He Said Two Things That Cannot Both Be True and Was Not Corrected

He has never told anybody, because in that community the doubt is the disqualifying thing.

Not the doing of something wrong. Everybody there has a category for that and a process. What there is no category for is a person who is faithful, present, serving, and privately not certain, because the room's whole account of a person like that is that they are not really in.

So he says the right things and means most of them, and there is a specific sentence he has never said out loud to anybody in thirty years, and it is not a wicked sentence. It is: I am not sure.

There is a man in Mark 9 who says two things in one breath that cannot both be true, and he says them at volume, with tears, in a crowd, and nobody corrects him.

He comes with a bad opening line

The father has already been to the disciples, who could not help, and he comes to Jesus with a request and the wording of it is not confident.

But if thou canst do any thing, have compassion on us, and help us. (Mark 9:22, King James Version)

If thou canst do any thing.

That is not a good sentence to open with, and he knows it, and he says it anyway because it is the honest state of his mind after however long this has been going on.

Notice also have compassion on us and help us. Plural. The boy is the one with the condition and the father counts himself in the request, which is a small and very human detail: the situation has been happening to both of them.

You are able to come with a bad opening line and be answered. Mark 9:22 has him saying if thou canst and being dealt with rather than dismissed, and it is by the Spirit, Romans 8:26, who helps our infirmities when a person cannot pray as they ought.

Jesus repeats the word back to him

The reply is short and it turns one word around.

Jesus said unto him, If thou canst believe, all things are possible to him that believeth. (Mark 9:23)

If thou canst. He takes the father's own phrase and hands it back.

That has been read as a rebuke and I do not think it is one, because of what happens next. What it does is move the if off God's ability and put it somewhere the man can actually engage with, and the father responds instantly, which is what people do when they have been understood rather than told off.

And all things are possible to him that believeth is a statement about God rather than a demand for a quantity, which the next verse confirms, because what the father produces is not a quantity of anything.

You are able to have a word handed back rather than a rebuke delivered. Mark 9:23 repeats the father's own phrase, and it is the Spirit of truth, John 16:13, who guides into truth rather than shaming anybody with it.

And then the sentence

And straightway the father of the child cried out, and said with tears, Lord, I believe; help thou mine unbelief. (Mark 9:24)

Straightway. Immediately. He does not compose anything.

With tears. It is not a tidy theological formulation delivered calmly. It is shouted, in public, by an exhausted man.

And the content is a contradiction. I believe and mine unbelief in one sentence, about the same subject, at the same moment. Nobody could pass an examination with that answer.

He is not corrected. Jesus does not tell him to sort out his position. The boy is healed in the next few verses and the father's sentence stands in the text, unedited, for two thousand years, as one of the most quoted prayers anybody has ever prayed.

You are able to say both halves at once, and the man who did was not corrected. Mark 9:24 has both clauses in one breath with tears, and it is by the Spirit, Romans 8:26, that groanings which cannot be uttered are made into intercession.

He asks for help with the unbelief itself

The construction of the second half is the part I did not notice for years.

Help thou mine unbelief.

He does not ask for more belief. He does not promise to work on it. He asks for help with the unbelief, which means he is bringing the unbelief itself to God as the thing to be dealt with rather than as the thing that disqualifies him from asking.

That is a completely different posture from hiding it, and it is the one thing this article is asking anybody to consider. The doubt is not the item that has to be resolved before a person can come. It is an item they can bring.

And nothing in the passage suggests that was inappropriate. It is answered by an act rather than by a discussion.

You are able to bring the doubt itself rather than resolving it first. Mark 9:24 asks for help with the unbelief rather than for more belief, and it is the Spirit who helps our infirmities, Romans 8:26, which is a word that assumes there are some.

Some doubted and were sent anyway

If a single case is not enough, there is a sentence at the very end of Matthew that is remarkable and that most people read past.

And when they saw him, they worshipped him: but some doubted. And Jesus came and spake unto them, saying, All power is given unto me in heaven and in earth. Go ye therefore, and teach all nations. (Matthew 28:17-19)

But some doubted. At the resurrection appearance. Among the eleven. Looking at Him.

And there is no sorting. He does not separate the doubters out, does not address it, does not delay the commission. The next verse is go ye therefore, and it is spoken to all of them, including the ones Matthew has just told us were doubting.

Jude gives the instruction for how to treat people in that state, and it is one word.

And of some have compassion, making a difference. (Jude 22)

Have compassion. That is the instruction, and it is worth knowing by anybody who has assumed the room's verdict is God's.

You are commissioned in the same sentence as people who were doubting. Matthew 28:17 records the doubt and verse 19 sends them all, and it is the Holy Ghost, named in verse 19, into whose name they were sent to baptize.

What this does not license

I want to be exact, because there is a version of this that is not what Scripture describes.

The father in Mark 9 is not comfortable in his condition. He cries out. He wants it dealt with. He brings it as a problem rather than as an identity, and there is a real difference between a man who says help thou mine unbelief and a man who has settled into uncertainty as a permanent position and stopped asking anything.

Nothing here is an argument that doubt is fine and should be preserved. It is that the doubt is not the disqualification, and that a person who has been hiding it for thirty years has been treating it as one.

And nothing here asks anybody to announce it at a Sunday table. The father said it to Jesus, in a crowd of strangers, not to his own family, and the sentence on this page is to be said alone.

You are able to bring it as a problem rather than keep it as a position. Mark 9:24 has him crying out about it rather than settling into it, and it is by the Spirit, Romans 8:15, that a person cries out to Him at all.