Doubting Thomas

Today, according to the Lectionary, is the day when the church remembers Thomas the Apostle. So I thought it would be appropriate to look at what John in his Gospel says about doubting Thomas. In John 20.24-29 we see how initially Thomas found it impossible to believe his fellow disciples that Jesus had risen from the dead.

His trouble was that he had not been present on the first Easter Day, when the Risen Lord appeared to his disciples in the Upper Room.  He had missed that visit that turned the sorrow of the ten into rapturous joy. Why Thomas was not present we do not know. Ed Sanders suggested that “he was indulging in the luxury of solitary sadness to which the melancholic is prone”. It is of course understandable that Thomas found it difficult to believe that  Jesus was alive. Dead men do not rise from the dead: once dead, people are normally always dead. So he said to the other disciples:

Unless I see the mark of his nails in his hands, and put my finger in the mark of the nails and put my hand in his side, I will not believe. (John 20.25)

Thankfully, in spite of Thomas’ doubts, he did not walk out on his friends, saying that he thought they were all mad for believing what they believed.  As a result he was present with the other disciples the following Sunday, when:

Although the doors were shut, Jesus came and stood among them and said, ‘Peace be with you’. Then he said to Thomas, ‘Put your finger here and see my hands. Reach out your hand and pit it in my side. Do not doubt but believe’ (John 20.26, 27).

All of a sudden his doubts were removed. He became convinced of the resurrection of Jesus, for he too had seen the Lord. In a wonderful act of surrender Thomas cried out, “My Lord and my God” (John 20.28). Indeed, it was more than an act of surrender, it was an act of worship. Thomas was the first man to worship Jesus as God. From the furnace of his doubt emerged the finest confession of faith found in the New Testament.

Thomas is not the only person to find it difficult to believe that Jesus was raised to life by God.  Yet for many doubt is the pathway to belief. In the words of Thomas Merton, “Faith means doubt, it is not the suppression of doubt. You overcome doubt by going through it”. He went so far as to say that “the man of faith who has never experienced doubt is not a man of faith”. At this point I do not agree with him, for there are many who believe whose life has not been complicated by unbelief. Yet there are also many others whose path to faith  is tortuous.  For those who wrestle with doubt, they can take heart from a 19^th century Thomas, the Russian Fyodor Dostoevsky, who said: “It is not as a body I believe in Christ. My hosanna has passed through a great furnace of doubts”.

The fact is that doubts can be overcome provided three factors are present. 

Doubt must be honest doubt

Not all doubters have any desire to believe. Some doubters are simply sceptics who seek to protect themselves from Christian commitment through their scepticism. They are dishonest doubters in the sense that they not willing to doubt their doubts. The fact is that some doubt simply as an excuse to escape from the cost of commitment to Jesus Christ. But those who doubt sincerely, who long for certitude, will eventually emerge into the bright sunlight of full faith. My mind goes to some words in the Old Testament where God says, “When you search for me, you will find me; if you seek me with all your heart” (Jeremiah 29.13). In some ways Thomas was a natural doubter, but I do not think he enjoyed his doubts, for I think he wanted to believe.  As William Temple said, the very strength of his protestations when the disciples claimed to have seen the Lord probably indicates he had a strong desire to believe. Yet what he regarded as ‘common-sense’ as also perhaps a fear of disillusionment held him back.

Doubt must be prepared to face up to the evidence

Doubt that simply buries its head in the sand will get nobody anywhere. The honest doubter must be prepared to look into the story of Jesus by examining the Gospel narratives. I find it significant that immediately after the story of Thomas coming to believe in the Risen Lord Jesus, John wrote:

Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not written in this book. But these are written so that you may come to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and through believing you may have life in his name. (John 20.30, 31).

Sometimes doubt is simply an excuse for intellectual laziness, a failure to examine the evidence for the resurrection of Jesus. As regards this evidence, Lord Darling, a former Lord Chief Justice of England, said:

In its favour as a living truth there exists such evidence, positive and negative, factual and circumstantial, that no intelligent jury in the world could fail to bring in a verdict that the resurrection story is true.

Doubt must be exposed to the test of faith

Jesus said: “Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe” (John 20.29). Strange as it may sound, it is in believing that we see the risen Lord. Certainty only comes as we take the leap of faith. It is not until we jump that we truly know the reality of the risen Lord. As the Psalmist wrote: “O taste and see that the Lord is good” (Psalm 34.8). It has been said that “Christianity has never been tried and found wanting; it has often not been tried, yet found wanting”. We need to take the leap of faith if we would experience the truth of Jesus, the Crucified and Risen Lord.