Stop Bullying Thomas

by

We all have doubts. Humans doubt: it is in our nature to doubt. Show me a person who doesn’t doubt, and I’ll show you an alien. For all I know, the little green people from the Andromeda Galaxy doubt. I don’t want to speak for the extra-terrestrial community writ large, but somewhere on their planet, they’re probably doubting that we humans exist. I think that’s funny.

And now, as we approach the second Sunday of Easter, we drag Thomas out of the closet for his yearly humiliation for doubting Jesus and what a faithless jerk he was for not getting with the resurrection program from day one. “How dare you, Thomas,” we proclaim, “for having trouble believing a dead man walked through a wall and talked to the disciples?” Thomas, in the shock of the events of Easter day, was coming to terms with some heavy-duty trauma. Now, his closest friends hit him with this utterly unbelievable claim: a dead man returned to life and, better still, appeared as a ghost. You're deceiving yourself if you don’t understand his doubt or at least his skepticism at the claim the other disciples made. Thomas’ reaction was natural, human, and normal.

Some of us like to put ourselves in the group of the holy and righteous Easter day believers. We wouldn’t be scared out of our minds. If Jesus showed up, we’d know it was him, and by God, we’d say, “Yeah, boy, Jesus. You sure showed them Romans.” Uh, no. The truth is this: Thomas is us. We have all doubted God at one time or another. To say otherwise is to lie. Let’s be honest with one another, shall we?   

We have hyper-inflated ideas about our religiosity. We are not the scrappy minor league batter who takes the plate on opening day and hits a home run at their first major league at-bat. We are sure we know and believe in everything Jesus taught. Only a fool would doubt Jesus. Yes, this is how it seems from our perspective. We approach the story of Thomas with two thousand years of Christian history. We exist in a Christian bubble, unable to see the whirlwind of emotions beyond our claims of certainty. Don’t check your humanity, emotions, and reality at the door. Be a regular person for a moment, a Galilean grappling with the death of your best friend, traumatized by the brutality of his execution, and imagine yourself walking into a room where your friends tell you an unbelievable ghost story. You don’t know whether to laugh or cry. That’s what an average person does. It’s exactly what Thomas did.

My thought for the day is to stop harassing Thomas. Get off his back. He doesn’t deserve to be pushed around by preachers and congregations two thousand years after he had a bad day. Besides, he’s not here to defend himself. How would you like to be vilified and labeled with a disparaging moniker for two thousand years after you died? Who will stand up for you? Do you know what we do to Thomas each year? We bully him. I’m sick of bullies. Let’s stop bullying people, whether they’re Biblical characters or our neighbors. We’ll all be better off in the long run.