Is Seeing Believing? by JE Rose

Then Jesus told him, “Because you have seen me, you have believed; blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.” (John 20:29)

Poor old Thomas. Next to Peter, which disciples has gotten thrown under the bus in sermons more? The self-righteous snobbery of those who do this to those guys has gotten really annoying to me. We love to dump on Peter because of his denials and his impulsiveness. We do that to Thomas and even label him as “Doubting Thomas” as if his words about belief and sight were abnormal and so beneath us.

But as I consider my own faith struggles I know otherwise. And it’s not just me. I think the words of Thomas are universally applicable if we would be honest. 

It isn’t wrong to want to have sensory experience to inform our understanding. Since God gave us eyes and ears he obviously wants us to use them. But since the Garden, particularly the Tree of Knowledge, we have been tempted to give sensory experience an authority God never intended. Genesis says that Eve saw the fruit and it was pleasant to the eyes. Never mind that God has forbidden it. Her own “reason” took priority for what was pleasant. 

But the Garden story and temptation can be misleading if we don’t really appreciate what happened. Like Thomas, we can miss the application to ourselves. I know I tend to. And I think I understand a bit more clearly why: for Thomas sight felt easier than faith. There are at least two reasons. 

Familiarity and Stress

What I call the “alarm system” of the brain (brain stem and reticular formation) is wired for “novelty.” To save energy and produce efficiency of operation, we aren’t on high alert all the time! The activation of internal alarms (“what’s happening?) involving epinephrine surges depends on familiarity and novelty. The more familiar, the less alarm. That doesn’t mean we always go into hysteria with something new (although some do). It just means other parts of the brain have to work harder to process the novelty. I’m not going to rehearse all the science here other than to say for someone like Thomas (and myself) the unfamiliarity of the events triggered fears and anxieties in him making him demand the “old way” of understanding: I want to see with my eyes and feel the nail prints…” 

Let’s consider the alternative and why it was so hard for Thomas (and for us). When Thomas faced novelty and unfamiliar experiences in the past he no doubt felt the surge of epinephrine but instead of fading and dissipating it recycled over time and began to produce toxic cortisol–the stress hormone. I tend to think that there is a particular natural life cycle to this that is different for everyone. We know that the epinephrine in the blood stream has a relatively short “half life”--not more than a couple minutes. However, if the alarm system doesn’t settle down within that window, it can start blasting “louder” in the brain. The longer it continues, the harder it is to quiet it. Eventually, it can hijack other neural systems and cause all sorts of stress reactions. 

In my view, this had been a struggle for Thomas all his life. It made him into the pessimistic fellow who said after Jesus announced going to see what happened to Lazarus, “Let us go that we may die with him” (John 11:16). When preachers talk about this event it usually elicits another chuckle at Thomas’ expense. But not from me I understand it too well. And from a neurological perspective it reflects the way he had learned to process the novelty and unfamiliarity of life. 

So far I’ve given him quite a lot of latitude. But I’d be remiss if i left it at that. It would be wrong if I let myself off the hook also for my similar tendency. For Thomas, “walking by sight” also reflected the sins of his father Adam. Theologically, we call it total depravity. It was the evidence that Adam’s nature had passed to all men–Thomas and everyone else. 

When Adam and Eve disobeyed God’s clear command and ate the forbidden fruit they justified it using the logic of the serpent: “God knows that in the day you eat it you will be like ‘gods’...

It wasn’t just a problem of relying on sensory observation (the fruit was pleasant to look at) it was that their own empirical observation to determine right and wrong was given higher priority than what God himself revealed. 

I think we can give Thomas a pass for the comfort and “easy” feel of his demand to see. But we cannot let him or ourselves off the hook entirely for we are not called to the easy path of knowledge. Let’s take another look at the outcome of the story:

²⁴ But Thomas, one of the twelve, called Didymus,^[c]wasn’t with them when Jesus came. ²⁵ The other disciples therefore said to him, “We have seen the Lord!”

But he said to them, “Unless I see in his hands the print of the nails, put my finger into the print of the nails, and put my hand into his side, I will not believe.”

²⁶ After eight days, again his disciples were inside and Thomas was with them. Jesus came, the doors being locked, and stood in the middle, and said, “Peace be to you.” ²⁷ Then he said to Thomas, “Reach here your finger, and see my hands. Reach here your hand, and put it into my side. Don’t be unbelieving, but believing.”

²⁸ Thomas answered him, “My Lord and my God!”

²⁹ Jesus said to him, “Because you have seen me,^[d]you have believed. Blessed are those who have not seen and have believed.” (20:24-29)

This story is my own. It’s yours too. We may not all act on our doubt the same way. But what strikes me here is how Jesus accommodates Thomas’ lack of faith. “Blessed are those who have not seen and have believed” is the ideal. But Jesus still met Thomas where he was, giving him the sensory evidence his weak faith required. 

However, I need to add that Jesus does not leave us where we are. Spiritual growth always means more faith and less sight. Church tradition tells us that Thomas eventually died a martyr's death after preaching the gospel in India. He supposedly admonished his frightened disciples to have faith and not harden their own hearts on his death. How ironic. Clearly God did the work of shifting his doubt. That’s because God equipped him to judge reality differently. He did not need to “see” the nails and put his hands in Jesus’ side like he once did. How? I think it probably involved the same brain systems but in a new way. When Thomas saw Jesus in the upper room and said, “My Lord and my God” that was the beginning of a new era: believing became the doorway. I think it was the theologian Anselm who coined the phrase, “ 

Neque enim quaero intelligere ut credam, sed credo ut intelligam^–("I do not seek to understand in order that I may believe, but rather, I believe in order that I may understand")