a lawless blog

Gospel:


I find it's much more rewarding to take a story like this as if it were a fable rather than an historical record. That way I am free to concentrate on the wisdom contained in it, without being distracted by details about how it might feel to touch the wounds of a crucified man, and the like. In fact, I think, the story is about the value of doubt.

I read last week that Thomas in his doubting is one of the most important examples for us to  follow. The gospel seems to say in the last sentence that it is better to believe without having seen, but in fact it only says that those who are not given to questioning are also blessed. I think the story would not have got into the written record if it was only to emphasise blind faith. In fact it illustrates that doubting, questioning, searching gets results. It is encouraging those who seek, with the assurance that they will find. It does not give preference to blind faith or unquestioning obedience.

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I find I want to go back to the prologue of John's gospel.

All things came to be through him, and without him nothing came to be.

What came to be through him was life, and this life was the light of the human race; the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it. [...]

It is such a concise and confident summary, which makes for a surprise when we find in the closing chapter (Chapter 20 seems to bring the gospel to a close, with Ch 21 being something of an appendix) the accent falls on doubt and questioning and a demand to see the evidence.

I hardly think John is concerned to tell us that "doubting" Thomas was a bit hard to convince. Positively the gospel is using him as an example to show that all of them were serious, like him, not inclined to accept such an improbable proposition on the word of a mate. "I've got to see for myself," he said. Faith MUST be based on something solid in our own experience, something we have considered and found trustworthy. To say "I'm a catholic. I believe" simply because it is our family tradition to be catholic is not enough, any more than it would have been enough had Thomas said: "Well, that seems pretty unlikely, but if you all agree, I'll go along with it."

Thanks to this Catholica forum many of us are enjoying the opportunity to look at the issue of "believing" from all sides. Some tell of the security the "born Catholic" feels; some recall most terrible brain-washing as children; some have told of the indoctrination experienced as young adults in seminaries and novitiates; most have memories of a social milieu in which catholics stuck together in tribal mode; others tell of the steps they have taken, whether early on or in adulthood or even in their senior years, to take personal responsibility to believe or not; some wonder whether Jesus existed as a real person or is just another myth, albeit embodying some of the finest teaching especially about personal freedom and responsibility, his following gaining traction through the unlikely story of an empty tomb and eventually, thanks to Constantine, achieving status as an established Religion;  finally there are those who share the unsettling experience of floundering in unfamiliar darkness, near to drowning, as they lose their footing and are swept away by the turbulent currents of questioning and doubt.

Week by week, for me, the razor's edge feels sharper, the razor's edge I walk along - the way they walk a tight rope in the circus. No safety net below: there'd be no point. No longer question whether to belong to church or not: now it is "to be or not".

Within my context, can I accept the word of those to whom the risen Christ "appeared"? It seems I have three levels of fact in which I could ground believing: (1) the testimony of those disciples just mentioned; (2) the experience of the communities of their immediate followers - the people who eventually put the story down in writing, together with Paul who claimed to be commissioned to expound the Mystery in his own way; (3) the evidence of centuries of christian living which, with all its shades of good and bad, still expresses at its best a commitment and a purpose I find most engaging.

As the years roll by and I get to see more clearly where I've been and where I came from, I am surprised today by how open the gospel is to not believing. Of course in those early years every one who joined did so from personal decision (although already there is evidence of families as a whole coming to belong), and anyone who did not arrive at the necessary personal conviction was merely one still searching - unless of course it was one of those who chose to remain in darkness and who tried to stamp out the fires that were beginning to lighten their world.

I think in the end I must formulate my own faith, starting with John's Prologue already quoted, read in the context of evolution, that is, not looking backward to see some original flaw rectified, but looking forward to what might be, to what "eye has not seen nor ear heard, nor heart conceived..." I then move on to accept that those first disciples, the men and women who went around with Jesus and who saw what happened to him - to accept that they came to "see" that he was not just "dead", but that he lives on - then and now and for ever. All their amazing ideas about the just being raised from the dead to reign with him make sense to me, not in the language of redemption from a debt of sin and atonement of an angry god, but in the language of evolution: life evolves by its own dynamic, and this level of intelligent life that we are is destined to share in the directing of evolution's progress. So we ought to stop fighting against the light, snuffing out other people, grinding their potential into the dirt under military boots or the wheels of commerce. We ought to take on our role as contributors.

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"Have you come to believe because you have seen me?
Blessed are those who have not seen and have believed."

Is this closing statement the inevitable two-bob-each-way bet to accommodate simple folk who don't feel the need or don't have the capacity to question? Perhaps. But in the careful phrasing of the gospel we can take note that they are not called "more" blessed, so it could equally well be a blessing on all the generations to come who never had a chance to see Jesus. As Thomas had to let go, to leave the solid ground of common sense and rational argument behind and take the plunge, believing, so do we all in the end.