The Example of Little/No Faith
I will start by covering the single case where Jesus labelled faith as being "little" to the point of nonexistence. This case is given in Matthew 8:23-27, where Jesus, after calming the storm, asked the disciples why their faith was so little. The parallel account in Luke 8:22-25 has Jesus asking "where is your faith?" However, the account that I will use is given in Mark 4:36-41:
36 And when they had sent away the multitude, they took him even as he was in the ship. And there were also with him other little ships. 37 And there arose a great storm of wind, and the waves beat into the ship, so that it was now full. 38 And he was in the hinder part of the ship, asleep on a pillow: and they awake him, and say unto him, Master, carest thou not that we perish? 39 And he arose, and rebuked the wind, and said unto the sea, Peace, be still. And the wind ceased, and there was a great calm. 40 And he said unto them, Why are ye so fearful? how is it that ye have no faith? 41 And they feared exceedingly, and said one to another, What manner of man is this, that even the wind and the sea obey him?
While all three accounts have Jesus commenting on the disciple's fear and amount of faith, this one has Jesus stating that they had no faith (V. 40).
It should be obvious, from the highlighted portion of verse 38, that the disciples not only were certain they were going to die, but accused Jesus of not caring. This obviously displayed a lack of trust in Jesus' personal commitment to his Command Responsiblity toward them: they were his disciples and hand picked by him so they were submitting to him and acted as if he had authority over them up until the storm came. The other passages have them begging him to save them because they were perishing, but have no comment about how much he cared about them, so their faith was seen in those contexts as little or temporarily absent, not non-existent as is implied here.
A bit more probing revealed to me that my understanding of what the disciples were thinking had to be revised: in the Matthew and Luke passage, the disciples beg Jesus to save them because they are perishing, but when they actually got saved they were astounded and deeply fearful. What's with that? How exactly did they expect Jesus to save them? Levitate the boat? Throw a cocoon around them? Tell everyone to grab hands, form a circle, and make all of them walk on water?
It seems to me that they did not expect any miracle whatsoever. Their request to be saved because they were perishing should be seen in the same light as the request of the repentant thief on Calvary that Jesus remember him. The request to be saved was for eternal life and salvation after death, not for the rescue from death due to the fierce storm. They were expecting Jesus to probably deliver a quick blessing and prayer over them before the boat got swamped, and when he took time to assess the situation, they panicked at his slow response and implied that he didn't care that they would be eternally lost. Instead, they were saved physically and in such an extraordinary manner that the method left them astounded and fearful.
I cannot help but believe that the purpose of working this extraordinary miracle was not just to save the disciples physically, but start the process of impressing on them the belief (necessary to turn their little-to-no faith to great faith) that Jesus not only had the power to save, but intended to deploy that power to save those who obey him. Many today have faith to believe that God and Jesus can work miracles on their behalf, as well as believe that They are good, but the doubt that keeps their faith small arises from the thought that God's heart or Jesus' heart does not contain the intention of being good to them. Recall what the Children of Israel said at Kadesh afger they heard This situation is not helped by the Calvinist teaching of God's Secret Will that overrides God's Spoken Will: on top of contradicting everything we read in the scriptures about the Universe being voice activated (Genesis 1), this teaching encourages people to discount what God says because it leads them to believe that God's "heart is not in it" when He says anything. Who can know the mind of God, so that they can divine the "Secret Will" behind the "Spoken Will" that will override it and truly decide what happens? Who can blame them for doubting when experience with people informs them that a person "is not worth a flip" when given a task while "their heart is not in it". I have long ceased to wonder how such a doctrine is supposed to help increase someone's faith in God (it doesn't), but still have problems comprehending how Calvinists continue to believe in their own intelligence when they maintain that it does.
We will now look at the two examples of faith that Jesus Himself called "great".
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