I’m deeply grateful for skeptics. I’m grateful because I’m one of them. Not easily persuaded of the incredible. Wary of the too-good-to-be-true. I’m grateful because when a fellow skeptic is finally convinced that something remarkable really is true, it’s much more likely to be, and affirms my own belief is reasonable.
My most recent discovery in this area was Antony Flew, the atheist who in 2004, after decades of fervent opposition to theism, changed his mind.
I also love the story of CS Lewis, who fought Christianity for as long and hard as he could, before famously describing himself as “the most reluctant and dejected convert in all of England”.
But I’m especially encouraged by how slow the followers of Jesus were to accept that he had risen from the dead.
Take the women who, three days after he was crucified, go to the tomb to embalm Jesus’ body (incidentally, you don’t go to embalm someone if you expect them to rise from the dead). On finding the tomb empty, their first thought isn’t that Jesus has risen – rather, that someone has moved the body.
The women go and tell the disciples, who think they’re talking nonsense. Peter and John run to the tomb. They look inside, and sure enough, it’s empty, strips of linen lying to one side, the burial cloth neatly folded. John (what a pushover!) believes, but seems to keep it to himself. Peter on the other hand wanders off, “wondering to himself what had happened.”
Then we come to the most hilarious part of the resurrection accounts. Mary Magdalene has followed Peter and John back to the tomb. After they have drifted off home, she stays there, crying (not the funny part – wait for it!). While she’s distraught and confused, a mess of tears and hair in her face, Jesus comes and stands next to her. He asks her why she’s crying.
Mary doesn’t explain. Instead, John’s gospel tells us, she thinks Jesus is the gardener, and asks if he’s the one who has moved the body! Jesus has spent three years trying to explain that he’s the Son of God, and she thinks he’s… the gardener! This is one of the many beautifully awkward details in the gospel accounts that makes them ring with truth.
Mary believes when Jesus gently speaks her name.
The disciples believe when, while they are sitting in a room with the doors locked, frightened of the people who killed their leader, Jesus turns up in their midst. But again, faith doesn’t come easy. We don’t have to wonder if the disciples were hallucinating – they openly consider the possibility for themselves. Jesus says, “Why do you doubt? Look at my hands and my feet and see who I am! Ghosts don’t have flesh and bones.” To get them over the line, he asks for something to eat.
And then it happens again. The most famous skeptic in the Bible is absent. When his buddies tell him they’ve seen the risen Jesus, Thomas isn’t having a bar of it. He says “unless I see the nail marks in his hands and put my hand into his side, I will not believe it.” Seeing is believing, guys!
Of course, later he does see. And he does believe.
I’m encouraged by these people who question things, just as I do. They weren’t simpletons, eager to believe. Their reluctance to be persuaded tells me that from the very beginning, the audacious claims of Christ were put to the test. Good, honest skeptics took their time.
Honest enquirers continue to discover the best explanation for the events of that first Easter is that Jesus was crucified and rose from the dead three days later. And that in doing so he proved his claim to be God. Not only by demonstrating his authority over death, but by revealing in himself the character of God: limitless, sacrificial love. A love that patiently reaches out to anyone who dares to contemplate that the incredible, the seemingly impossible, might just be true.