commercials depicted pleasant scenes, like a woman running in a field with her dog, clearly able to enjoy the blue sky above and flowers below because of her helpful prescription for allergies. Then, as the happy duo took a seat on a rock at the edge of a hillside, the woman scratched behind the dog’s ears while a kindly voice overlay said to contact a doctor if a rash-headache-earache-toe ache-blurry-vision or hives-nausea-ulcers-amnesia-hallucination-spontaneous-combustion developed.

Okay, I’m being a little extreme, but the lists can be simultaneously terrifying and hilarious.

This very same law extended to print. This is where my asterisk ignorance finally lifted. “Ah-ha!” I said. There it was, that cute little star from the keyboard, placed neatly beside the desired intent of the prescription. My eyes then traveled down to where it showed up again, now preceding the long and unwelcome list of possible negative side effects. Oh, I realized, the asterisk is all the stuff we don’t want to talk about. The stuff we would rather leave in small print at the bottom of the page. The stuff we really hope never happens, but sometimes it does.

So today we’re going to talk about one more asterisk—the one we never put in print but at times exists in our minds: God is good.*

Ouch. It was hard to even type that.

My dear brothers and sisters, sometimes, in our humanity, “God is good” doesn’t end with just a period.

One of the deepest and most transformative times in our faith journey is when we’re forced to reflect on whether God is good without exception. Walking with God for any length of time, we come to this place—maybe many times in different seasons of life—and have to wrestle with whether to put an asterisk or a period there. This can be a painful and unsettling place to be.

The reality is that we can’t part and parcel our world. If we pick and choose which aspects of reality we want to think about, we remove the integrity of the entire picture. Sooner or later, we all have to wrestle with the idea that the God we serve is also a God who rules a world where children die, people suffer, and unimaginable horrors occur. A world where sometimes our children die, our people suffer, and we encounter unimaginable horrors. Our faith in God doesn’t necessarily spare our suffering; it only guarantees to spare our eternity.

We also can’t part and parcel God’s Word. Standing in bold opposition to our sometimes-wavering faith and human interpretation are verses that read like this:

“Taste and see that the Lord is good; blessed is the one who takes refuge in him.” (Psalm 34:8 NIV)

“Give thanks to the Lord, for he is good; his love endures forever.” (Psalm 107:1 NIV)

“Praise the Lord, for the Lord is good; Sing praises to His name, for it is lovely.” (Psalm 135:3 NASB)

Well, shoot. What are we to do with a God who is good but a life that sometimes is not? My friends, we name our asterisks.

That’s right. All of those exceptions hanging out in your faith? See them. Name them. Tell God about them. We’ll never make any progress in polishing our faith if we’re unwilling to look for the spots in it.

One of the most authentic examples of this practice in Scripture takes place in the book of Mark, chapter 9. The scene opens with a father who’s brought his extremely ill son to be healed. The symptoms are disturbing, and the dad shares that the boy has been suffering like this since childhood. He asks for Jesus’s help.

Jesus said to him, “If you can believe, all things are possible to him who believes.”

Immediately the father of the child cried out and said with tears, “Lord, I believe; help my unbelief!” (Mark 9:23–24 NKJV)

I do believe; help my unbelief. This is how to be vulnerable with an asterisk. The man knew his faith had areas of weakness, and he owned them. The man offered Jesus all the faith he had, and then he asked him to fill in the rest. This man is all of us.

Asterisks in our faith can come from anywhere. If you’re in a place right now where you have an asterisk (or two or eight) next to God’s goodness, that’s okay. We do ourselves no favors by ignoring the exceptions we think we see, and we will never overcome them if we don’t take God’s hand and face them. The only way to get rid of an asterisk is to persist in the faith struggle long enough to figure out that the exceptions don’t actually exist.

And so to you, the one with the asterisks in her faith, or to you, the one who will discover asterisks in the years to come, let me say you are not alone. Remember that the asterisks that seem real to us in no way hinder the truth of who God is. He has never had and never will have an asterisk next to his goodness. No matter how we feel or what we face, we can trust that he has a period at the end of that sentence, God is good. Every. Single. Time.

Lord, help our unbelief.

Anne Rulo is an author, speaker, professional counselor, marriage and family therapist and veteran coaches wife. She and her husband Tim have two children and are passionate about reaching people for Christ and sharing information on coaching, marriage, family, and mental health. Read more from Anne at www.annerulo.com.

Photograph © Nhu Nguyen, used with permission