Doubting Thomases in an age of science

Thomas is my favorite apostle. I gotta love a guy who, regardless of the niceties of the situation, when offered the opportunity will thrust his hand smack-dab into the side of the risen Lord because he needs to experience a God who is real.

I’m certainly a big believer in doubt, which qualifies me as both a progressive Christian and a conventionally faithful one. But I don’t think doubt adequately describes Thomas’s problem, nor does reassurance adequately describe his solution. Doubt is cerebral (Did I remember to turn the stove off? Is her house on the left or on the right? Do these pants make me look fat?). And seeing in order to believe is primarily concerned with confirming something exterior or posterior, as the case may be. What my favorite apostle seems to me to be asking for, however, is a more visceral experience.

Thomas reaches his hand into the side of Jesus’ body because he needs to know in his own body that this God is real. Because if Jesus has truly been resurrected, then Jesus is God, and if Jesus is God alive again and right here, in his body, in this upper room, then Thomas can trust that the devilish work of empire—all the lies, the violence, the ignorance, the demagoguery, the death, and the subterfuge—even if it lasts ’til the end of time, even if it vanquishes him, will not win. And this is exactly the sort of fierce hope we all need this year, not just intellectually but in our bones and muscles, so that we have the energy to get up and get on with doing the work of proclaiming the gospel (or saving the world, for Pete’s sake) in a bleak time. But first of all, we need to believe that this God and this resurrection are for real.