Faith, Doubt and Batman

Who is Batman? Who is he really? A savior? A god? A fallen idol?

In my reading, King tells us that, too.

“He tries,” an anguished Bruce Wayne tells his fellow jurors. “He does … I know. And he fails, and he tries again.”

That sounds familiar.

The Batman I wrote about in God on the Streets of Gotham was no perfect Christ-like figure, no avatar of the Almighty, as Bruce imagined him to be. He’s just … a guy. Like us. One with a bigger bank account, certainly, and a willingness to suffer some broken bones and lose a lot of sleep for a better cause. But he’s not so different. Most of us, in our better moments, want to do the right thing. We want to make the world a better place. We want to find, and follow, a higher purpose.

Like Bruce says, Batman tries and fails and tries again. The fact that he fails makes him human. The fact that he tries again makes him a hero—someone who, like most of us, struggle to follow a better, brighter path. The fact that Bruce’s faith in Batman reflects a spiritual reality that many of us have come to understand, and painfully: Even the best of us will fail. You can count on it. The Christian faith understands it, accepts it … and points to the only one who will never let us down.

“Batman is on a walk of faith,” I wrote in my book, “following a voice to his ultimate purpose. … He is, like we are, following a worthy call—his to serve Gotham, ours to serve God and his people.”

I don’t imagine that King will ever have Batman heeding an altar call. But even in this issue, where he says he doesn’t believe in God anymore, it’s clear that Batman and Bruce Wayne are both still on their walk of faith, trying to hear and heed that all-important call of purpose.