No Doubt!

A seriously cool article on my favorite apostle.

You know, I've wondered why we think of Thomas as "doubting," too. Yeah, I know he wanted proof of the Resurrection before he believed the rumors, but absent hindsight, wouldn't you? That misunderstanding aside, I tend to think of Thomas having stronger faith than any of the others.

Consider the two other spots in the Gospels where he has something to say. Right after he checks out Jesus' hands and side, he falls to his knees and says, "My Lord and my God." Not "Gosh, Master, what does this mean?" Not "Hey! You look almost like you could be God. Maybe you were the Messiah!"

No. It's "my Lord and my God." Period. For a supposed skeptic, Thomas absorbed the entire doctrine of the Incarnation, awfully quickly and without blinking. Once he knows the Jesus he's heard about is the same one he already knew, he's willing to believe anything that Jesus says. As Paul said later, "I know whom I have believed." That's faith in a Person, not merely in a set of doctrines.

The other one makes me embarrassed of my lack of faith. When Jesus is fixing to go to Bethany to see Lazarus and his sisters (and carry out a really spectacular miracle), the disciples try to talk Him out of it. All except Thomas. He shrugs and says, "Let us go also, that we may die with him."

Wow. He's certain the Jews are going to kill them, and he probably thinks Jesus is making a terrible mistake. But that's beside the point to Thomas. He's going to follow, even though he's pretty sure that it will all end badly. I think I would have at least looked for ways to stall Him a little.

That kind of puts the stories of Thomas' evangelism in India in perspective. Even if we slough off the more spectacular miracle stories as legend (and that's not always safe to do when you're talking about apostles), Thomas carried the Gospel farther and into more alien territory than any of the other disciples. In fact, just off the top of my head, I think he's the only one who carried the word outside the bounds of the Roman Empire. The church he founded in India is still there, despite being in decidedly Christian-unfriendly territory for two millennia.