Faith In The Era Of Doubt

The Gospel today, about Doubting Thomas (John 20: 19-31), prompted me to ask: why did God became man at such a time? Why didn't he choose this age instead to come down to earth?

By living in this century, Jesus would have made it easier for us to believe in Him and His Resurrection: we're talking about hundreds of pictures and videos from smart phones and paparazzi documenting His every move, His every word. With the current technology, we would have been able to amass literally millions of reference material on Him and His teaching instead of the measly four Gospels we have now. In short, it would have been easier to believe in Jesus, fully alive, fully human and divine.

Instead, He was born in a small desert nation ruled then by the Roman empire. He lived in a time full of superstition and crude beliefs, when 'documentation", as we know it now, was virtually non-existent. 

Some historians nowadays question the historicity of Jesus Christ. Some hypothesize that He did not exist at all. Some claim that He was in fact an amalgam of several influential thinkers. In both schools of thought, Jesus Christ is an illusion. As to why has the belief in such a questionable figure of history persisted over the centuries points to nothing else but the intractability of the Jesus myth.

But yet we are here: believing in the Risen Lord with a fervor that defies logic and reason. 

Sir Ivan, a former colleague, shared a story about the Jesuits during one of our sales trips. The conversation was about my mother's comment on the Society of Jesus. She was mesmerized how such men, immensely gifted intellectually, did not see any discord between their faith in God and in science. Sir Ivan promptly replied that, perhaps, this is so because the Jesuits have seen and experienced God Himself; any other proof was rendered moot.

Maybe, it is only fitting that Jesus lived and died in the context that He was in: a forgettable nation in what should be an insignificant era of human history, a time when pictures, videos, or even news have yet to be invented.

It is only in this context that the phrase 'leap of faith' can ever become genuine. Without any 'evidence' of Jesus, our transition from non-belief to belief becomes all the more powerful and life-changing. Without 'evidence', ironically, God becomes more evident in the way He touches us. Like the Jesuits, we believe even more that Jesus is alive because we have seen and experienced Him. We have felt Him move us and change us deep within.

This is perhaps the paradox of His Resurrection today: that in His physical absence, He makes His presence all the more felt.