For the account of Thomas, Skeptic turned Believer, read John 20:24-29

“I don’t know, but my big brother knows.”

When I was very little, this was my answer to every question. He was two years older than me, talked nonstop, and, my tiny self was very sure, knew the answer to every question ever posed by mankind. Why bother asking me when you could just ask him?

Sometimes – okay, most of the time – I did know the answer, or at least I was pretty sure I did. Okay I thought I did? But – the moment the question was actually posed – the moment someone turned their eyes on me, quiet little me who so carefully avoided them – in that moment, when my shy little mind went white with panic, I was never sure. Maybe “I don’t know” was a cop out answer. Maybe “I don’t know” was really “I’m afraid to say.” Maybe. I use that qualifying “I might be wrong” word now instead. Maybe.

Maybe that is why my heart uncurls a little when I read about Thomas. Maybe I recognize the voice that said, “I will believe it when I see it,” because I don’t know what to believe. Actually, now that you mention it, now that you ask the question, I am so unsure. I mean, I want to believe it. I want to believe it so badly I am afraid to believe it because it is just too good to be true – and what is it people are always saying: “If it seems too good to be true, it probably is.”

Imagine Thomas’s life with me: the noise. The noise in Jerusalem after Jesus died. The city is bursting, full of tourists who came to celebrate Passover, the biggest event of the year. Bursting with noise. On every street corner, in the alleys, behind every closed door, people are talking about it, and they all have something different to say. “That Jesus man, the one who healed people, they say he tried to overthrow Caesar,” “no, they say he claimed to be the son of God,” “blasphemer,” “usurper,” “killed by the Romans,” “lawbreaker,” “zealot,” “terrorist.” The rumors are ugly – and personal. Thomas had spent years following this man, but he had spent more following the people who murdered him. These people, the ones who killed him, they had spent decades, had dedicated their lives, to this one, holy task: understanding the Scriptures and revealing God’s will to the people. What if – no, really think – what if Thomas had gotten it wrong?

Nothing went the way he expected, the way any of them expected. Jesus was supposed to be their king, their rescuer, their Messiah who saved them from the Romans. They had the heavy weight of their bullies around their necks, and surely Messiah would not want to see God’s people brought low. Surely Messiah wanted what they wanted. Surely Messiah wanted them to be free of their oppressors!

And he did. Oh, he did. He said he did. Didn’t he say he did? He wanted them to be free of the sin that shackled them, free of the worry that distracted them, free of the diseases of their souls. But he didn’t say much about the Romans, except – “Give to Caesar what is Caesar’s and give to God what is God’s.”

He could calm a storm at sea. He could raise the dead. He could feed thousands of people with one small lunch. And he said, “Let Caesar have his money”?? It did not make sense. He had SO. MUCH. POWER. Why wouldn’t he use it to save them??

And then. And THEN. He did the most unexpected thing of all.

He. DIED.

If any of them had had the kind of power that let Jesus raise people from the dead, we can be sure of one thing: they would have used it to NOT DIE. But Jesus – who had that power – made a different choice. He brought others back from death. But he himself charged right into it. He let himself die. There was no other way to understand it because Thomas had seen his power for himself. He was there. He saw it all. And it didn’t make sense. Why would he let himself die when his people still needed saving?

There’s a moment when our faith tilts on its axis, when our God makes choices we do not expect and do not understand, when we have to stare it in the face and ask ourselves, truthfully, what – or who – is the object of our faith. Do we have faith in God, or do we have faith in the outcome? Do we believe God is a means to achieve our desired end? Or do we believe that God will achieve His desired end, that His will is better than ours, that He will triumph as He has determined? Do we believe He is good, that what He wills is good, even when His will disagrees with our own? Can we lay down our own will, surrender what we’ve always thought would make us happy, and open our hearts to His suggestion instead?

What if His ‘good’ is not like ours?

What if it’s not success. What if it’s not security. What if it’s not even peace. What if He’s willing to pick a fight with Pharaoh, incite the Egyptian army, flee into the wilderness, and pin Himself between His enemies and an uncrossable sea. Do we still believe He’s good?

What if He’s willing to wander around in the wilderness for forty years, with just enough to get by every day and no savings for the future. No home. No retirement plan. Just a promise that it won’t always be this way.

What if the way into His promises is through a river in flood stage. What if the way to His promises is through another army, and another. What if He’s not afraid to pick fight after fight after fight with people who are cruel, dangerous, and in the wrong. What if the only peace He’s interested in is complete, uncompromising lawfulness. People willing to live in harmony and respect.

Or – worse – what if He’s willing to serve the wicked Egyptians for four hundred years. The arrogant Babylonians. The cruel, bloodthirsty Romans. What if He shrugs and says, “Let Caesar have his money. God wants something better.”

What if He’s not interested in what we think we want, after all. What if He’s got something better in mind, something we have not even begun to imagine, and He whispers a ludicrous trust ME, and then does the exact opposite of what we would have done.

Can I still believe, even then?

Could Thomas, who liked to understand? Could Thomas, who had maybe been taught his whole life that God was a means to Israel’s ends? That Israel cried out to God in their captivity, and He saved them! Again, and again, and again. I’m sure, under the yoke of the Romans, they liked to tell those stories best.

His faith was tilting on its axis. He was being given the choice: believe in the God he wanted, the one he’d always believed in, or believe in the God who wanted HIM, the one with His own mind and His own will and His own impossible, God-sized plan. The one who DIED. Dead. Buried. Gone. Along with all Thomas’s hopes and expectations for Israel’s future, for his own future. All. Gone. And maybe he was already feeling like this faith in Jesus was not like the faith he’d been raised in, like quite the fool for having believed any of it in the first place. Maybe he no longer recognized his own faith; maybe there was noise building up, not just outside, but in his own head.

I don’t know where Thomas was when Jesus appeared to the others. It just says he was not there. He didn’t see it. But when he did come back, because he did come back, they told him the most ludicrous story.

He rose from the dead. We saw Him, and He’s alive!

This one moment has tripped many, many millions of people, the same way it tripped Thomas. He rose from the dead? Seriously. Stop and think about it for a moment. What experience in your lifetime would ever give you any reason to believe that? There were a lot of opinions about Jesus in Jerusalem just then, but of all of them, alive was definitely the most absurd.

But here were the people he had trusted most in the world, the people who had seen everything he had and who knew Jesus the way he did, the people he trusted in the noise – and alive was THEIR story. He stayed with them. He watched, he wondered. But he thought to himself the whole time – Are you sure?

And from all sides, all Thomas could hear was noise.

Do you ever feel that way in this world? I do. The more knowledge we have at our fingertips, the noisier it gets. Anyone can say anything and be heard by millions of people. Misinformation spreads faster than any other virus; sometimes deliberately, sometimes ignorantly, but whatever the case, there it goes, covering the earth in a noise pandemic that deafens everyone who hears it. All I can hear, everywhere I go, is noise.

I can no more easily find the truth on the internet than I could find a specific grain of sand on a beach. It’s there, I’m sure of it. But it would take longer than my life to find it.

Thomas could not find the truth in the ridiculous, deafening noise. It was there, somewhere, he was sure of it. But where? It would have taken longer than his life to find it.

So – the Truth found him.

My soul is uncurling to listen.

The Truth found HIM.

“I am the way, the truth, and the life.” Jesus had said that to him, when Thomas had said he did not know the way to the Father.

So there, in the middle of the noise, in the midst of his confusion, the Truth found him.

Jesus stood before a muddled and deafened Thomas, held out his scarred hands, and said, “Touch them, Thomas. Touch them, because that’s what you said you’d need to do to believe.” And yes, Jesus rebuked his doubt. But he also came back just for him. He also came back to silence all the noise.

So when my soul gets muddled and overwhelmed by the noise of the world, when my mind goes white as a sheet with panic and I am not sure of my answer, I will know who I can ask. Find Me, Jesus the Truth.

I don’t know, but my big God knows.

He is the Truth.

And He is Who I choose to believe.