"You are such a doubting Thomas."
Many people have heard the phrase "Doubting Thomas" applied to them in a conversation with a radical believer. The conversation might go something like this, "I seriously doubt the Cubs will ever win the World Series in my lifetime." The fanatic Cub fan would reply, "You are such a doubting Thomas."
Few people realize the origin of this phrase is found in the Bible. Specifically, the phrase is a reference to the story found in John 20:20-29. Thomas is the last apostle to see the risen Jesus. He is questioning the sanity of his fellow apostles concerning their delusional stories about a bodily resurrected Jesus who had been crucified a week earlier.
St. Thomas has become something of a patron saint in the student group that I started at The Ohio State University. When I arrived on campus, I realized something: there seemed to be plenty of good Christian groups of all stripes on campus. I didn't feel I had anything to add.
I soon realized that a place did not exist for students to express honest doubt. Many groups had one or two nights dedicated to questions, but I felt we needed more than that. I decided to invite Christians, doubting Christians, agnostics and what I call Pirate Atheists into a discussion group that became known as The Thomas Society.
We covered every topic ranging from "Why does God Allow Suffering" to "Science versus Faith" in our discussions. This group of students carried their conversations from small groups into large settings. Students from all walks of faith (or nonfaith) began to honestly engage each other in real dialogue from their dorm rooms to a service project we all took to New Orleans.
While in New Orleans, we sat at Lafitte's Pirate Tavern on Bourbon Street on one particular night. Our group had just finished a long hard day of demolishing abandoned houses from hurricane Katrina. I asked all of them to share why they believed in God or why they didn't.
As I listened to their stories with the craziness of Bourbon Street passing by, I realized how all of their stories and questions could be encapsulated in St. Thomas' story. All of their questions about science, God, faith, suffering, justice and injustice could be summed up in Thomas' intellectual and emotional doubt.
Thomas asked for concrete proof of Jesus' resurrection, he essentially asked for intellectual proof. He needed tangible, real evidence. Contrary to popular belief, most people in the first century didn't believe people just rose from the dead.
There is also an element of emotional edge to Thomas' doubts. Thomas and the apostles had staked their entire lives on Jesus. They believed He would throw out the hated Romans and that they would be Jesus' right hand men. Such a belief ended cruelly and abruptly with each nail that was hammered into Jesus. Thomas and the apostles had every reason to believe they might be hunted down and given the same treatment. Their hopes for life had pretty much come to an end.
When conversations in our culture center on religious issues and doubt, false dichotomies are always given as the only choices. We are told that we doubt God out of the need for intellectual proof or we doubt God out of strong emotion. The Pirate Atheists (or the New Atheists as they are commonly known) would argue that much of their doubt comes from the intellectual side. On the other side, many Christians argue that these atheists are all just abused former church kids. If we hit their hearts, it's commonly thought, their intellect will follow.
As my students talked at that pirate tavern, I realize each of them had an endless knot of intellectual and emotional reasons wrapped up in their stories of heartache, struggle and severe questioning. These struggles often resulted in radically different conclusions, depending on who told the story.
This lesson taught me a lot about how we work as people. Our beliefs can't be boiled down into either purely intellectual or emotional categories. Belief is never that neat or clean. Our lives are never that segmented. We are a curious nexus point of the seen and unseen worlds. Jesus Himself recognizes this as he tells Thomas at the end of the story, "Blessed are those who don't see, but believe." This isn't a rebuke to Thomas, like many Christians think; rather, it's a profound recognition of our struggle to believe. Jesus blesses those who will walk the road of doubt with a full heart, open mind and a willingness to bow to the truth at the end.
Through my students, I realized that I would have been right there with Thomas asking for the same intellectual and emotional truths. I have realized that my search for truth must go deeper then the superficial answers given to us by our culture in the church and the culture as a whole. I realized that my search for the truth must answer my intellectual or emotional questions, otherwise, my search will never be satisfied.
Follow Rev. Jonathan Weyer on Twitter: www.twitter.com/spookypastor
Marilyn Mellowes: 'God in America:' A House Divided Twice (VIDEO)
New Atheism - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
New Atheism has five distinctive doctrines | Comment is free ...
Because it's cheaper then facing "Passing the Hat" every Sunday.
I might, just might have more compassion for the religious community if they would pay their fare share of our taxes.
Thanks for your comments! I'm really glad you liked the article.
And what proof is there that the OT prophesies were not cherry picked and altered to validate John and Jesus?
Talking about the prophets in the way the writers of the gospel did is a proven First centuary Jewish practice attested by thousands of manuscripts. The Dead Sea Scrolls are a good place to start. Cherry picking, as you call it, was a common practice then....
That is actually the point of my article. Again, I hang with atheists on a regular basis. Please see my bio for details.
And, are you aware of the fact that these were Jews we're talking about?
Where on earth did you get such ideas that these poor fishermen were people in power, and what Media existed back then to manipulate, anyway?
Did you ever crack a Bible? Well, I find it incredible that a rational person would be so utterly unaware that upwards of 2 billion of the people on earth are Christians and certainly do buy what the Bible says.
And in case you didn't know this, The apostles did things according to the Law of Moses, one such law states that out of the mouths of two or three witnesses let every word or testimony be established.
That is why we have 4 eye-witness accounts of what Jesus both did and taught: the Gospels.
I have not the slightest notion what you're trying to say about abuse.
Were you kicked by members of a Christian congregation, or physically harmed in some manner or what by them, that you feel this way?
If you really think the story of Jesus and the bible and all that is true, I suggest you study other myths floating around the Mediterranean 2,000 years ago. I think you'd be hardpressed not to realize that nearly every facet of Jesus' story was lifted from other gods such as Horsu, Mithra, Zeus etc.
The reason I don't believe in a personal god that is endorsed by the bible, Qu'ran etc. is because it makes no sense for god to make a creature and then punish it for his mistake.
And the Jews? God's chosen people? Holocaust anyone?
There is a very wide gulf between his doubting DID Jesus rise from the dead, and IF Jesus COULD rise from the dead. One is simple doubt from a lack of knowledge, and the other is a form of unbelief arising out of scepticism.
This position is always self-contradictory because it holds that the possibility of knowledge is limited either because of the limitations of the mind or because of the inaccessibility of its object.
Thomas' was the Sceptics' error of mistaking the unobserved for the non-existent, just as many atheists are plagued by with an even worse disease of mistaking the unobserved for the unobservable.
That's why the sceptic's demand is so untenable: "I won't believe in God until I see Him walk into this room right now!"
Because, the Bible declares that no man can see God in live.
And even if God could overcome seeing this revolting sinful creature, He would still be inaccessible to him, because God is Spirit. And all spirits are invisible.
There are other kinds of proof than just first hand knowledge; I believe this is what Jesus was saying to Thomas.But perhaps at bottom. Thomas doubted if Jesus was really the Messiah.
And I think you can see the basic premise of where doubt actually arises from observing the natural world itself, from the fact that all life in whatever form is temporary.
Everything in the natural world is ever and always material and fading, delicately mortal, physically limited and having to do with time as opposed to eternity, having to do with earthly life as opposed to the spiritual life which we are told is eternal and heavenly.
The tension of his temporariness causes man, as a created being, to become radically aware of his death.
If one has been told that there is life after death, and that there is a Creator God Who will judge you after you die.... the majority of traditional societies teach in one form or another, that if one leads a worthy life here on earth, then one will enjoy a wonderful life in Paradise after death....that person will inevitably be confronted with the universal question of doubt.
I believe that doubt can take two different, and very distinct, forms.
and that DOUBT can be "man-ward" or "God-ward".
It can be a form of DOUBT based on the belief that man is the MEASURE of all things.
Or it can be a form of DOUBT based on the belief God is the MEASURE of all things.
Did not God appear to Abraham and Sarah? Check out Gen 17:1 and 18. I expect that was different though. Just like Jesus, who was both divine and human. So being God on earth appeared to lots of people.
You have adjustable rules to suit your purpose.
There is not an iota of first hand proof that any of this fairy tale actually happened. Everything you said in your two recent posts are conjecture based on what you think and feel.
"His disciples witnessed His execution by crucifixion, and so knew He was dead, then He was raised from the dead, or they could not have met Him when He appeared in the house.
That is the nature of eyewitness testimony, "I saw such and such", and this is what the gospels consist of: testimony.
ask any Lawyer to read their testimony, and he will tell you the disciples of Jesus' testimony is admissible in a court of Law.
"The Lord has risen from the dead", was their testimony. "
You are absolutely, totally wrong. You obviously think that the original apostles wrote the gospels which they did not. No one knows who wrote them and the names appended to them were added much later. They were not eye-witnesses and never knew Jesus.They were written up to 80 years after his purported death and were fabricated from oral tradition and hearsay. No court or lawyer in the civilized world would go anywhere near hearsay as testimony.
Do yourself a favor and read "Jesus Interrupted" by Bart Ehrman. With an open mind you might learn something about the historicity of the gospels.
Well, I don't suppose you've ever heard of a THEOPHANY: its an earthly form God often used in the Old Testament accounts to appear to certain people.
But, the question is why did the Eternal One arrive so late?
What was He doing during the 1.4 million years since the Acheulean carvings in Africa? or the half million years since humans harnessed fire? Or, more immediately, why didn't He appear earlier than in the forty thousands years of human religious practice..of burying the dead and belief in an after life?
Why did He wait for Abraham to make His covenant with (a portion) of mankind?
I think the short answer is that God is unthinkable without writing, or, more indirectly, without the wheel, innovations which reduced human dependence on time and space.
Writing is a medium of the birth of the Alphabetic God, and in a great sense He used it in order to appear.
From the role played by writing... there was an interaction between the physical environment, and the psycho-theological work it performed in engendering a Transcendent, disembodied invisible Being.
Or...as John put it so beautifully :" In the beginning was the Word, and The Word was with God, and the Word was God..."
And I am serious about this. I am no thumper, no inventor of religions. Only that you could walk for a while with some decent people on your journey, and then part ways, maybe come back, maybe not.
Whatcha think?
BZ.
So..arrrggg me hearties....drink some rum and calm yourselves....
The superficial answers given to you by your church culture is all you have, anything else you come up with will be invented and rationalised in your mind - because for whatever reason, you don't want to reject irrational beliefs.
At what point might your search be satisfied? When belief without evidence supercedes your intellect and powers of reason?
"This lesson taught me a lot about how we work as people. Our beliefs can't be boiled down into either purely intellectual or emotional categories."
You are talking specifically about religious beliefs here. You should therefore separate "intellectual" and "emotional."
Faith, is a belief that does not rest on logical proof or material evidence and cannot be considered an intellectual pursuit, anymore than believing that alien abduction is. Faith IS an emotion.
Intellect: the power or faculty of the mind by which one knows or understands, as distinguished from that by which one feels and that by which one wills; the understanding; the faculty of thinking and acquiring knowledge.
I suggest that the acquisition of knowledge cannot be achieved without hard evidence as opposed to what one wills or feels.