Seeing And Believing

In a Peanuts comic strip, Charlie Brown is talking with Lucy as they walk home on the last day of school. Charlie Brown says to Lucy: “Lucy, I got straight A’s; isn’t that great!” Lucy in her typical fashion shoots down poor Charlie Brown and says: “I don’t believe you Charlie Brown. Unless you show me your report card, I cannot believe you.” Can you relate to Lucy? Seeing is believing, isn’t it?

Most people have to see something before they can believe it. I’ve heard said: “Don’t believe everything that you hear and only half of what you see.” This is often how we describe the apostle Thomas, but is this saying really accurate? Let me ask you a few questions:

Have you ever felt like you missed something big that everyone else seemed to know about?

Have you ever felt like you were not spiritual enough because of your past failures?

Have you ever felt like you could really believe even more in Jesus if you could just catch a glimpse of Him?

If you have ever felt like this or anything like this you would be in good company with Thomas.[1]

John 20:24–29 (NKJV)

In 1957, Lieutenant David Steeves walked out of the California Sierras Mts. 54 days after his Air Force T-33 jet trainer had disappeared. He related an unbelievable tale of survival after ejecting from his disabled plane. For almost 3 months he said he had eaten berries and dug snow tunnels to sleep in, had seen no one during the entire time & finally walked out on his own. By the time he showed up alive, he had already been declared officially dead and his story was viewed with much skepticism because during that same time frame his assigned unit had been sent to Korean.

When further search failed to turn up any wreckage, a hoax was suspected & Steeves was forced to resign from the Air Force under a cloud of doubt. He lived for a decade branded as a deserter and possible spy. One story had him selling the plane to the Russians, another shipping it piecemeal to Mexico. (This was a jet trainer, not the latest in Jet Fighter technology.) Steeves spent many years looking for the weckage of his failed jet to clear his name but in 1965, he was killed in aircraft accident.

In 1977 a troop of Boy Scouts hiking through Kings Canyon National Park discovered the jettisoned canopy of Steeve’s plane. The serial number on the canopy confirmed it was from his jet. And Steeve's story was finally confirmed. 20 years after it happened, 12 years after his death. His family was issued an apology from the military and was told that Lt. David Steeves’s name was reinstated with honor. One of Steeves friends, Eugene Junett, after the ceremony told the Associated Press. “This is nice, but then he added: “I just wish someone would of believed Dave back then.”

We have all heard things that are hard to believe. TV shows and the museum of “Ripley’s Believe It or Not” make millions of dollars telling about things hard to swallow.

So is it too difficult to blame a man who has been told the ultimate unbelievable tale, that Jesus who had been put to death had come back from the grave, for his skepticism? I think we all, to some degree, can identify with Thomas, one of the 12 hand-picked followers of Jesus.[2]

Doubt is something we all experience over a great number of subjects. We all experienced doubt over our faith in God at some point. Jesus does not rebuke Thomas for having doubts, but for unbelief.

John 20:27b Do not be unbelieving, but believing.

One of my favorite commentators, Warren Wiersbe puts it this way: Doubt is often an intellectual problem: we want to believe, but the faith is overwhelmed by problems and questions. Unbelief is a moral problem; we simply will not believe. [Here is] The difference between doubt and unbelief. Doubt says, “I cannot believe! There are too many problems!” Unbelief says, “I will not believe unless you give me the evidence I ask for!” [3]

Judas has been the picture of betrayal, Peter gave the example of denial, Now Thomas is the image of doubt or skepticism. In verses 19-23, on Sunday evening after the resurrection, Jesus appeared to the Disciples except for Thomas.

John 20:24–25a Now Thomas, called the Twin, one of the twelve, was not with them when Jesus came. 25 The other disciples therefore said to him, “We have seen the Lord.”

Of course the others will tell Thomas that they have seen Jesus. In the Greek, “said” is in the imperfect tense” Tenses are important because the describe the action. In this case, it is a continuing action. They did not merely said it one time, they continued to say to Thomas – “We have seen the Lord” They attempted to convince him.