On the importance of doubt

‘… blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed’ (John 20:29)

John 20:19-31 (Year B: Easter 2)

No doubt no faith..

Without doubt there is no faith. What? Read that again. To have faith implies to trust and to entrust. That means taking a step and making something of a leap. Put another way, it means trusting without full certainty. Doubt has an inevitable place in the act of trusting. We entrust our doubt in the act of trusting and that in which we trust takes care of our doubts. Sounds simple? Yes and no.  Life is always a struggle and the edges are not always so clear cut on a particular question or issue.

If what we believe in were certain, provable, ‘scientific’ in the usual sense of this term then there would be no need to trust anyone or anything. It would be a matter of certain conclusion. Because we are human we live in a reality of uncertainty, questioning, evolution, struggle, victory and growth. This is what makes us human. Now, my favourite definition of faith is what Paul wrote (using, in this instance, the King James version of the Bible in English) in Hebrews 11:1:

Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.

Bereavement as faith in doubt..

People passing through bereavement (it happens to all of us at some stage) feel a mixture of emotions. Sometimes, people of strong faith believe that their loved ones have left clues and signs – establishing a kind of benevolent and watchful presence as they continue to care for us.  Other times, the bereaved have such a strong hope and a strong love and a strong faith that they look forward to being reunited with their loved one after death. These emotions and insights should not be dismissed as mere psychological coping strategies or imaginings. Yes, we do need to cope and to find ways of dealing with realities. However, the seeds of faith – of trusting – are sown deep in the human soul. And we ought not to resist the natural growth of such seeding. What feeds such seeding is the rough soil of turmoil and doubt – never being entirely certain or sure of what it is that is growing in our hearts and minds. We look for clues, we look for certainties, we look to cling to something or someone.

Thomas – ‘the twin’ – was a very modern sort of person in our books. He was just trying to be honest with himself and others not taking on board whatever others told him to think or believe. He looked for hard evidence. Perhaps he has been misled more than once before in his life. Perhaps his companions, the disciples, were not above exaggeration. And Lazarus notwithstanding why should he have accepted this story about Jesus being alive again? God loves us in our doubts, in our questioning, in our anguish, and in our struggles to be honest with ourselves and others.

When John tells us that Jesus appeared to the apostles, including Thomas, ‘eight days’ later he shows them his wounds. However, miraculous his movements and however glorified his body, the risen body of Christ carries wounds. We should never forget this. Our peace is in his wounds and John emphasises, both in the story of Calvary and here, the source of life and renewal in the wounded side of Christ from which ‘blood and water’ flowed. As always, John is never far from the material because his gospel is steeped in mystery or, to use a Western term, the sacraments of Christ’s presence and action. Being highly sacramental (to continue with a Western term) means recognising the ‘fleshiness’ of what it is we believe in. References to body, eating, wounds, touching, seeing and feeling are not accidental. John – like the other evangelists – has news for us. Material is good. And we attain to the spiritual through the physical because the two are closely united. They are two sides of the one coin. An early Christian writer, Origen, writing in the second century understood resurrection as ‘a spiritual transformation without loss of individual identity’. He rejected a simplistic physical reconstitution (resuscitation) interpretation. At the same time, he rejected an interpretation that saw the material as evil and entirely separate from the resurrected body. The ideas system behind this view of material as evil was known as ‘gnosticism’ and like all heresies (i) it had elements of useful insight and truth and (ii) it never went away but lurks under other ideas systems in our own times.  For Origen, the resurrected body shares the same ‘form’ as the physical body. The tension between the now and the past; between the physical and the spiritual (however these terms are understood) is handled by an approach that can receive the mystery of rising as embodying different truths and not rejecting anything essential through a one-sided emphasis.

Material is good..

So, material is good.  Material and spiritual (which is not merely some non-material substance or reality) are part of an indivisible whole.  The notion of the soul being released from the earthly body which waits to be reunited with the soul on the last day is surely platonic.  The squeamishness about cremation in former times may testify to such dualist and physicalist notions.

Perhaps the metaphor we need to work with nowadays is one that tells a story about a seed (as outlined in the first letter to the Corinthians). The seed dies (buried in the ground) but transforms into new life. There is a continuity and what was perishable in some mysterious way ‘lives on’ except in an entirely way.  It takes imagination and a leap in faith.  The intellectual underpinning is informed by a critical examination of the evidence – or the lack of it – combined with  an attitude of ‘not knowing’ leading to trust. We hear the word, we do not know how, we believe.

 When you sow, you do not plant the body that will be, but just a seed, perhaps of wheat or of something else. But God gives it a body as he has determined, and to each kind of seed he gives its own body. 1 Cor 15:37-38

Our faith is 2,000 years old but not our thinking….

After all disputation, after all our striving, after all our pain and suffering –

‘if Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless and so is your faith’ (1 Cor 15:14)

A sobering thought indeed! But, in rising Jesus breathes new life into us (literally ἐμφυσάω or emphysáō in the Greek in John 20:22 according to Strong’s Concordance). The word, or breathing, is the only place in the New Testament where it is used. In the Old Testament it is used in Genesis 2:7 where God created and formed human life breathed into it new life so that ‘man’ became a ‘living being’.

  

Resurrection whether we realise it or not..

Writing a number of years ago, the late Brother Roger of Taizé offered us the following insight:

A luminous Gospel insight has come to light after gathering dust for a long time: “The Risen Christ is united to every human being without exception, even if they are not aware of it.”

And prayed thus:

O Christ, you are united to every human being without exception, even if they are unaware of it. Still more, risen from the dead, you come to heal the secret wound of the soul. And for each person, the gates of a heartfelt compassion are opened.

And the fruit of trusting is joy – overflowing joy and everylasting joy.

The disciples were overjoyed when they saw the Lord:

The disciples were overjoyed when they saw the Lord. (John 20:20)

Christ is risen and with us right now. Alleluia. Let us rejoice. Amen.