Reasonable Thomas

The story that birthed his nickname is in John 20:24-29, shortly after the risen Jesus first appeared to the disciples gathered in the upper room. Thomas is not in the room when this unprecedented encounter with Jesus happens.

So Reasonable Thomas does a very reasonable thing next – he tells the others that unless he sees the mark of the nails and the wound on Jesus’s side, he will not believe.

Not Asking for Anything Unusual

When this passage is discussed, it most often frames Thomas in a negative light. It’s used to advance the idea that faith without seeing is better than faith with seeing, but all that Thomas is asking for in this passage is something that Christ has already offered the other disciples a few verses prior. “After he said this, he showed them his hands and his side. The disciples were overjoyed when they saw the Lord” (John 20:20).

Thomas isn’t asking for something unusual. Just the same thing the other disciples were offered. Why have his questions become suspicious to us?

A Subtle Subtext

I grew up during the era of books with titles like Bible Answers to Life’s Big Questions. These kinds of books helped me along in my faith journey in wonderful ways, but sometimes there’s a subtle subtext left behind that if our lives produce big questions, the Bible has the answers to those questions waiting in the wings for us.

The problem with this approach is that it prioritizes the answers over the questions themselves, when it is our questions that I think sometimes draw us into the holiest of encounters with God.

Having Honest Conversations

In my work as a professor in marriage and family therapy, it is in this embracing of questions that I most often find myself able to bring my faith into the classroom. My school is right in the middle of the Bible Belt, and as we’re learning how to work with the culture of our clients, we have to have honest conversations about what to do when clients see the source of their pain as a spiritual issue rather than a psychological one.

Students of faith are quick to embrace the idea of spiritual healing. Students without a religious faith are quick to rush to the textbook to explain the issue at hand.

Somewhere in the Middle

The truth, I believe, generally lies somewhere in the middle of these two. Inviting students into conversations where their certainty can be questioned in either direction creates space for the kind of conversations that would generally be hard to structure at a state school.

I firmly believe this gives the Holy Spirit an opening to start stirring things in the hearts of my students. Anne Lamott said it best – “the opposite of faith is not doubt, but certainty.” It is in the questioning of certainty that I have been able to make the most space to engage students with conversations that invite faith to the table.