Doubt can be a bridge between the Jesus we
thought we knew, to Jesus as He really is.
If we stay with an intellectual, textbook type Sunday school image of
who Jesus is, we have a powerless hard-to-live journey of following Jesus. If the disciples had stuck to their idea of
Jesus as a political King; a leader of
their people, they would never have realized His whole purpose of coming, dying
and rising, to take on Himself all of our wretchedness.
It’s the same for us. If we never
question the Sunday school image we have of Jesus, against our own experience
and existence in the real world, we won’t come to a relationship with the
living, risen Christ. He will remain a
dead, intellectual figure that we really don’t understand at all. He will remain a “head knowledge” God,
without any interaction or connection with us in our everyday lives.
When we are in
some trouble or anxiety, and we begin to doubt God’s care or purpose for us, it
is not an easy time. It’s accompanied by
fear and turmoil and these things are very disturbing and by their very nature
they are tyrannical. They grip us with
such intensity. It seems we don’t have a
moment’s rest. We have on the on the one
side, our picture of Jesus as a loving God of mercy; a generous Father
figure; a gentle shepherd who gathers
his lambs and protects them. And then,
on the other side, we have whatever malady or circumstance has happened to us,
and we can’t seem to reconcile the two. They seem to be incompatible. How can God let this happen? We wrestle with these questions. We begin to cross the bridge of doubt. It seems a perilous journey, filled with confusion
and searching and conflict and perplexity.
How can God be
loving and caring yet allow our loved ones to suffer? How can God be a God of justice when we have
been blamed for something we didn’t do?
How can the gentle Shepherd allow a little child to suffer in the hands
of a ruthless abuser? Why does God not
intervene when something bad is about to happen? These are the big questions of life. We don’t like tackling them. We don’t like to question. We don’t like admitting we have these dark
mutterings in our hearts. And our
responses will perhaps be the same as the people in the Resurrection
story.
We, like Mary,
can be overcome at first, with sorrow.
But you’ve got to also be encouraged by her story. Jesus appears to her and she is
ecstatic. She runs to tell the
others. This can be our journey too,
even in the face of sorrow, when we allow the presence of Jesus to come to
us. I think Mary of all the followers
was the closest to understanding what Jesus was all about.
Or we can react
with fear, like the disciples in the room with the doors locked. It’s understandable, when confronted with a
big life event, to be afraid. Fear is
crippling; it can be overwhelming. It
reduces us to jelly. How can we not be
afraid when we are confronted with serious illness or when our children are in
trouble? But the most frequent command in the bible is
“Do not fear”. We can tell Jesus we are afraid.
We hear him say to us as he said to the disciples in the locked room
“Peace be with you”. God’s peace is one
of the best gifts he gives his saints.
Or we can be like Thomas, and be honest and
say “Show me who you are Lord. I doubt;
I’m hurting; I’m afraid; I’m sad” And do
you see what happens then? Jesus come to
Thomas and shows him the scars. He says
“blessed are you Thomas because you believe”.
He encourages us down the centuries when he says “blessed are you when
you don’t see and yet believe”.
You can’t always
believe unless you have first doubted. And
there’s a world of difference between a doubter and an unbeliever. The doubter is an honest person seeking an
experience of God even in the midst of his own perilous circumstances; an unbeliever is never interested in any kind
of experience of or conversation with, God. A doubter is a person struggling to
live an honest life, who has many questions of God; An unbeliever doesn’t care about those
things. And Jesus receives our doubts as
willingly and as generously as he values our faith; he is well acquainted with human
misunderstanding and frailty. Our
journey with him will be at times as bewildering as it was for those first
disciples.
They cowered
behind locked doors. We too hide in
fear, or are beset by doubt, even though we know we have the Risen Christ with
us. But take heart, on the other side of
the doubt bridge, our immature, incomplete, inaccurate picture of Jesus will be
left behind. We will know a fuller Jesus, a more completely loving Jesus, a
wise Jesus who knows what’s best for us, even if it seems He does not. We will know a Jesus who will share himself
with us; a Jesus who will make our lives
a joy to live; A Jesus who shares his
spirit of peace with us throughout all aspects of our journey.
He has given us
the HS which is His presence with us. He didn’t condemn Thomas for his honest
doubt, and he won’t condemn us either.
In fact, He promises never to leave us;
he promises that we are kept by the power of God. He promises that he will complete His good
work in us. And he says, do not fear, only believe (Mark 5:36 ).
When we keep our
faults and doubts safely locked away, we don't grow; we are like a seed which never swells with new life but stays a tiny lifeless thing in the infertile soil of untested intellectual faith. But when we
honestly tell God what troubles us, He comes into our hearts and fills us with
a deeper, stronger, more effective faith. He doesn’t rebuke us, but empowers us
with peace, and we are able to answer not just our own questions, but bring
resolution and peace to others as well.
Doubting is not meant to be a comfortable exercise. When you question things like “does God really care about me, or Is God really in control of the world, there will be turmoil and searching and conflict and perplexity. But if we are to come to terms with the awful things which happen to us from time to time, there is sometimes the need to get it all out before the Lord, and ask and pray and question and learn. If we are to know God on a deeper level, we must be willing to risk stepping out onto the hard cobblestones of doubt. I can tell you it will not be an easy experience, but it will be one in which Jesus will be with us.
I would encourage you to use the figurative fingers of
doubt and put them into Jesus’ scars.
Let him show you his real self.
Let him appear to you in His resurrected God-head self. He will be as gentle and compassionate to you
as he was with his first disciples.
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