Michael Spencer has the Doubts, or the Beliefs

From time to time, I go over to Michael Spencer’s site at the Internet Monk. I don’t know Spencer, and we’ve never corresponded. So I don’t go because I know him. I just find him interesting. And usually reading his work has the consequence of me considering Jesus. Not always, but often: this probably explains why I don’t drop by more often.

Recently, he thought again about his doubts about this whole God business. (Also, see Spencer’s introductory remarks about his doubting and the comments left.) He does it in a well-written piece, and even gets around to citing Luther.

Take a moment here. Spencer’s not a nutcase or even slightly insane, at least not much of the time. He’s a “full-time Christian worker” which translated into normal English means that he gets paid to do church stuff in a forty-hour a week or more job. (Normally more.) He went to seminary and did the time necessary to get ordained. He lives onsite at a Church-affiliated boarding high-school in what even my ancestors in the Hatfield-McCoy feud would have considered “The Boonies”. He writes a great deal online, perhaps because the closest hardware store and major league ballfield is too far away.

So he’s not your run-of-the-mill Christ-blogger who shouts about this and that but who doesn’t really have the stomach to do anything with his life that matters. You can say what you will about church work, but dedicating your life to the kids that they get out there is something I would put in the bucket as “doing something that matters”.

So, when he writes about his doubts it’s bound to be interesting. Mostly because most people in his position have the good sense to stay out of the rain and keep these things to themselves until they announce to their congregation in a letter on Thursday that they are converting to another religion as of last Saturday and last Sunday’s eucharist was just keeping things moving. It keeps you from getting people questioning your ability to be a man (of God), whatever that means.

Me, I’m just this guy who works with kids real part-time, writes some church plays, and worries about his own a lot. So his expressing his doubts make it easier to live with my own.

Spencer’s doubts feel close to mine, even if he believes a bit more, I’d reckon. Maybe they aren’t, and I’ll just say that maybe that doesn’t matter for this statement. He doubts but he believes. A commenter said it felt like something that the father of the demon-possessed boy said. Jesus had been up on the mountain praying or something when this guy brought his boy to get exorcised. The Twelve, hotshots all, still had no traction with getting this kid level-headed again which started the religious leaders of the day arguing with them. I’m guessing “accusing them of being frauds” would be closer to the truth, but I wasn’t there.

Jesus comes down, sees all this going on, and is seriously disappointed in folks. The father says that if Jesus can do something, for goodness sakes to get to doing it.

Jesus can’t believe it. “If I can?!” he asks. “Everything is possible to a guy who believes.”

Then the fathers says something interesting. And it’s interesting not because he says it, or because it makes a lick of sense on its face, but from Jesus’ response to it.

“I believe!” he says, immediately followed by “Help my unbelief!”

At which Jesus drives out this demon and the boy is healed.

(My rough remembrance: it’s in Mark 9 according to BibleGateway.com.)

Which is about what I felt Spencer was saying in his essay, too.

It’s odd that people on both sides didn’t seem to get what he was saying. He wasn’t saying that he came to a New Revelation. Spencer’s really conservative, if you look at him from the perspective of Christianity in America. With a Southern Baptist spin of course. He’s not saying that he’s abandoning the received tradition of the Gospels or adding some new thing to it. He even gives a nod to Luther.

He’s also not saying that his doubts are this great holy thing that show how truly wonderful he is for having doubts so why don’t you have some, too. At least, I find that difficult to support in the text he left. He’s saying that maybe doubts aren’t inherently the end of it all. That Christ is supra our doubts. He’s obviously thinking out loud here, and doing so in a pretty interesting way.

(Michael, I don’t know what “canonizing your doubts” means, either, although I think I get the point in general. You get the strangest comments.)

What I liked about it was that he is pummelled but not torn from the Rock. These doubts rock his faith. They smash it. Yet it stands.

The old Reformed people used to say that your faith came from God to God anyway, that it wasn’t yours to begin with. Maybe that’s a good point.

Spencer, of course, believes a lot more even on his doubting days than I seem to on mine. But get this: he believes in the midst of his doubt. No trick of rhetoric here: he really believes even as he is not believing.

I believe: help my unbelief!

And it’s not because he has some new revelation or because he’s some type of saint because he has all of these doubts. Take either side of that last sentence and add “so he’s so much more holy than you are”. God knows he’s probably a royal pain in the ass in person.

But he’s been gotten by God. That’s what I take away from reading him.

So many people who try and “help” those with doubts, truly believe that they have gotten God. My people don’t have that. They don’t have the ability to get God. Most of the time we don’t have the ability to get up and face the day, and I sure am tired of losing y’all.

So maybe this is for them, this strange admission by the Rev. Spencer. Somehow, in all his doubts and complaints, God has gotten him. He doubts but knows. He would fall but he cannot let go. Because most of the time from my point of view it doesn’t seem like he’s holding at all but that something else has gotten hold of him. That this thing, this person who has gotten him will not let up until this tragic faith of his is perfect.

That must be an unpleasant way to live, a slave to someone who has captured you, who parades you around as a trophy of his conquest. At least it isn’t his responsibility, if Spencer’s right, to get it perfect by himself. Of course, that may just be me projecting.

But I’m appreciative of the good Rev. for sharing the road.