Most of us are familiar with what happened in the Upper Room when Thomas showed up late. We may even have judged Thomas for his lack of faith. Rightly or wrongly, doubters ever since have been dubbed Doubting Thomases.

            Nonetheless, putting ourselves into this story may help us to understand our own faith. One way to do that is to ask ourselves a few simple questions: What might we have done had we been in Thomas’ sandals? How would we have reacted? What would we have said? What would we have thought? How might we have felt? Perhaps, to our chagrin, we may have reacted as Thomas did. We might even have been more doubtful than he was.

            We live in a doubting world. For many people, empirical evidence and rational thinking have become the gods of truth. Anything that science cannot prove or our human minds cannot reconcile we assume to be either untrue or still waiting for science to catch up. For the moment, at least, we believe only what can be proven. Our pride can blind us to the reality that our minds, no matter how brilliant, and our science laboratories, no matter how sophisticated, are limited in their ability to uncover truth. No matter that the most intelligent among us have, in the past, misjudged what is true. No matter that many of yesterday’s scientific discoveries have been shown by today’s science and our own experience to be incorrect.

            This does not mean that human intelligence and science should be rejected as paths to truth. God gives us many vehicles for finding truth, and the gifts of our human intelligence and the marvels of science are among them. And yet, as Socrates the great Greek philosopher observed, the wisest of persons is the one who can recognize that h

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