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.” John 20:24-29 ESV.

I grew up hearing the story of “Doubting Thomas” many times. I was warned as a child not to be like that pesky, doubting Thomas but to just have faith instead of asking for any proof from God. If we have proof than its not faith, it knowledge. The story goes that after Jesus rose from the dead he appeared to people, talked with them and even ate with them to prove to them that he was really alive again. He appeared to all of his 11 disciples, that is, except for Thomas. Thomas wasn't convinced by all the stories that his close-knit community of trusted friends told him. He went so far as to say that the only way he would believe would be if he were to “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.” He sounds almost like an ancient version of a modern skeptic. This claim sounds either like he had a stubborn refusal to believe even when his trusted friends tell him he should based on their experiences or he just needed some real proof of the veracity of their stupendous claims of a crucified man rising from the dead and being healthy and alive again. Remember, being skeptical doesn’t mean being doubting. It means that you won’t believe something without sufficient evidence or reasons to believe it first. His moniker, “Doubting Thomas” would more accurately be “Skeptical Thomas.”  

So as the story goes, Thomas was with the group later on and Jesus entered a locked room and talked with them all. Jesus had opened a locked door and walked in, walked straight through the solid door or teleported into the room. Any of these scenarios is a pretty fantastic story to hear, especially when you’re taught from your childhood that it is historically true. As a child, I imagined that Jesus had comic-book-like powers to pass through solid matter and read people’s thoughts. So Jesus took up Thomas on his offer and told him to “Put your finger here, and see my hands; and put out your hand, and place it in my side. Do not disbelieve, but believe.” That was all it took for Thomas to believe. He even called Jesus “My God” in response to the experience. We don’t know if he put his hand into Jesus’ wound. But the moral of the story was summed up in Jesus’ closing remark, “Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.” So Thomas wasn’t particularly blessed because he had a reasonable skepticism, apparently. The lesson here is that we readers of this gospel of John ought not to question the miraculous claims of Jesus’ supposed followers but blindly believe them without asking for any evidence. For this “virtue” of having blind faith, we will be blessed.

Back when I was nearing the end of my experience as a believing Christian, I found myself living with a mounting number of issues that were progressively eroding my faith away. I described it like this. “I feel like my faith is there. But it’s like it’s a car that’s broken down on the side of the road. All the parts are there. It’s in the right place. But it’s out of fuel or something’s not working right.” I truly believed that if I could just “press into God” harder through prayer and often times through fasting, studying the scriptures deeper, humble myself before my brothers in the Lord more, confess my sins and struggles with sin or wait for God that a breakthrough was going to come in my relationship with God. I still felt the comforting sensations of God’s presence occasionally while in prayer or worship. I believed that God was working behind the scenes in my life to bring about something glorifying to God. God was a redeemer of all things for his glory and he was my personal savior. Somehow this was all part of His wonderful plan for me. Never once in my 33 years of living had I experienced any actual doubt about my faith. Things that should have caused me to question my faith only motivated me to reach out harder for God.

Doubting Thomas started to become an inspiration to me. If Jesus honored Thomas’ need for first-hand evidence (pun intended) of his resurrection, then Jesus would honor my own need for sufficient evidence of his truth. My prayers being answered appeared to be at about the same rate as chance or what would likely have happened anyhow. My life experience was not all adding up to what I understood the Bible to say about God’s activity in my life, but my experiences were that of a very human man. In Christianity’s teachings, I am considered both a “fallen,” broken, sin-tainted mortal with thinking that is limited and clouded by a sinful nature. I absolutely needed the Holy Spirit of God to guide me into truth (John 16:1) because I was not supposed to rely on my own intellect (Pro 3:5). And I had complete faith that God would do this (essentially he would do the thinking for me). I didn’t give God a required specific criterion of proof as Thomas did. I just asked, “God. I do believe. Help my unbelief. I know I’ve experienced you. But please. Show up in my life in a way that qualms my nagging confusion. Your word says one thing. But my experiences, observations and my growing understanding of science suggest otherwise. I don’t know how but I need you to meet me like you met Thomas right where he was in his skepticism. You said you’re the same yesterday, today and forever (Hebrews 13:8). So please, do again for me what you did for Thomas’ when he had honest questions.”

At this point I think I should share an experience I had when I was very young. Keep in mind that as a young child, my social life consisted of going to church with my mother, my father and my grandparents. (They attended three different churches.) While at home and at my grandparents’ house I prayed with them before bed and before meals. My grandmother would “lay hands on me” and weep with hot tears for my soul each night before bed when I slept over at her place. While I was playing with my toys I was being indoctrinated by Christian television hours each day. I grew up hearing stories from family about personal encounters with Jesus, Satan and angels, miracles and even UFOs. Missionaries’ stories of the miraculous, stories about battles with demons and stories about divine healing were a big part of my reality. To me, the world first and foremost was filled with unseen angels and demons battling over the salvation of every soul.

One morning while I was alone in my bed, I awoke to see what appeared to be Jesus standing in my bedroom. He was emanating sunbeams. He was dressed in Biblical garb with arms outreached to me and a welcoming smile on his face. I was terrified. But I instantly recalled the story (and its accompanying children’s song) of Peter, James on John caught in a violent storm on the Sea of Galilee. Jesus suddenly appeared, walking on the storming sea’s waters. He said “Don’t be afraid. It’s me.” And when he stepped into their boat the storm stopped. I knew I should heed Jesus’ words and not fear. But when I looked at Jesus, I was scared. I covered my face with the blankets a few times before yelling “Mommy! Mommy!” I looked at him again, standing there patiently with a loving smile, shining like the sun (but not hurting my eyes). As soon as my mother began coming into my room, he disappeared right before my eyes. This experience lodged deep into my consciousness. For years, I would recall what happened and never have a single doubt that Jesus was the living God as the Bible claims.

Fast forward about 28 years. In the past couple years I had come to learn that I was lied to about evolution all my life. I was erroneously taught that the rapture of the church was imminent, which the Bible does not teach. I was taught that tithing is commanded by God, which it isn’t. And that encounter with Jesus was one of numerous, but much less dramatic, “spiritual” experiences that I had through the course of my life. I needed something more than an appearance, a feeling or another refreshing of my spirit. I needed not to continue to have to simply believe without any real evidence. I needed something that stood up in the face of logic, reason and testing. I needed to know, not just believe. I didn’t know what that would take. But I knew that if God was indeed real, he would know exactly how to demonstrate his existence to me as he did to Thomas.

I had recently come to discover that evolution was true. The Big Bang was real. We are animals and we have animal ancestors. Natural selection is nature’s power to create species, no miracles needed. Our brains evolved in such a way that we believe what we’re told by our trusted elders. We naturally detect agenticity (attribute conscious intent to something that is impersonal and natural, i.e. attributing thunder’s sound to Baal’s chariot wheels rolling, etc.) in events even where there should be more realistic scientific answers. But the Bible claims that our power to reason is broken unless Jesus saves us and fills us with his Spirit (John 16:8-9). The deck was stacked against us. Only Jesus could save us. But Jesus had already saved me! I had “the mind of Christ.” Why were the instances where I formerly saw the hand of God at work to be now more reasonably explained by evolution, psychology and other fields of science? Was I simply dismissing what science is showing us in order to preserve my simple faith? Could I try to reconcile science and faith through some variation of Creationism? Was this God’s way of purposefully hiding himself from me (Isa 45:15)? Was this a test? Was my choosing one of these taking away the Holy Spirit’s role in my life? How could it be good for God to test whether or not I should trust the information I have or to trust him in spite of evidence that contradicts his word?

Either Jesus was going to show favoritism to Thomas (and God said that he is no “respecter of persons” in Acts 10:34.), or he was going to come through for me. Well, he didn’t come through. I kept seeking until I found. And what I found wasn’t God. What I found was that if there is a god, he/she/it is definitely not the Christian god, the Jewish god, the Muslims’ god or the Mormon god. If there is a god, it is either entirely inscrutable, completely uninterested in the well-being of anyone or it’s a god I’ve not yet heard of. And that god would not be a god worthy of worship based on all the needless, preventable suffering humanity has constantly been subjected to and the slipshod job of creating that he did.

My ‘deconversion’ from Christianity put me in no man’s land when it came to what the purpose of life is, if there is one. I was not sure what I thought. I definitely still felt a strong sense of compassion for people. Atheism didn’t make me into a bad person or unleash my inner demons or anything. It made me think. I had a new acceptance of myself that I’d never felt before. For one thing, years of battling and suppressing my natural sexual feelings were now understood to have been a wasted effort. I needed not feel any guilt for entertaining sexual thoughts or giving into sexual temptation. I still felt the same guilt, shame and regret for typical things that weren’t wrong simply because the Bible said they were. But I felt no dread over the possibility of ending up in hell. Was this a freedom-to-sin pass? Well, yes and no. Yes, it’s okay to be human, have sexual feelings, swear, dance, listen to music that’s not “glorifying to God,” watch a “worldly movie” or drink alcohol. No, it’s not okay to murder, lie, cheat or steal. No longer was I committed to conforming to God’s unclear, often changing, and sometimes impossible to reach will for my life. I had many more choices to make as to what I would make of this. It was MY life to live. It no longer belonged to a god who would reward or punish me based on my actions.

God is not what I found when I looked for him in the places that the Bible said I should find him. What I did find was that the world is a fascinating place of vast mysteries and numerous discoveries that have been and are being made. I found that I am a part of a whole universe. I am a part of a vast web of interrelated life in this planet (and possibly beyond). Natural selection had forged me. I can credit my origin in part to the death of a star, not to the hands of an ancient Near Eastern tribal deity’s hands. My existence contains much wonder and mystery. But it doesn’t in any way point to an intelligent designer. If there is an intelligent designer, he/she/it has a LOT to answer for. It’s more comforting and less mind wrenching to accept that there is no reason to think that there was a designer of the universe. No one’s coming to save us. Not Jesus. Not God. We are on our own. We have the ability to forge our species’ path into the future (barring an asteroid impact or some other man made or natural cataclysm driving us into extinction). There is no rule book of life. To an extent, we write our own. We are free to consciously craft our own meanings based on empathy, reason and evidence (ethics). And these can be battled out via philosophy and hopefully not through war. But regardless of any of our philosophical leanings, we all have the innate sense of right and wrong to steer us in the best direction. Now I knew what stands in the way of what nature has given us in our natural moral sense, religion, politics and ideology, the trinity of mind controlling evils.

I honestly, genuinely asked God to give me what he gave Thomas, even though I knew that somehow would mean I would miss out on the blessing of believing even though I had not seen. Was that special blessing actually the bliss of ignorance? I didn't know. But it certainly began appearing that way. I began seeing more and more the hypocrisy and ignorance of sincere Christians. Was I also ignorant and hypocritical in my own ways I still couldn't see? If I was, I knew I wasn't ignorant about the Bible or science as most Christians I knew were. In this age of information, ignorance is a choice, a choice I refuse to make.

So now instead of honoring faith in the absence of evidence, I value skepticism, evidence and critical thinking. I now see debunking bad ideas, rumors and conspiracies to be a good thing. I’d rather be free to think a thought and learn something new than work hard at conforming my thoughts and behavior to what I think God wants. How relieving it is to see the people of the world as the people for who they are instead of seeing them as souls that need to be either saved or further enlightened with God’s truth. The incessant unseen battle of the angels and demons over the fate of all the people of this world had finally stopped. The shame of many of my sins vanished. Thought crimes no longer existed. The struggle to be pious ended. Now it was my goal not to please anyone else like my god, but to make the most of myself and this life that I have while I have it. This life is so much more precious once eternity is not the underlying factor in how I think about literally everything in life.

I no longer live in the often comforting and sometimes terrifying shadow of a god. Spirits, angels and demons no longer filled the world I lived in. The dedication to living a life of prayer and fasting was meaningless now. My fascination with this supposedly beautiful god was now replaced with awe of the fascinating universe. And that’s enough to enrapture your spirit for the rest of your life right there. The shock of just how deeply deluded I in fact was now humbles me and motivates me to learn all that I can about the human mind and our evolutionary origins. I am a part of something that is as vast as I could ever have imagined God to be- the universe itself. Einstein said it eloquently when he wrote: “A human being is a part of the whole, called by us "Universe," a part limited in time and space.  He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings as something separated from the rest, a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness.  This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us.  Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.  Nobody is able to achieve this completely, but the striving for such achievement is in itself a part of the liberation and a foundation for inner security.”