Without A Doubt

"Thomas, called Didymus, one of the Twelve, was not with them when Jesus came. So the other disciples said to him, 'We have seen the Lord.' But he said to them, 'Unless I see the mark of the nails in His hands and put my finger into the nail marks and put my hand into His side, I will not believe.'
Now a week later His disciples were again inside and Thomas was with them. Jesus came, although the doors were locked, and stood in their midst and said, 'Peace be with you.' Then He said to Thomas, 'Put your finger here and see my hands, and bring your hand and put it in my side, and do not be unbelieving, but believe.'   Thomas answered and said to Him, 'My Lord and my God!' " --[John 20:19-31].


My parents were the most emphatic people I have ever known. They "knew" things and believed things so strongly, that it was like they were espousing dogma.

Only, it was the dogma of the Material World. They used to lecture me at the dinner table, that I must "worship the Almighty Dollar." They called charitable donations, "giving our money away."

They "knew for a certainty" that all kinds of people were beneath us, immigrants who were Asian, Polish, Hispanic, black, etc. But WE, we were superior. Without a doubt.

It must be easier, in a way, to never doubt.  My parents "knew" things, for certain; and to hear them say it, they were never wrong.

Today, there are politicians whose catch phrases are "Believe me." I spent half a lifetime of hearing my family's dogma, and yet instinctively understanding that they were wrong, wrong, wrong. In fact, as I began to shape my own beliefs, it was a pretty good bet that the Truth was the opposite of what my parents had told me. And so when a politician says, "Believe me", I start to question immediately.

Today, we have news shows on TV that purport to showcase "debate". But all we get is each side shouting their dogma, louder and louder, at the other. This is no exploration of things in doubt. It is just a scream fest.

In John 20: 19-30, we confront Thomas, the doubter. It is actually a relief to see a bit of doubt these days.

Someone once said that to doubt our Faith is a sign of weakness in our spiritual life. But, I would argue that the only thing worse than Doubt is indifference.

Doubt shows that you care about your Faith and that you need to explore it. I liken it to being lost in a dark place. Do you sit down and give up? -- a dangerous business, because if you stop in your journey and refuse to move, you will surely die.

No. . . . . If you are lost, you reach out in the darkness. You try to find the parameters -- the walls, the ceiling, the floor. You seek your relationship to your environment. Perhaps as the hours and days go on, you call out-- "HELLO? Anybody?!"

Perhaps, to our amazement, we may actually receive a reply. We are not each alone in our own little universes. To question, "Who am I and where am I and how do I fit in", inevitably takes us to a much larger realm, where we begin to explore the Infinite.

What I see today is that we are, too often, looking for all the answers in all the wrong places. Certainly, we look to Science. But Science is merely our all-too-human attempt to understand what God has made. We humans are trying to segregate Science from God, as if Science were its own Thing, with its own ecosystem, logic and integrity.

To worship Science is to simply explore the Product. To understand ourselves in a deeper way, we must turn to our Creator.

Martin Luther King, Jr. , in his book "Strength To Love"[1963], talks about how we have made Science, "the new cathedral of men's Hopes."  He also said, " What shall it profit a man, if he gain the whole world of externals -- airplanes, electric lights. automobiles, and color televisions -- and lose the internal -- his own soul?"

King even argues that "the [Science] laboratory has begun to replace the church, and the scientists [have] became a substitute for the prophet."

And so, if we worship Science, and we make God "an unnecessary item on the agenda of life", then you can understand why I actually welcome Doubt.

Doubt is a tiny spot of light beaming through a chink in the wall, which we have firmly placed between ourselves and God. WHY do we need to be so very sure of ourselves, so jaded and "modern", that we cannot look outside of ourselves? Must all of modern life be so self-referential?

Outside of ourselves and our little worlds is a vast Universe of Mystery, waiting to be explored. What hubris for us to think that we create all, we understand all, we control all; and that everything simply refers back to our own human greatness.

Open ourselves to Doubt, past all that we can see, and then, we will open ourselves to God. . . .

[Related Postings: "The Benefit of Doubt", 4/29/14; "His Divine Mercy", 4/7/13; "The Truth of His Wounds, 4/13/12; "Doubt", 5/1/11].

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