“Doubting Thomas”?

Now Thomas, one of the Twelve, called the Twin, was not with them when Jesus came. So the other disciples told him, “We have seen the Lord.” But he said to them, “Unless I see in his hands the mark of the nails, and place my finger into the mark of the nails, and place my hand into his side, I will never believe.” Eight days later, his disciples were inside again, and Thomas was with them. Although 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, and see my hands; and put out your hand, and place it in my side. Do not disbelieve, but believe.” Thomas answered him, “My Lord and my God!” Jesus said to him, “Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.” Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of the disciples, which are not written in this book; but these are written so 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 20:24-31 (ESV)

Doubt’s a funny thing, sort of a grey area between belief and unbelief—between, you might say, two different kinds of certainty. It can be paralyzing, leaving people unable to act because they don’t know what to do. Sometimes, it can be liberating, freeing people to let go of a false certainty to seek a true one. It can be unhealthy, especially if it becomes obsessive; but it can also be a healthy thing, reminding us that we might not know quite as much as we think we do. Of course, doubt can be dishonest, really a mask for a determination not to believe something—or, in some cases, for a refusal to commit to any belief at all; but honest doubt, doubt which is truly open to belief and truly seeking understanding, can be an important prelude to true faith. The problem is, it’s all too easy to lose sight of that, and so you find churches that treat doubt as a sin—as if believing in Jesus and following him are supposed to be easy, which they often aren’t—that fail to see the difference between doubt that doesn’t want to believe, and doubt that does.

The story of Thomas is a corrective for us in that respect, if we actually read it. Unfortunately, this is one of those stories we already think we know; even people who’ve never knowingly been within fifty feet of a Bible know what a doubting Thomas is. Just for grins, I Googled the phrase “doubting Thomas” and found 903,000 hits, including a page on Dictionary.com which informed me that a doubting Thomas is “one who is habitually doubtful.” That’s our picture of Thomas, based entirely on this passage, as if he were the sort of guy who wouldn’t believe you if you told him the sky was blue.

Is that really fair, though? Does he really deserve to be universally known as “Doubting Thomas”—to be a cliché? He’d been off on his own, away from the other disciples, and while we don’t know for sure why that was, it seems likely that he reacted to grief and loss the same way many of us do: he pulled away from other people, shut them out, and tried to work through it by himself. The Scottish New Testament scholar William Barclay notes that England’s King George V used to say, “If I have to suffer, let me be like a well-bred animal, and let me go and suffer alone”; this seems to have been Thomas’ approach. When he got to the point that he felt he could bear to be around the other disciples, he joined them, expecting to commiserate and reminisce with them—and instead they fed him the most implausible story he had ever heard. Put yourself in his shoes—would you have believed it?

Of course, part of the reason Thomas picked up his label is his response to the other disciples, with his statement that unless he could see the wounds and put his hands in them, he would never believe that Jesus was alive again; if you read the commentaries, you’ll see that they treat his statements as if he made them calmly and rationally, as if he were matter-of-factly stating the terms which would have to be met before he would believe. Stop and think a minute, though—do you really imagine that Thomas, confronted with this ridiculous fairy tale, tugged on his beard, carefully considered the situation, and then set forth the conditions on which he would believe the story, as if he were a philosophy professor grading a blue-book exam? No! He responded the way many people would have, with anger, sarcasm, and hyperbole: “You expect me to believe that? Why, unless I see the wounds in his hands—no, unless I can touch them myself—there’s no way!” OK, so maybe it’s not an admirable response; but really, which of us would have done any better?

The fact of the matter is, Thomas was no more a doubter than any of the other disciples who didn’t believe until they saw Jesus with their own eyes, and the Bible never portrays him as such. We do know that he was something of a pessimist, and that he loved Jesus greatly; in John 11, when Jesus announced his intention to go to Jerusalem, setting his feet on the road to the cross, Thomas told his fellow disciples, “Let’s go with him, that we may die with him.” He was sure the worst was coming, but he made no excuses; better to die with Jesus than to abandon him. In the event, the worst happened and Jesus was crucified, but Thomas survived; he had seen it coming, but was still broken-hearted at Jesus’ death. If he hadn’t cared, he no doubt would have had an easier time believing in the resurrection; as it was, his grief was too great for belief to come easily.

To be sure, Thomas does come across as something of a skeptic—but there are skeptics and there are skeptics. There are certainly those who are “habitually doubtful,” who refuse to believe anything anyone tells them, whether because they’re suspicious and distrustful, because they’re contemptuous of others, or for whatever reason; but Thomas doesn’t fall into that category. Thomas doubts, yes, but he doubts because faith comes hard. How much of that is grief and how much is his natural character and temperament, we don’t know, but he just needed more, some sort of tangible proof. He was willing to believe, but he needed more than just a crazy story; he needed to see Jesus himself.

Given that, it does need to be said for Thomas that at least he was honest about it. When the others told him they’d seen Jesus, he didn’t try to play along or try to humor them; he was completely honest, telling them straight out that he didn’t believe their story. What’s more, he didn’t leave, either; it must have been a little uncomfortable—they were celebrating the resurrection, he was still grieving the crucifixion—but he stuck around. Thomas doesn’t get credit for either of those things, as a rule, but both say a great deal for him.

The text doesn’t tell us, but I can only think that he stayed because his fellow disciples were his connection to Jesus; he stayed because he wasn’t giving up on them, because he wasn’t giving up on God. As for his honesty, how many of us are honest enough to admit we don’t understand, or believe, something when we don’t? Better someone like Thomas, who insisted on being sure and was open and forthright about his doubt, than someone who just plays along, mouthing the words and pretending to believe. As Barclay noted, “It is doubt like that which in the end arrives at certainty,” while those who just pretend never get anywhere at all. It also needs to be said for Thomas that he didn’t do anything by half measures; when he doubted, he doubted, and when he believed, he believed. Once he saw Jesus—and you’ll notice, for all his talk, Thomas didn’t need to touch him, just to see him—his doubts were gone, his belief total. Faith didn’t come easy for him, but once he was sure, once he had counted the cost, there were no halfway measures, and no holding back.

Perhaps that was part of the reason for his skepticism; it’s easy to make commitments, after all, if you only make them half-heartedly, but that doesn’t seem to have been an option for Thomas. We can see that in the statement he makes when he sees Jesus, which is really pretty remarkable. It’s been said that this is the key moment in the entire gospel, the key statement about Jesus, and I think that’s true, because Thomas here moves from several steps behind the other disciples—disbelieving the resurrection—to a step ahead of them; in an instant, he sees what the resurrection truly means, and from his heart he exclaims, “My Lord and my God!”

The disciples had been calling Jesus “Lord” for quite some time, but that’s a word that can cover a lot of ground; on the one hand, it was the standard Jewish substitution for the name of God, but on the other, it was a standard form of polite address, meaning roughly “Sir.” Somewhere along the line, the disciples started to mean more than that by it—they clearly realized that he deserved more than the ordinary level of respect—but how much more is impossible to say. For Thomas at this moment, however, it’s very clear exactly what he means by “Lord”: he’s giving it all the meaning it can bear. In putting “Lord” and “God” together, he’s joining the two great Old Testament names for the Creator—Elohim, which we translate as “God,” and the personal name of God, often rendered in English as “Yahweh” or “Jehovah,” but which the Jews substituted with Adonai, “Lord,” because no observant Jew would speak it. In calling Jesus “Lord” and “God,” then, Thomas is affirming Jesus as YHWH Elohim, the God of Israel, the very God of all creation, deserving of all worship and obedience. His realization is the cornerstone of our faith now, but then it was a new and radical statement; for a Jew who had been taught in no uncertain terms the vast difference and separation between God and his creation, even human beings, to come to understand that God had stooped to cross that divide by becoming human was a truly remarkable and world-expanding realization indeed.

Jesus responds by approving Thomas’ recognition, and then goes on to say, “Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.” Some people think that Jesus is rebuking Thomas here for his unbelief—that fits in with the whole “Doubting Thomas” thing, after all—but if so, it’s a very gentle rebuke, and one addressed to the others, not just to Thomas; after all, there were very few at that point who had believed without seeing Jesus with their own eyes. Jesus isn’t singling out Thomas for rebuke, and I’m not at all sure he’s rebuking anyone, since he doesn’t say “More blessed.” He simply blesses all those, both then and throughout time, who had and would come to believe without visual confirmation. He pronounces a blessing on, among others, us.

Now, if Thomas’ confession is a critical moment in this gospel, I think Jesus’ response is almost as critical. Remember that John chose to include these words for a reason—none of the other gospel writers did so—and notice that they are followed immediately by verses 30 and 31, which set out the purpose for this book: “These are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that through believing you may have life in his name.” Jesus pronounces a blessing on those who believe without seeing, and the purpose of this gospel, the reason John chose to write it, is to bring people into that blessing, to bring people who have never seen Jesus in the flesh to believe in him anyway. In that light, I think it’s worthwhile to ask why John tells this story; and I think one reason is to show us vividly that faith didn’t come any easier for those disciples than it did, or does, for anyone else.

Modern skeptics know how hard it is for them to believe that Jesus actually rose from the dead, and they tend to assume that it must have been easier for the first disciples, or else they never would have believed such a crazy tale; but Thomas shows us otherwise. As we’ve seen, he’d expected the worst, and the worst had happened, and that was just too powerful, too real a thing for him to set aside just because the other disciples told him he should. These were his friends, the people with whom he had walked the length and breadth of Israel who knew how many times—these were the people he trusted if he trusted anyone—but his pain and loss were too real and too great for him to hear. Their testimony wasn’t enough; Thomas had to see Jesus for himself before he could believe.

And here’s the key: that doesn’t disqualify him. His doubt doesn’t rule him out. Instead, he cries out for a reason to believe—and God gives it to him; and after all this, it’s Thomas, not any of the others, who makes the great confession which is the climax of this gospel. It’s Thomas, who spells out his inability to believe in great detail, whose doubt persists longer than any of the others, who then makes a statement of faith which goes beyond that of any of the others. It is the one who went through this period of doubt, who heard the story of the resurrection from those who had seen Jesus alive again and declared, “I don’t believe you, and I’m not going to believe until I can touch him for myself,” who then called Jesus both Lord and God. It was out of the dark soil of his doubt and grief that the bright flower of his great confession grew.

This is no accident; it’s no mere coincidence that Thomas made this statement; rather, it’s a lesson for us. We often tend to treat doubt and faith as opposed, as if doubt were the opposite of faith—but that isn’t true at all of honest doubt, like that of Thomas. Rather, doubt can be essential in working our way through to deeper faith. If we never doubt because we never ask questions about our faith, if we never doubt because we never really face the hard times in our lives, if we never doubt because we never admit to ourselves that we might have reason, then we don’t have more faith—we have less; we aren’t exercising our faith, we’re protecting it, and that means we aren’t really trusting God. Part of having real faith in God is trusting him enough to doubt him—I know that sounds strange, but it’s true. Faith doesn’t mean never doubting, it means trusting him enough to believe that if we express our doubts, as Thomas did, that God will respond and give us reason to have faith in him.

I think we sometimes tend to be afraid of our own honesty, afraid of admitting what we really think and feel, and we need to understand that God isn’t. True faith in him means trusting him enough even in our doubts to believe that God can handle our doubts just as well as he can our professions of faith—and that if we bring our doubts to him, they will be answered, and we will find that we really can trust him.