Jesus 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 20:27
Last time we thought about the sad mystery of why people “fall away” from faith in Jesus.
Our main focus was on people whose faith crumples because they never talk about, or seek help for, doubts and questionings that challenge their faith; and by the time they do, it’s too late. And I suggested that sometimes churches must bear a weight of responsibility for this, because they treat doubt almost as a sin, so that people feel too guilty to open up about it.
“But wait a minute,” somebody might say, “isn’t that being a bit soft on doubt? Didn’t Jesus tell ‘Doubting Thomas’ off for his doubt? ‘Stop doubting and believe’, he told him. And in other places don’t we find Jesus obviously very disappointed by people’s doubting?”
A fair question. But I think there is an answer.
First, a matter of translation...
Even though Doubting Thomas has gone down in history with that title, it isn’t quite correct. Strictly speaking, what Jesus said was “Don’t be unbelieving, but believing.” There are other words in Greek for “doubt”, but none of them are used here. Several Bible translations reflect this difference. The King James Version, for example, has “Be not faithless, but believing”; The New English Bible has “Be unbelieving no longer, but believe”.
So? Well, this suggests that Jesus wasn’t taking Thomas to task for honest doubt, but for stubborn disbelief.
Just think. Thomas had missed out on Jesus’s appearance to his fellow disciples (verses 19-23). But... never mind, he knew these men! He had lived intimately with them for over two years, as they walked and talked with Jesus. He knew that they were hard-headed men, not shallow and impressionable.
So when, as one man, they greeted him with the news “We have seen the Lord!” (verse 25), he should have believed them. If it was just one or two, fair enough - we could understand his inability to believe. But John gives a clear impression that, no, it was the whole group (just Judas missing, of course).
So Thomas was at fault, not for doubting, but for refusing to believe, in the teeth of good evidence. There is a big difference.
Mind you, having said that, it’s important to point out too how gently and lovingly Jesus treats Thomas: a rebuke, yes, but a very tender rebuke (verses 27-29). He actually invites Thomas to prove to his satisfaction the very thing he has refused to believe: “Put your finger here; see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it into my side...”. No anger; no condemnation. Just disappointment - and love.
(It’s also worth noticing that Thomas had a bit of “previous” when it came to doubt. In John 14:5 he’s the disciple who flatly contradicts Jesus when Jesus talks about “the way”; and a little earlier, in John 11:16, he’s the one who cynically suggests that if their friend Lazarus really is dead, “Let us also go, so that we may die with him.” Not exactly a little ray of sunshine, our Thomas! - yet, again, how kind to him Jesus is. Is there a message there...?)
When I said that some people’s faith collapses because of a slow build-up of unspoken doubts - the last straw that breaks the camel’s back, if you like - I had in mind doubt in the sense of questioning. It’s not lacking faith; it’s wrestling with genuine puzzles and mysteries. And this is surely something we all do. (In this sense you could call Job the patron saint of doubt; and therefore the patron saint of all of us.)
Is it a sin, in the aftermath of the New Zealand mosque shootings, to wonder, “Why did God allow that to happen?” Or likewise, when there’s a terrible natural tragedy like the Mozambique cyclone, to reflect, “If God really is God, couldn’t he have prevented that from happening?”
I have on my shelves a book, written by a Christian, called Is God a moral monster? It grapples, among other things, with those Bible passages where God is portrayed as, in effect, ordering mass slaughter (Joshua 6 would be a prime example).
I’m not sure how successful the writer is - but ten out of ten for trying! Anyone who has read the Bible without puzzling over passages like these... well, all I can say is that they have never really read the Bible at all.
So, a question to finish with: Are you bottling up doubts in your mind? Yes? Then, please, find a wise and trusted Christian friend and unload them. It could make all the difference.
And for the rest of us, a tiny verse from the tiny Letter of Jude: “Be merciful to those who doubt” (verse 22). Or, as the New English Bible puts it, “There are some doubting souls who need your pity”. Or, as The Message puts it, “Go easy on those who hesitate in the faith.”
Yes? Yes! Amen!
Lord Jesus, please be gentle with me when my faith falls short. Please help me too to be completely honest when I find myself doubting. And help me too to “go easy on those who hesitate in the faith”. Amen.
Last time we thought about the sad mystery of why people “fall away” from faith in Jesus.
Our main focus was on people whose faith crumples because they never talk about, or seek help for, doubts and questionings that challenge their faith; and by the time they do, it’s too late. And I suggested that sometimes churches must bear a weight of responsibility for this, because they treat doubt almost as a sin, so that people feel too guilty to open up about it.
“But wait a minute,” somebody might say, “isn’t that being a bit soft on doubt? Didn’t Jesus tell ‘Doubting Thomas’ off for his doubt? ‘Stop doubting and believe’, he told him. And in other places don’t we find Jesus obviously very disappointed by people’s doubting?”
A fair question. But I think there is an answer.
First, a matter of translation...
Even though Doubting Thomas has gone down in history with that title, it isn’t quite correct. Strictly speaking, what Jesus said was “Don’t be unbelieving, but believing.” There are other words in Greek for “doubt”, but none of them are used here. Several Bible translations reflect this difference. The King James Version, for example, has “Be not faithless, but believing”; The New English Bible has “Be unbelieving no longer, but believe”.
So? Well, this suggests that Jesus wasn’t taking Thomas to task for honest doubt, but for stubborn disbelief.
Just think. Thomas had missed out on Jesus’s appearance to his fellow disciples (verses 19-23). But... never mind, he knew these men! He had lived intimately with them for over two years, as they walked and talked with Jesus. He knew that they were hard-headed men, not shallow and impressionable.
So when, as one man, they greeted him with the news “We have seen the Lord!” (verse 25), he should have believed them. If it was just one or two, fair enough - we could understand his inability to believe. But John gives a clear impression that, no, it was the whole group (just Judas missing, of course).
So Thomas was at fault, not for doubting, but for refusing to believe, in the teeth of good evidence. There is a big difference.
Mind you, having said that, it’s important to point out too how gently and lovingly Jesus treats Thomas: a rebuke, yes, but a very tender rebuke (verses 27-29). He actually invites Thomas to prove to his satisfaction the very thing he has refused to believe: “Put your finger here; see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it into my side...”. No anger; no condemnation. Just disappointment - and love.
(It’s also worth noticing that Thomas had a bit of “previous” when it came to doubt. In John 14:5 he’s the disciple who flatly contradicts Jesus when Jesus talks about “the way”; and a little earlier, in John 11:16, he’s the one who cynically suggests that if their friend Lazarus really is dead, “Let us also go, so that we may die with him.” Not exactly a little ray of sunshine, our Thomas! - yet, again, how kind to him Jesus is. Is there a message there...?)
When I said that some people’s faith collapses because of a slow build-up of unspoken doubts - the last straw that breaks the camel’s back, if you like - I had in mind doubt in the sense of questioning. It’s not lacking faith; it’s wrestling with genuine puzzles and mysteries. And this is surely something we all do. (In this sense you could call Job the patron saint of doubt; and therefore the patron saint of all of us.)
Is it a sin, in the aftermath of the New Zealand mosque shootings, to wonder, “Why did God allow that to happen?” Or likewise, when there’s a terrible natural tragedy like the Mozambique cyclone, to reflect, “If God really is God, couldn’t he have prevented that from happening?”
I have on my shelves a book, written by a Christian, called Is God a moral monster? It grapples, among other things, with those Bible passages where God is portrayed as, in effect, ordering mass slaughter (Joshua 6 would be a prime example).
I’m not sure how successful the writer is - but ten out of ten for trying! Anyone who has read the Bible without puzzling over passages like these... well, all I can say is that they have never really read the Bible at all.
So, a question to finish with: Are you bottling up doubts in your mind? Yes? Then, please, find a wise and trusted Christian friend and unload them. It could make all the difference.
And for the rest of us, a tiny verse from the tiny Letter of Jude: “Be merciful to those who doubt” (verse 22). Or, as the New English Bible puts it, “There are some doubting souls who need your pity”. Or, as The Message puts it, “Go easy on those who hesitate in the faith.”
Yes? Yes! Amen!
Lord Jesus, please be gentle with me when my faith falls short. Please help me too to be completely honest when I find myself doubting. And help me too to “go easy on those who hesitate in the faith”. Amen.
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