Thomas the Sincere

The Incredulity of Saint Thomas by Caravaggio

Easter gets treated like a second-class holiday. A time for chocolate bunnies, colored eggs, and gorging on ham and all the trimmings. Easter marks the end of Lent and is linked to the Jewish Passover. I could bore you with a lengthy parade of historical facts and customs about Easter. But I won’t. Instead, let’s go directly to the heart of Easter: It’s about the resurrection of Christ from the dead. I have been a Christian for decades and every now and then a tiny doubt enters my noggin. The resurrection of Christ happened so long ago that it can occasionally seem like a fable, even to a dyed-in-the-wool believer like me. After all, rising from the dead can seem preposterous to those of us living in the modern world where the laws of nature and physics dominate our lives. Those with more scientific minds sometimes accuse us of magical thinking or superstition when we talk about Christ rising from the dead. I understand that not everybody can get their head around a resurrected Savior. And yet I feel guilty when I have an occasional doubt about Christ’s resurrection. I tell myself it’s only natural for me—two thousand years after the event—to wonder if it really happened. But I can’t doubt the unmistakable hand of God in my life. And that God is Christ.

Still, I like to think of Thomas when those irksome doubts appear. History has given Thomas a nickname: Doubting Thomas. Here’s the amazing thing about Thomas—He was one of Christ’s disciples and witnessed many of the miracles Christ performed. Thomas spent years with Christ before the resurrection. And Thomas still had doubts. Here’s the post-resurrection scripture that marked Thomas as a doubter:

John 20:24-27, “One of the twelve disciples, Thomas (who was called Didymus), was not with the others when Jesus came. They told him, ‘We have seen the Lord.’ But he replied, ‘I won’t believe it unless I see the nail wounds in his hands, put my fingers into them, and place my hand into the wound in his side.’
Eight days later the disciples were together again, and this time Thomas was with them. The doors were locked; but suddenly, as before, Jesus was standing among them. ‘Peace be with you,’ he said. Then he said to Thomas, ‘Put your finger here, and look at my hands. Put your hand into the wound in my side. Don’t be faithless any longer. Believe!’”

Thomas was indeed a doubter, but he sincerely wanted to know the truth. God has done enough to satisfy those who really want to know. As for those who really don’t want to know; I doubt (pardon the pun) they would believe even if they saw Christ walk out of the tomb and touched the wounds in his hands and feet. They would say it’s an illusion or that he wasn’t really dead. But for those who really want to know, God has done enough to satisfy our doubts. He performed documented miracles. He taught with power and authority in a completely new way. He impacted lives then and now. He changed the course of human history.

Thomas has already gone before us and demanded hard evidence that he could directly feel and experience. The rest is up to us—to believe. If you sincerely want to know the truth, the truth will reveal itself to you.