Reflections on Doubt and Belief

Text: John 20: 19-31

I offer three brief responses to the familiar story of “Doubting Thomas”:

I want to praise Thomas for doubting.

I want to probe the meaning of Thomas’s doubting.

I want to practice Thomas’s response to doubting.

First, I praise Thomas for doubting.  More than that, I praise him for being willing to express his doubts and not keep them to himself since, by expressing his doubts, he moved toward belief.  By telling his friends he had not experienced what they experienced and by insisting he needed to rely on his own experience, Thomas helps us value our unique sacred experiences.  Your experience of the Sacred is not mine and will not suffice for me.  And it does me no good to pretend I’ve felt what you've felt.  Often people don’t admit their doubts even to themselves, and that traps them into faked faith, which is no faith.  I want to praise Thomas for his authenticity.

Second, I want to probe the meaning of Thomas’s doubting. Since the opposite of doubt is belief, let’s recall Marcus Borg’s definition of belief as “setting one’s heart toward.” To believe in Jesus is to direct one’s life toward him.  Of course I affirm intellectual questioning that advances understandings. But belief is not so much about intellectually assenting to certain facts as it is heart-felt commitments to a way of living.

Lauren Winner explains, “On any given morning, I might not be able to list for you the facts I know about God.  But I can tell you what I wish to commit myself to, what I want for the foundation of my life, how I want to see.  When I stand with the faithful at [my church] and declare that 'we believe in one God’ . . . I am saying, ‘Let this be my scaffolding. Let this be the place I work, struggle, play, rest.   I commit myself to this.’”[i]

Perhaps Thomas’s doubt was a loss of vision, of heart, a feeling of discouragement and despair, a disappointment perhaps with Jesus or Jesus’s way.  I’m making a leap here, but I even wonder if Thomas had given up on Jesus’s way of peace.  After all, we can’t help noticing that Jesus gave three greetings of peace in this terse dialogue. “Peace be with you” could even be taken as a command to “be at peace.”  Put that repeated phrase together with Thomas’ absence from the group after Jesus’s violent death and then factor in the “honor culture” of the ancient Near East and I can imagine (yes, this is just in my imagination, not in the text) that Thomas had left the others to roam the back streets of Jerusalem,  to consort with the Zealots, and to consider possibilities for revenge and revolt.

However, one week earlier Jesus had breathed into the other disciples the Holy Spirit, and in that same breath Jesus commissioned them to forgive.  If they’d been aching for vengeance, the Spirit quelled that impulse.  Jesus had said to the others, ^“If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained” (John 20:23).  Some have used this verse to claim for themselves the authority to judge others.  But maybe Jesus is describing the simple reality that others cannot FEEL forgiven, cannot feel the effects of God’s forgiveness, if we do not live toward them as if they have really been forgiven.  The cycle of violence cannot end unless someone begins to forgive.  And we cannot let go of the burden of our mistakes until we sense forgiveness.  We must forgive people of the tiny slights and major offenses against us, real and imagined, so that others experience genuine forgiveness. Which is not “I forgive you and now I have a handy thing to hold over your head” forgiveness.  Not “I forgive you and now I feel superior.”  Not “I forgive. Sort of.” If the power of God’s forgiving spirit is going to be known in this world, it’s going to be known when human beings bestow real forgiveness on one another.  And if we do not--if we do not let one another off the hook--then we all suffer. 

This scripture suggests that the church’s Great Commission according to John’s Gospel is forgiveness.  As one writer has said, “The church is not in the morals enforcement business.  The world is in the morals business, and it has done a fine job of creating moral philosophy and moral codes and judicial systems.  But the church is in the forgiveness business.” Jesus breathed into us a spirit of forgiveness.  Which comes from the spirit of peace.  We refrain from getting even.  But we go one step further.  We reach out in kindness and forgiveness.  Maybe Thomas had been ready to give up on Jesus’ way.  But how can you see the wounds of Jesus, recall his ability to forgive from the cross, and not believe that forgiveness is possible and is, in fact, the only path to peace.

Finally, I want to practice Thomas’s response to doubts.  “My Lord and my God,” Thomas replies when he reconnects with Jesus.  Jesus let Thomas touch his woundedness and then Thomas could breathe in forgiveness, not retaliation. 

I want to move from my inevitable moments of doubt to reaffirm Jesus’s Way.  It can often seem impossible that vulnerable love will have the last word, that forgiveness is stronger than anger or bitterness or defensiveness or self-righteousness or fear.  Sometimes it seems I have the most trouble forgiving the people I love the most or the slights that are the least.  But when I look to Jesus . . . when I am able to do that, I find I can honor no other way but his.  “My Lord and my God,” I pray as I try, as I try by God's grace, to forgive. 

PRAYER FOR PEACE

In this quiet moment, breathe your peaceful Spirit on us, Force of Love.  Call to our minds the people and situations we need to forgive.  We may even need to let you off the hook, O God.  Let us give up our needs for control to find harmony without and within.  Let us be at peace with you and with all your creatures.   Let us also resolve to WORK for peace with courageous hearts that believe and do not doubt that peace will one day reign.

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[i] Winner, Lauren F.  Still: Notes on a Mid-Faith Crisis. New York: HarperOne, 2012  (p. 169)