EASTER 2  
Doubting Thomas 

John 20.24  Unless I see the scars of the nails in his hands ... I will not believe.

It is apposite that my middle name is Thomas. Throughout my Christian life I have been a doubter, even though I continue to work as a full time lay minister. In the usual way of Christian paradox I feel called to ‘preach the gospel’ even though I struggle to believe much of it.

Belief and doubt is the yin-yang of many a Christian’s life. Many are desperate to believe, wrestle with doubt, question reality, and yet can’t bring themselves to put to one side something so dearly cherished. Many, like me, cannot live with faith and yet cannot live without it.

But is doubt a bad thing? Obviously St John thought so, expressing the view that ‘blessed are those who believe and do not see’. Personally, I see doubt as not only healthy but essential to the Christian life. If more religious people doubted, surely the world would be a slightly saner place? 

Even as I write there is news of yet another Palestinian suicide bomber blowing himself up along with any Israelis unfortunate enough to be within striking distance. I wonder how many suicide bombers would blow themselves up if they doubted the promises of a martyr’s paradise?

The opposite of doubt is certainty, and yet there can be no such thing in the realms of religious speculation. Give a man or woman certainty and there can be no room for faith, for faith is hope in what is not seen. We can live faith for it is open, endless and eternal. Does not ‘hope spring eternal’? Give certainty and we risk sowing the seeds of arrogance and bigotry. 

The faithful – the truly faithful – stand much more chance of living in harmony because they recognise within others a seeking after truth and a quest for answers to those illusive eternal questions; the truly faithful recognise that faith is but a tradition to build on and live by. 

The purely religious, on the other hand, desperately seek converts to bolster their own version of the truth and to confirm their own cherished convictions of reality. To be proved ‘right’ is a very human need - but it can be extremely dangerous.

The world is divided essentially because we are all so sure that we are indeed ‘right’.

There are, of course, degrees of doubt. Enough doubt to move us to agnosticism is healthy, because we then recognise our need to fall back on faith. Too much doubt and we move towards atheism, and atheism can lead to the same stifling certitude of the most ardent religious convert. In my own experience, having a reasonable religious discussion with either a card-carrying atheist or a dyed-in-the-wool follower of a particular faith has the same stultifying effect. Both are intractable, for they are but different sides of the same coin.

Does this mean all religions are the same? By no means, or I wouldn’t follow the Christian faith. I would say that Christianity probably encourages the intimacy of prayer more than other faiths, and encourages and talks about relationships a great deal more. Christianity has been more open to academic criticism than other major faiths, although they too are now facing questions from within. 

If we Christians can put to one side the metaphysics and concentrate on the ethical we still have a faith which can go a long way to ‘saving’ the world. Faith can inspire, correct, encourage and comfort, and all these things are worth pursuing – but never at the expense of loving our neighbour. That is not Christian, yet so many of us do just that.

Poor ‘doubting Thomas’ tends to get a mixed press; seen as lacking because he doubted, then hailed for exclaiming ‘my Lord and my God’, and finally knocked down again because ‘blessed are those who believe without seeing’. The poor man couldn’t win, but then, can any of us?

Live your life with its mixture of faith and doubt, as you probably do already, but be more open about it. I no longer fear telling people about my doubts because that is what faith is for. Pray to your Lord as best you are able and lay your burdens at his metaphoric feet. In the words of George Fox, founder of the Quaker movement, "walk cheerfully over all the world meeting that of God in everyone".

Seek faith but not conviction, and be not ashamed of doubt, for true discipleship must by its very nature be a mixture of both.

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