Thomas doubted the testimony of his peers, and really, who could blame him? None of them were expecting the resurrection. Why would Thomas put stock in the testimony of similarly exhausted, traumatized people like him? But even as we soften in our view of Thomas, we should not blunt the edge in the Lord’s correction of him, especially because we stand in constant need of this correction, too.

After Jesus rose from the dead, a disciple named Thomas would not believe it when others told him that they’d seen the Lord. They were thrilled, ecstatic. But Thomas wasn’t having it. The talk of Christ-sightings probably seemed crazy to Thomas, if not also cruel. Thomas was spent. Like the other disciples, his heart had been ripped out by the brutal death of his beloved master. Thomas said that unless he could see and feel the nail piercings in Jesus’ hands and the speared gash Jesus received in his side when Roman soldiers checked to see if he was really dead, the despondent disciple wouldn’t believe in the resurrection. Because of this, he’s often called “Doubting Thomas.” I think this moniker is mostly unfair. At the very least it’s uncharitable. It also overlooks vital lessons which Thomas’s faith can teach today’s beleaguered believers, and ironically misses perhaps the truest reason why Thomas does deserve (kindhearted) criticism.

We tend to forget that earlier on in Jesus’ ministry, Thomas led the other disciples in a willingness to die with and for him. As Jesus’s enemies were becoming murderous, the Lord was determined to go to Judea to visit the family of the Lazarus, whose grave illness he’d heard about two days prior and who had since died. The disciples thought their master was crazy, and tried to talk him out of it because it was now known that Jesus’s enemies wanted to stone him. Jesus insisted, and Thomas spoke up, urging the other disciples on to follow their Lord. “Let us also go, that we may die with him.” Some might read Thomas’s words as somewhat cynical, or at least sullenly resigned, but even if that was their true tone, his sentiments were no less sincere for it. Thomas teaches us that living faith does not require a lively personality. Sometimes the most buoyant expressions of faith are the ones which sink first beneath the trials which test them.

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