The Cost of Doubt
1 John 1
John 20: 19-31
8/23/15
Today we hear the
very familiar story of doubting Thomas. He has heard the news that Jesus
appeared among the disciples and yet he does not believe it - or rather he is
unsure, for as he describes it, he is not against believing, he just wants
proof. And after Jesus gives him that proof Jesus says to Thomas, “Because you
have seen me, you have believed; blessed are those who have not seen and yet
have believed."
This reminds me of
the story of a little boy, the son of a pastor whose parent told him to go wash
his hands after playing in the dirt because of all the germs. The child refused saying “Germs and
Jesus! Germs and Jesus! That’s all I ever hear around this house and
I’ve never seen either one!”
At least most of
us here have probably never seen the risen Christ and so we are part of that
group of Christians who, by our very presence in this room, are proclaiming
that we believe in some way in a resurrected Christ. Whether you believe that
to be literal or a story does not matter.
Your presence here declares that the story has meaning for you, that
resurrection and the new life that it proclaims are realities for you. We are,
therefore, part of that group of blessed people who have believed in some way without
seeing. But we live in a time when Christianity has been around for awhile. I
think back to the time of Jesus and find myself wondering how easy it would
have been to believe around the time of Jesus’ death? If we were living at that time, I think it
might have been much harder for us to accept that a person we had actually seen
and heard about, maybe even someone who grew up in our home town, maybe someone
we went to school with, had arisen in any way from the dead. The farther back
in time an event occurred, I think the easier it probably is to believe in it:
the more distance we have from knowing the person personally, the less their
story has to compete with an image of who we thought they were. I imagine that
knowing Jesus and seeing him as a person might have made it very difficult for
some, like Thomas, to believe without some kind of proof.
The gospel writer
John is very clear about his reason for writing his gospel stories. He says, “these are written that you may
believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may
have life in his name.” Many scholars believe that the gospel of John was
written around 125 AD, so few, if any, of the people who met Jesus were still
alive. Still, it was a time close enough to Jesus’ life that it was still
probably difficult for many to believe a resurrection story about someone they
may have connections with, either through friends or relatives. “Aaron’s
cousin, Jesus, was said to have risen from the dead. What do you think of that?”
It is in this context - of not knowing Jesus, but probably knowing people who
did know or were somehow related to Jesus, that John is writing his gospel. And
he is encouraging them to believe without sight, saying this is a blessed
thing; to believe even when their senses have not been given the same proof the
disciples were given. Hard for many people today. No doubt even harder for the
people of Jesus’ time.
But whatever you
believe the resurrection to mean or be about, my question for you today is what
does this story tell us about doubt, about our own doubts, about our times of
faith struggle, and about where God is in those times and experiences?
With Jasmyn’s
permission, I want to share with you some of the faith story of my eldest
daughter. Jasmyn is now 15, but, perhaps especially when she was little, she had
a very special relationship with God.
She talked to God starting at a very young age, and she would often tell
us about things that God had said to her. I believe in those conversations. I
think children are in a unique place, before the cynicism of age has crept in,
before the “realism” of life raises doubts in them, to really hear God’s voice
in ways that most adults can no longer do. Someday I will share with you some
of the things Jasmyn has shared with me about her conversations about God. But today I want to share something
different. When Jasmyn was about 7 years old at dinner one night (where all my
deep theological conversations with my daughter seem to take place), Jasmyn
popped up with “Mama, I’ve been thinking and I’ve been realizing that believing
in something doesn’t make it real. I mean, we can believe things that aren’t
real, that aren’t true.”
“Yes, that’s true!”
I agreed, thinking of the many times Jasmyn had said things to me such as, “I
know you don’t think fairies are real, but they are. I know you don’t think Pegasus’ are real, but
they are.”
But Jasmyn
continued, “So it is possible that we believe in God, but God might not be
real. Our believing in God could just be a belief that doesn’t make God real.”
So I answered, “Yes,
you are right, Jasmyn. Believing does not make something real. That is why our belief is called ‘faith’. It
isn’t something you can prove or disprove. It is something you believe without
that.”
This answer made
Jasmyn very uncomfortable. She thought about it and began to cry, “Well, then
how do we know God is real?”
“Well the simple
answer is that we don’t know if by knowing you mean having hard,
scientific evidence. We believe it. We trust it. But many people, at least,
would say that we don’t know in the sense of having irrefutable proof.” After
a pause I added, “Jasmyn you yourself have told me on many occasions that God
has spoken to you. You have told me of things that God has said to you. So you
have heard God. Don’t those conversations act as a proof for you that God is
real?”
“Well, it’s
occurred to me that those things I thought God told me just might be my own
voice inside my head.” She was clearly very distressed by this. And I found
myself both a little sad and a little proud. The sad part was that she had
finally grown beyond the innocent blind acceptance of her faith. That magical
childhood time of unwavering and unquestioning faith she had begun to leave
behind. When Jesus said, “you must come to me as a little child”, I believe he
meant we must come knowing that there is more to learn, that God is not done
with us, that we don’t have all the answers. I believe Jesus meant we must come
searching for answers and wanting to know more. I don’t think he meant we need
to come without questions or doubts. But
still, as with any parent, there are some moments of grief as our children
leave aspects of their childhood behind. I had enjoyed hearing about Jasmyn’s
conversations with God and it occurred to me that they were now changing, or
her absolute faith in them was now changing.
The pride part for
me held a recognition that she was also beginning to engage her faith with her
mind, something God also calls us to do. Yes, those who can believe without
proof may be, as Jesus said, “happy.” I mean face it, it is easier to have all
the answers. It is easier to have an unwavering faith. It is easier, and I
would say happier even, to believe 100 % without doubts or reservations in a
God who is with us, who loves us, who has been resurrected and calls us into
new life with God.
But God calls us
to love God with our whole heart, soul, strength, and Jesus added MIND to the
list - and that mind engagement is going to cause moments of doubt, moments of
crisis, moments of questioning and exploration. As we’ve discussed before, it
is, according to the spiritual development experts, those very periods of
crisis, including periods of doubt, that cause our faith to grow, to develop,
to become deeper and more real. Real faith is a living, breathing thing. It
must be allowed to be explored and searched. If we keep it boxed into a rigid
tight doctrine, it is not real, it cannot spread roots, it cannot grow up to
the heavens, it cannot be firmly rooted in the creation God has made.
In other words,
doubt is a gift. Frederick Buechner describes doubt this way. “Whether your
faith is that there is a God or that there is not a God, if you don’t have any
doubts you are either kidding yourself or asleep. Doubts are the ants in the
pants of faith. They keep it awake and moving.”
None the less
doubt is uncomfortable. It isn’t comfortable to be unsure, to be in crisis, to
be in a time of spiritual turmoil. This is not comfortable at all. And it has
the possibility of leading into cynicism which is unhealthy and causes
unhappiness. But for those willing to truly engage it, look at it, explore it,
doubt is a gift. For it calls us to take our faith seriously, to explore with
God what it means to be a person of faith, to continue to grow in our
relationship to God and in our understanding.
It does even more
than that. In today’s scripture when Thomas doubted, how did Jesus respond? Did
he say “well, forget you, Thomas. You needed proof, so I no longer accept you
as one of my own!” Did he say, “Happy are those who believe without proof and
cursed are those who need it?” No. Instead, what did he do? He came to Thomas.
He came to Thomas and invited Thomas into a much closer relationship with him:
he invited Thomas to touch him, to experience him with his eyes, his ears and
even his sense of touch. Jesus was their teacher, the “Rabbi” as they described
him, and for him to allow himself to be touched would have been breaking, once
again, some of the most important Jewish rules of the time: to be touched in
this way at this time would have made Jesus “unclean” by the laws of the day.
But Jesus crossed this line: he chose intimacy with Thomas, he chose
relationship. Helping Thomas believe was much more important than anything else
and Jesus was willing to do whatever was needed to meet Thomas and offer this
gift of faith to him. For Thomas, his
doubt brought him this deep gift. Doubt brought his faith to a deeper and more
intimate level.
For those of you
who are curious, my answer to Jasmyn, as it would be to any of you in the
middle of a faith crisis was simply this, “I believe in those conversations (or
experiences) you had with God. The God I know and love does say or communicate
the things you have told me about; things like ‘This is my world’ and ‘I am
always with you.’ But if my belief in your conversations with God, if my belief
in God is not enough for you right now, that is okay too. Because my God is okay with your doubt as
well as your faith. My God loves all of who you are, with your struggles, with
your questions, with your confusion, with your doubts. And God’s love for you
and God’s faith in you, even if you do not have faith in God, is enough to save
the whole world.”
But the story didn’t
end there. Just like Thomas, Jasmyn was not content to just stay in the doubt.
For months after her first expression of this doubt she continued to do what
felt like “badgering” to me. Every day or so she would pop up with things like “Well,
except we don’t really know if God is real or not,” and she sounded defiant or
angry every time she said it, like she was testing me, I thought. But finally,
I heard it a little differently and I said to her, “Jasmyn, it sounds like your
doubt is really upsetting you.” She acknowledged that it was. So I said to her,
“Jasmyn, as I’ve told you before, God can handle your doubt. So take it to God.
Ask God what to do with or about it. Ask God how you can feel sure that God is
real.”
A few days later
as we were driving home from school, Jasmyn said to me, “You know, God loves
this earth and really wants us to take care of it.”
Her tone was so
different from the last few months’ conversations about God that I had to ask,
“Jasmyn, you really sound sure about that.
Did you talk to God like I suggested before?”
“Yes,” she told
me, and she continued, “I talked to God about whether or not God was real and
God said to me, ‘Jasmyn, I am more real than any of you. I’m more real than
your friends, I’m more real than your mama, I’m more real than your sister and
brother, and I’m even more real than you.’ So I don’t doubt anymore. God is
more real than any of us.” Out of the
mouths of babes.
Amen.
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