Free Access

Last week we talked about ghosts and how hard it was for even Jesus’ best friends to believe that He was alive again after He was dead. Well, by this time -- a week after Easter -- most of Jesus close friends had seen Him alive and believed it. But there was one man named Thomas who still did not believe.

Some people came rushing to him and said, 'Thomas! Thomas! Come quickly! Jesus is alive!' But Thomas had his doubts. Thomas was one of those guys who has to see something with his own eyes before he can believe it. Thomas was one of those guys who, if someone were to say, 'I can jump all the way across this sidewalk without touching it,' he would say, 'Oh, yeah? Let’s see you do it.' Thomas was one of those guys who, if someone were to say, 'I’ll give you one hundred dollars for that bicycle,' he would say, 'Oh, yeah? Show me the money!'

Thomas was not a man easily fooled. When people came to him and said Jesus was alive, Thomas said, in effect, 'Oh, yeah? Show me. I won’t believe it until I can touch the places where the nails wounded His hands. Then I can see and believe for myself.'

Ever since then, he has been called Doubting Thomas. And ever since then, people in church have used Doubting Thomas as an example of what not to be. 'Don’t be a doubting Thomas!' they say, to children and adults alike. When it comes to believing in God and Jesus and Christmas and Easter and all the things we talk about here in church, some people say we shouldn’t have doubts. We must have faith.

Is it okay for your minister to tell you that? I’m not so sure. Sometimes doubting is a good thing. And sometimes the best way to believe in something is first to have doubts about it.

Suppose I were to tell you, 'I believe that if you ran as fast as you can towards that wall over there, and if you wish really hard and don’t stop running, you can run right through that wall like magic and not be hurt.' Are you going to believe that? Are you going to try it? No! Not a chance! Not unless you want to make a mess of your face! You’re going to have doubts about it, and those doubts will keep you from getting hurt. That’s a case of it being good to doubt, isn’t it?

Sometimes doubting can help you believe. Suppose I told you that if you took two balls of the same size and shape up to the top of a very tall building -- one ball weighs ten pounds and the other weighs one pound -- and you dropped them both at the same time, they would hit the ground at the exact same moment. 'No way,' you say. 'I don’t believe it. The heavier ball falls faster because it weighs more. It has to fall faster!'

You have your doubts, so you try it. And the two balls hit the ground together. You still have your doubts, so you take two other balls, one light and one heavy, and you try it again. The same thing happens: they hit the ground at the same time. You try it five or six more times, and finally you believe that heavy and light objects of the same size and shape fall to the ground at the same speed. Now you believe it would happen the same way every time and everywhere you tried it, and no one can make you stop believing it.

Well, that is a case of doubts helping you to believe something. So you see, it’s nice to have faith and believe, but it can also be okay to have your doubts, because doubts can be the seeds of a very strong faith. That is what happened with Thomas. He had his doubt about Jesus being raised from the dead, so he went to see for himself. And once he did, he believed and never doubted his faith again. Amen.