Recently, while preparing a homily on Thomas' encounter with the resurrected Christ, I was eager to find new perspectives on the human struggle with faith and doubt.
I knew I couldn't afford to simply rehash a story that most Christians have heard over and over since their first days in Sunday school.
Knowledge of human habituation processes suggested to me that repeated exposure to the same stimuli (in this case, sermons or Bible stories) could lead to decreased attention or interest. Even in the church, people are drawn to new information, which can help maintain engagement and interest.
In my quest for fresh insights on the story of "Doubting Thomas," and realising that the Bible offers no explicit reasons for his famous scepticism about the resurrection or even for his absence during Christ's first appearance in the locked room.
I considered many possible explanations. Was it just the effect of the trauma and the grief? Or could it be a case of cognitive dissonance arising from the discrepancy between Thomas' expectation of Jesus' messianic role and the gruesome reality of the crucifixion?
Still casting about for a novel viewpoint on these issues, I stumbled on an e-copy of a new book by the American author, blogger, and New York Times columnist, Ross Douthat. Titled "Believe: Why Everyone Should Be Religious," the book was published by Zondervan on February 11, 2025. With clear logic and in prose sometimes redolent of C.S. Lewis and Timothy Keller, Douthat argues that doubt in itself is not a sin if it serves as a launchpad for a search for the divine.
While he absolutely believes that Christianity is the most complete and accurate path to God, he argues that you don't have to pick a religion from the start of your enquiry about the nature and existence of God. The fact that you have begun that journey is more important than where you begin from.
Believing in the existence of God, regardless of what name we know Him by, is more rational than believing He doesn't exist, Douthat argues.Yet, he insists that it's not wrong to believe that Jesus is the only way by which we can be saved. After all, Jesus himself said so (John 14:6).
However, if Christianity offers the ultimate revelation of God, then we shouldn't be afraid of people starting their search for Him in different places.
So long as their goal is to find Him, we must trust that the God who is truth can bring people to Himself even if they don't start with Christianity, or even if their faith frequently falters, as it did in the case of Thomas.
For Douthat, then, Thomas embodies various themes and ideas. He is a metaphor for uncertainty and the search for truth and understanding, an enquirer whose questioning nature seeks confirmation of supposed verities.
Yet, in a very poignant way and in a manner that symbolises the battles of everyday life, Thomas' absence and doubt are also evocative of the emotional struggles people face after experiencing trauma and loss.
If we're sincere, we will certainly see in ourselves some of Thomas' failings: his dereliction of duty, his predilection for truancy when his presence was most needed, his hesitancy in faith, his stubborn insistence on physical evidence for the existence of spiritual realities, among other foibles. When we acknowledge these faults in us, perhaps we can then say like the man in Mark 9:24: "Lord, we believe; help our unbelief."
I recommend Douthat's book to anyone who has ever struggled with faith or who needs a well-written text on Christian apologetics.