Believing Is Seeing
Thomas Huxley coined the term agnostic. Huxley taught, “totally refuse to commit” to either denying or affirming the supernatural without evidence. Huxley himself trumpeted Renee Descartes as the first to train himself to doubt. Descartes’s method for knowing was to begin by doubting everything until he found one unflappable belief: Cogito ergo sum. “I think, therefore I am.” This Descartes trusted. Only his thoughts made things believable to him. A little philosophical humor: Descartes walks into a bar. “Care for a beer?” asks the bartender. “I think not,” says Descartes and “poof” he disappears in a puff of logic.
Didymus the twin, or more commonly Thomas the disciple of Jesus, may have sympathized with Huxley and Descartes. “So the other disciples told Thomas, ‘We have seen the Lord!’ But he said to them, ‘Unless I see the nail marks in his hands and put my finger where the nails were, and put my hand into his side, I will not believe’” (John 20:25). How does a mutilated man raise himself from the dead? In fact, Thomas’s declaration of unbelief (“unless I see in his hands the mark of the nails”) is the only time nails are mentioned in the Gospels as part of Christ’s crucifixion. One wonders if the horror he witnessed put upon our Savior on the cross made it all the more difficult to believe in a Risen Lord? Let’s not assume we too wouldn’t have earned with him the not so winsome nickname of the one who doubted, “Doubting Thomas.”
Listen to Jesus give Thomas the evidence he needs and the greater blessing we so benefit from. After all, don’t we all doubt the Risen Christ at times? “Put your finger here; see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it into my side. Stop doubting and believe.’ 28 - Thomas said to him, ‘My Lord and my God!’ 29 - Then Jesus told him, ‘Because you have seen me, you have believed; blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed’” (John 20:27-29).
Seeing by the eyes of faith is believing! In this day, faith seeing brings more joy than head seeing. Faith, as the Bible describes it, is not blind. Unbelief is blind. Faith sees a reality beyond what eyes can see. God gives this faith and reveals this reality to us through his living and active word (Hebrews 4:12). This is why Peter, Thomas’s fellow eyewitness, later wrote, “Though you have not seen him, you love him; and even though you do not see him now, you believe in him and are filled with an inexpressible and glorious joy, 9 - for you are receiving the end result of your faith, the salvation of your souls” (1 Peter 1:8–9). Great joy comes not by seeing Jesus now, but by believing Jesus now. Believing is seeing. God give you this greater joy to an even greater degree as you “walk by faith not by sight” in the Risen Christ.
