A Doubting Thomas – ChurchEdge

One night when I was in college, I went to what I thought was going to be an ordinary concert. After playing some music and singing a few songs, the Christian musicians passed out index cards to all of us young college students in the room. They said the cards were for us to anonymously write down any barriers to faith that we were struggling with. I filled up every inch of that little 3 x 5 card with tough objections to Christianity that I had heard from professors and classmates. I turned in my card and waited eagerly for them to provide detailed answers to each question. But that is not what happened. They invited us instead to close our eyes and begin a time of prayer about the things we wrote down. I must admit, I was a little disappointed. I wanted instant, verbal answers to my questions — not a moment of silence. Reluctantly, I bowed my head, closed my eyes, and started to think about some of the questions I wrote down. Just when I was starting to get into it, my prayer time was interrupted by a strange clanking sound that I found very distracting and untimely. I opened my eyes and looked up to see where the racket was coming from, and when I did, my heart sunk. Each index card full of tough questions and objections to faith was being nailed to a big, wooden cross. As I listened to the sad sounds of the hammer striking the nails, I heard a different kind of answer to my questions — one that was both heartbreaking and hopeful all at once. It was an answer that I wasn’t expecting, and sadly, one that I was usually all too quick to try and ignore.

As we journey to the Cross this Lenten season, we are reminded of the importance of looking inward and examining the state of our hearts before God. Spiritual introspection is a crucial part of growing in faith. But we cannot forget in the midst of all our self-reflection to look outward, to Jesus, just as doubting Thomas did. We read in John 20:25 that after Thomas was told the news of the resurrection, he said, “I won’t believe it unless I see the nail wounds in his hands, put my fingers into them, and place my hand into the wound in his side.” In verse 27, Jesus replied, “Put your finger here, and look at my hands. Put your hand into the wound in my side. Don’t be faithless any longer. Believe!” Jesus allowed Thomas the dignity of carrying his doubts to the very one who carried the Cross. He did not ask Thomas to bury his questions, but offered him the most convincing answer available — himself.

In our quest for absolute certainty, we long to find comprehensive answers to the mysteries of faith. Yet as Alister McGrath reminds us, “The things in life that really matter cannot be proven with certainty — whether they are ethical values (such as respect for human life), social attitudes (such as democracy) or religious beliefs (such as Christianity)…there will always be an element of doubt in any statement that goes beyond the world of logic and self-evident propositions. Christianity is not unique in this respect; an atheist or Marxist is confronted with precisely the same dilemma. Anyone who wants to talk about the meaning of life has to make statements that rest on faith, not absolute certainty. Anyway, God isn’t a proposition — he’s a person!”(1)

The same nail-scarred hands of the person that reached out to doubting Thomas reach out to us today with assurance and compassion. In his poem “The Ancient Sage,” nineteenth-century British poet Alfred Lord Tennyson writes:

For nothing worthy proving can be proven
Nor yet disproven; wherefore thou be wise
Cleave ever to the sunnier side of doubt
And cling to Faith beyond the forms of Faith!

This holy week, instead of clinging to truth in propositions alone, let us rest in the embrace of the person who embodies it.

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1. Alister McGrath, DOUBTING: GROWING THROUGH THE UNCERTAINTIES OF FAITH (Downer’s Grove: InterVarsity, 2006), 23-25.

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[Original illustration at this number was a duplicate of HolwickID #1981]