Unless I See

Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands, and put my finger in the mark of the nails and my hand in his side, I will not believe.

 - From John 20

St Thomas the Apostle, apparently, was a man who followed the science. I have known many people like that. 

In fact, maybe most people I have known follow the science. They need evidence. They need proof. And they need the evidence to be persuasiveness, at least to themselves, if not to anyone else. And when ten of his friends insisted they saw the risen Lord, and that He was alive . . . that was not good enough for him. 

Christ's inner circle - the Twelve Apostles (now reduced to eleven) apparently did not operate a democracy. Ten witnesses were not enough. Thomas wanted proof. He was afraid that that the other eleven were merely spreading disinformation, or maybe misinformation, in reporting the impossibility of Christ being alive. He wanted proof. He wanted evidence. He wanted science. 

The account in John, of the testimony of The Ten versus the Science of Thomas is a compelling mirror to modern times. On the one hand, we believe in "democracy." We hold "democracy" as a sacred thing that is always at risk of being removed. We believe there might just be something to this idea that, if the crowd is doing it, we should want to do it too. 

But then we have the ones that want to be intelligent, practical, logical, but most of all, scientific. 

It all seems rather chaotic and incompatible, when viewed through the faulty lens of human eyes. 

But in God's calculus, it all makes perfect sense. Democracy, in which the strength in numbers lend an air of credibility to an assertion, but that also insists upon the right of a single individual to dissent (which in turn can add depth to the original assertion) . . . coupled with science and rationality, which helps an assertion hold up to inquiry and challenge. You must have both. God's nature is not inconsistent with itself. It all works out. 

Thank God for Thomas - - - for his insistence that a thing be proven beyond a shadow of a doubt; and Thank God for the Ten, for their great bond to one another, and the powerful testimony born of the experience of many!