One day a young mother came into her daughter’s room to find her busy with her crayons and paper. “What are you drawing?” she asked. Her daughter paused and said, “A picture of God.” Her mother smiled and said, “But no one knows what God looks like.” The little girl continued with her work and matter-of-factly stated, “They will when I get through.”
That is what John is doing when he writes his Gospel — he is painting a portrait of God, and when he is done God’s picture will look like Jesus. He is saying, “They will know what God looks like when I get through.” He states at the end of this chapter: “Jesus did many other miraculous signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not recorded in this book. But these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name” (John 20:30-31). One way John does that is to take us through the life of Thomas as he journeys from doubt to faith.
Thomas is perhaps the least understood and one of the most maligned of the disciples. But there is no one quite like Thomas. He is a natural skeptic, often leaning toward pessimism. He is the kind of person who sees problems more clearly than he sees solutions. He wanders in the dark more than he walks in the light. His mind is full of questions and even answers that are acceptable to most everyone else do not satisfy him. He is an analyst. He likes to tear things apart and look at them to see how they work. He wants to understand everything before he will believe in anything.
Let’s look at the personality profile of this skeptic. Almost everything we know about Thomas is found in the Gospel of John. John’s main concern in his gospel is moving people from doubt to faith, so Thomas is a natural study. In the eleventh chapter of John, Jesus has just informed the disciples of the death of their friend Lazarus, and then tells them that he is going to Bethany to raise him from the dead. But the disciples are aware that Bethany is only a few miles from Jerusalem, and the officials are seeking to put Jesus to death. Going there will mean that all of them will be placed in harm’s way. The rest of the disciples just sit in stunned silence at Jesus’ announcement. Their minds are filled with fear and uncertainty. But John writes, “Then Thomas (called Didymus) said to the rest of the disciples, ‘Let us also go, that we may die with him’” (John 11:16). In effect he says, “We are all going to die. I just know it. We might as well go and get it over with.” Thomas always expects the worst, but this time his pessimism is rooted in reality. The disciples will not die, because they will all run, but Christ will be taken to the cross — an awful end to a glorious life and ministry. Yet, to his credit, Thomas is, at this point, willing to go and die with Christ. That is more than the others seem to be ready to do.
The next time we meet Thomas it is in the Upper Room where Jesus and his disciples have just eaten their last supper together. Judas has left their company to begin his egregious journey of betrayal. It is at this point that Jesus unveils his heart as he speaks openly to his friends. He tells them that he will not be with them much longer. Then he says, “Do not let your hearts be troubled. Trust in God; trust also in me. In my Father's house are many rooms; if it were not so, I would have told you. I am going there to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me that you also may be where I am. You know the way to the place where I am going” (John 14:1-4). At this point Thomas has had all he can take. He nearly shouts in frustration, “Lord, we don’t know where you are going, so how can we know the way?” And Jesus’ simple reply is, “I am the way...” Thomas is silenced, but his mind is still whirling with objections and arguments.
I have known many people like Thomas. Their minds are filled with debates and disagreements. Questions are more important than answers. Even when you present the most rational arguments possible it does not satisfy them. They believe their objections to be insurmountable. They would feel dishonest by bringing closure to their quest. They feel that continuous interrogation is an inseparable part of honesty. To accept an answer to a query would betray intellectual inquiry. They shun what they think of as “easy believism.” The problem is that they are on a continuous quest, but never coming to a place of discovery. They are always seeking, but never finding. Always asking, but never receiving.
Sometimes doubting is mere foolishness. Listen to these examples of things that some people said “couldn’t be done”:
▸ Charles H. Duell, U.S. Patent Office director, said in 1899, “Everything that can be invented has been invented.”
▸ The first successful cast-iron plow, invented in the United States in 1797, was rejected by New Jersey farmers because they believed that cast iron poisoned the land.
▸ One eloquent authority in the United States once declared that the introduction of the railroad would require the building of many insane asylums, since people would be driven mad with terror at the sight of locomotives rushing across the country.
▸ It was supposedly proven by “experts” that if trains went at the frightful speed of 30 miles an hour, passengers would suffocate.
▸ Engineers insisted that iron ships would not float, that they would damage more easily than wooden ships when grounding, that it would be difficult to preserve the iron bottom from rust, and that iron would deflect the compass.
▸ Joshua Coppersmith was actually arrested in Boston for trying to sell stock in the telephone, because “All well-informed people know that it is impossible to transmit the human voice over a wire.”
All these people were doubters. There are times when doubting is a display of ignorance. Being a constant cynic or skeptic can keep you from truth that may be important to your life.
But doubt is not always foolish. In fact, if it is honest doubt it can actually lead to faith, as it did in the case of Thomas. Tennyson wrote: “There lives more faith in honest doubt, believe me, than in half the creeds.” The difference between dishonest and honest doubt is the willingness to accept evidence when it is given. Larry Jones writes, “There is much honest doubt that should be encouraged. History, for instance, is literally patched together by doubt. There could be no progress without it. Galileo doubted that the earth stood still. Copernicus doubted that the earth was the center of the universe. Columbus doubted that it was flat. Newton doubted that nature was erratic, and Einstein doubted that the earth was fixed.”
There is nothing wrong with asking questions and even doubting. It means you are thinking. In Thomas’ case his skepticism eventually led to faith. He had some honest doubts, but there came a time when he had to be told that it was time to set his doubts aside and stop letting them keep him from the truth. Picture the scene. Jesus has risen from the dead and he has appeared to several of the disciples, but Thomas has not seen him because he preferred to be alone in his despondency. It was a great mistake because doubt and despair grow when we are isolated from other believers.
But now Thomas is again with the disciples and they are huddled in a room with locked doors, afraid that the authorities will soon be after them. John tells the story like this, “Now Thomas (called Didymus), one of the Twelve, was not with the disciples when Jesus came. So the other disciples told him, ‘We have seen the Lord!’ But he said to them, ‘Unless I see the nail marks in his hands and put my finger where the nails were, and put my hand into his side, I will not believe it.’ A week later his disciples were in the house again, and Thomas was with them. Though the doors were locked, Jesus came and stood among them and said, ‘Peace be with you!’ Then he said to Thomas, ‘Put your finger here; see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it into my side. Stop doubting and believe’” (John 20:24-27). And “Stop doubting and believe” are the operative words of this passage, and indeed the Gospel of John. The interesting thing is that the Scripture never says anything about Thomas accepting Jesus’ invitation to touch his wounds so that he might believe. There is no longer any need to touch, he simply falls on his knees and says, “My Lord and my God!” “Then Jesus told him, ‘Because you have seen me, you have believed; blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed’” (John 20:29). That would be us! We have not seen as Thomas saw and yet we believe, and Jesus said that we would be blessed for our faith. Jesus was comparing Thomas’ doubt to the faith you have in Christ, even though you have never seen him as Thomas did.
There is a time and place for honest doubt that is searching for the truth, but there comes the time when doubt must give way to faith. If your questions lead you to dig for truth and search for meaning then doubt has served its good purpose. If we believed everything that came down the pike we would not be people of faith, we would simply be naive. We would be like the people who believe the tabloid headlines which say things like: “Mom On Diet Of Only Chicken, Lays Huge Egg.” Or, “Adam & Eve’s Bones Found In Asia: Eve Was A Space Alien.” Faith is not foolishness, it is always able to stand up to investigation and reason.
The reason the Christian faith has grown from one little band of disciples to the place where it has conquered kingdoms and the hearts of people of every age is that it is based on truth. This book, the Bible, has inspired, challenged and changed the lives of people in every land, age and century. People of all races have come to love Christ, put their whole trust in his grace, been transformed by his indwelling presence and have the desire to share him with others.
Even people you would not expect have come to know and love our Christ. Madalyn Murray O’Hair’s son, William J. Murray, is now a Christian. He is so grateful for his newfound faith that he has gone into the ministry to help others experience what he has found in Christ. His new joy has obviously given him a sense of humor, for in his book My Life without God, he says that he became a Christian because he “couldn’t stand the silences after the sneezes.”
Thomas did not remain a skeptic. When Thomas was faced with the truth he exclaimed, “My Lord and my God!” We often turn to Peter when we talk of the great proclamations concerning the person of Christ, for when Jesus asked Peter who he thought he was, Simon Peter answered, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God” (Matthew 16:16). That is a profound response, but actually Thomas’ answer is even better. Peter said that Jesus was the Son of the living God, which he was, but Thomas rightly proclaimed him to be God, and fell down to worship. Scales fell from Thomas’ eyes and a new warmth entered his doubting heart. Love conquered his fears and truth entered his mind. Only God can, on his own, return from the dead. Thomas realized that and dropped his doubt to pick up his faith in a new way. His old pessimism gave way to new hope. He willingly obeyed Jesus as he stopped doubting and started believing. The good thing about Thomas is that he became as committed to believing the truth as he had formerly been committed to skepticism. His faith was as intense as his former doubt had been. Once he was sure he held nothing back.
I want to assure you that no one has all the answers. The only person who has no doubts is the person who has stopped thinking. I, for one, have lots of unanswered questions, and as soon as I get to heaven I have lots of things I want to ask Jesus about (although when I get there I somehow think they will suddenly become very unimportant). But one thing is for sure, until then I am not going to let the relatively few questions I have spoil the many assurances I have already been given. I’m not going to spend my days as a cynic. Don’t let a few doubts keep you from enjoying what you already know to be true. It has helped me to realize that I do not have to have all the answers. I can hold some questions in suspension knowing that even though I do not understand them now, there will come a day when I do. I know that even though some things about this life don’t make sense to me, some day they will. As the Bible says, “For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known” (1 Corinthians 13:12).
When we read the Bible we do not read it as a physicist seeking proofs, but we read it as people who are seeking God. We are looking for how to have a relationship with our Creator. I really do not believe that there are more than a handful of true atheists, that is, people who cannot accept the existence of God on intellectual grounds. The main problem with belief is a problem with behavior. You see, if there is a God then there is someone to whom I am accountable. If the Bible is true then I must believe it and obey it. People do not believe because they do not want to obey. It is not intellectual difficulties that hold people back from God, it is moral difficulties that keep them from him. Doubt is almost always a resistence to the Lordship of Christ. It is doubting that Christ should have the right to control your life — even though he created you and gave his life for you.
Throughout history there have been many intellectuals who have sought to disprove the Christian faith and ended up embracing it. In the later years of his life Robert Louis Stevenson was a man of deep and profound faith. It was not always like that, however. Like many young people he rebelled against his upbringing. He was raised in Scotland in a very strict Christian home. As a college student he quickly shed his rigid upbringing, which he called “the deadliest gag and wet blanket that can be laid on a man,” and adopted a thoroughly reprobate lifestyle. He called himself a “youthful atheist.” As he became older, however, he began to have “doubts about his doubts.” He came to see that for all its claim to wisdom, the world had no satisfying answers to the deepest questions of life. Later Robert Louis Stevenson would ultimately write, “There is a God who is manifest for those who care to look for him.” I believe that is true. God is here and he is able to be experienced by those who care to seek him. The Bible says, “And without faith it is impossible to please God, because anyone who comes to him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who earnestly seek him” (Hebrews 11:6).
Rodney J. Buchanan
May 1, 2011
Amity United Methodist Church
rodbuchanan2000@yahoo.com
