For those of you who don't know Thomas let me quickly introduce him. He is one of Jesus' followers who gets a bit of stick because he has the audacity to say that he won't believe Jesus has risen until he sees it for himself. Ever since he uttered those words, anyone for the last 2000 years who has voiced their doubts has run the risk of being called a "Doubting Thomas".
Talk about a name sticking like mud!
It seems to be a bad thing to be a Doubting Thomas and yet I think I, and many others, would react exactly the same way.
Imagine if you had just been told that someone you knew and loved had got up and walked out of their grave after you had witnessed their brutal torture and murder. Are you gonna start hollering and praising God or are you gonna say "really guys? That seems a bit far fetched, I may have to see it to believe it"?
The thing I love about Jesus in this story is that he shows up to do exactly what Thomas said he needed. While all the other disciples where standing round telling Tom he needed more faith, or he should just believe, or that doubt is from the devil (come on, we've all been told these things!), Jesus walks in and says "hey bro, heard you needed some proof".
I think Tommy boy gets a bad name.
Because we all doubt.
We all have moments when we ask ourselves if our faith is really what we make it out to be or if it is simply a really good hoax.
We all question why we are living as Christians, or why we are living at all!
We all ask for proof, for something that would undeniably prove to us once and for all that this is everything it promises it is.
We doubt God, we doubt our faith, we doubt ourselves.
We are all Thomas.
Except in the fact that Thomas doubted one massive thing, whereas I for one everything.
I am always seconded guessing myself and wondering if I made the right decision. I am constantly worried that I am gonna make a wrong turn and ruin my life. Maybe it comes from being divorced so young. But I have another theory.
My sister calls it 'procrastinating perfectionism'.
Being a perfectionist means that you have to do everything perfectly, you want it to be right first time. By procrastinating though you usually don't end up with enough time to do that. Put these two together and you have someone who fears getting it wrong so you put it off til the last minute to when you are bound to not be able to get it right and then you don't disappoint yourself.
Yeah, I am messed up.
See disappointing people is where my biggest fear lies. I am worried that, if I take the wrong path, I will disappoint my friends, family and, worst of all, God.
I know that this isn't right. I know that God is with me in all things and that nothing I can do is going to drive God away but somehow that doesn't translate into how I feel.
And so I become afraid, and then stressed, and then I begin to doubt.
It's a vicious cycle.
It is moments when I am beginning to fear that I remember a bible verse that I memorised as a child in Sunday school:
"God has not given us a spirit of fear, but a Spirit of power, love and soundness of mind" (2 Tim 1:7)
See, God doesn't operate by wielding fear over our heads. In fact fear is the opposite of love, and God is love, so there is no fear when you live in the love of God.
So those moments when I am afraid, I tell myself that if I just step over that line, cross that bridge, jump that hurdle, then I will have defeated the fear of the thing itself.
Feel the fear and do it anyway.
Because faith is about the unknown. It is about hearing a life giving word and, despite the doubt, despite the fear, deciding that you can't live without it. And then, equipped with that faith, you then face all of lives other challenges, still with fear and trepidation, but with strength and determination.
And then when you face death, the biggest fear of all, it can be with peace, knowing that to die is the biggest step of faith there is (idea stolen from Sam Burrows) as it is in death that we find out if what we lived for is really true or not.
For it is when we die that we will see Jesus, just as Thomas did, smiling and saying "Now, about those doubts you had...."
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