The Gift of Doubt
Overcoming the Sin of Certainty
I have been thinking about the apostle Thomas. He gets a bad rap, mostly because I think we miss the point of his appearances in the Gospel of John. Tim Gaines discusses this in his book Walking the Theological Life. Gaines points out how zealous Thomas appears when we first encounter him in the story of Lazarus. Thomas' attitude is one of being willing to go to the death, to follow a way he does not know. Thomas asks Jesus how they can know the way to follow Jesus if he hasn’t told them where he’s going. I encourage you to check out Gaines' book for his creative way to introduce theological method through story.
But what we think of when we hear about Thomas is that Thomas doubts. Many Bibles have the passage beginning in John 20:25 as “Doubting Thomas” or “Thomas Doubts.” We associate that idea with unbelief at our peril. Remember that Thomas' question about following Jesus leads us to the truth of Jesus being the way to know who God is. It is Thomas' questions which reveal the truth of Jesus being the way to truly know God. So, Thomas' statements after he is told of resurrection fit within the larger narrative of Thomas' thinking. If you read Luke’s version of the resurrection, he says that the men believe the women proclaiming the risen Jesus to be telling idle tales. Thomas does not claim it is an idle tale, but wants to see his friend before he gives into the hope being laid in front of him. It is doubt, but it is the doubt of hope rather than unbelief. Thomas is not faithless, because doubt is not the opposite of faith. Certainty is the opposite of faith and we know that certainty is not a problem Thomas suffers from.
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I thought of Thomas as I watched the beginning of the excellent movie Conclave. The homily Cardinal Lawrence delivers on the eve of a papal conclave taps into the truth of what Thomas brings to us. Cardinal Lawrence first reminds the Cardinals that Paul says the gift of the Church ,as expressed in Ephesians, is variety and diversity. That the unity of the Church exists within its incredible diversity. But then Lawrence speaks one of the great truths of faith.
Over the course of many years of service to our Mother the Church let me tell you. there is one sin which I have come to fear above all others; certainty. Certainty is the great enemy of unity, certainty is the deadly enemy of tolerance; even Christ was not certain at the end, ‘Dios mío, Dios mío, ¿por qué me has abandonado?’ (My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?)… Our faith is a living thing precisely because it walks hand in hand with doubt. If there was only certainty and only doubt, there would be no mystery, and therefore no need for faith.
That’ll preach, and it does! Certainty is that which destroys faith, because if anything shakes that certainty, the illusion fails. Faith is much more. In fact, faith is full of risk. As Aaron Simmons says, “faith is risk with direction.” That is frightening for those who desire certainty, but where has certainty gotten us? It brings division, it brings mistrust, it brings hatred of anything that does not prop up that certainty. Doubt is that which brings us faith that is not shaken. For too long, the Church has bought into the assumptions of modernism’s certainty and forgot what true apologetics are about. Rather than a defense of the existence of God, the earliest apologists were defending who they knew God to be. In other words, the Church should abandon arguments for the existence of God and return to showing who the God we worship is and what God is like. We should repent of the sin of certainty and live into a deep and abiding faith that is not afraid of doubt.
Let us have more Thomas' who demand their faith have hope and who do not need certainty. Let us find mystery and beauty in the risks we take in the direction of a God who loves through mercy and grace.