Is this really your body, Lord?

How I'm joining Thomas in doubt as I look for Jesus again

I almost lost my faith.

I didn’t want to, but after I was driven out of the church I loved, I no longer knew what was true. I believed in Jesus, yet the local church, which I’d been taught to see as His body, had cast me out.

I knew “nothing can separate us from the love of Christ.” Yet the part of his body I’d belonged to, the one I fully trusted and had given my heart to — this body had cut me off and thrown me away.

I didn’t want to walk away from Jesus — where else could I go? — yet no longer knew where to find Him.

As I grieved, we were trying to establish our family in a brand-new community. After what we’d experienced in North Carolina, we moved to another state. Now we were settling into a new home, neighborhood, schools for our kids… and trying to find a new church.

Walking into unfamiliar sanctuaries was unsettling and painful, every Sunday morning a reminder of what I’d lost. I was on edge, anxious (I now wonder if I had some PTSD). And as much as I longed to find a safe place again, I was terrified to trust any institution or any of the people within it. I’d once been a believer in the local church; now I was doubting everything.

Because I had trusted. I’d trusted with all of me.

Where can you find Christ’s body?

For almost 10 years, our family experienced a church congregation as a true home. We knew nearly everyone. A large number of them had been in our house (I tried to estimate but gave up after counting 50 different families) — for dinner, parties, cookouts, play dates, and/or small group meetings. Our goal had been to welcome as many as we could, to let others share in the blessing of being known.

These were not superficial relationships. These people had walked with us through suffering, and we’d done the same for them. We’d worked together in ministry and seen the Lord do some really beautiful things. We prayed for each other, grieved together, laughed together. Our children were growing up together; we brought each other meals after new babies and passed around kids’ hand-me-down clothes.

My love for the Lord was intertwined with my experience of a loving church community: knowing him and being known by his people. This, I was certain, was what the body of Christ was supposed to be.

It’s hard to look back on that time. Even now, I tend to look down on that version of me, feeling cynicism and contempt for my naive trust. But I share this glimpse of our pre-betrayal life in that community to give you a sense of what I lost, and why it’s been so hard to trust again.

A few months after moving to Delaware, we finally decided to join a church. The one we found seemed fairly safe and healthy, our kids began making friends, and we started hosting a small group in our home.

Yet every Sunday as I sat in the pew, I wondered: where are you, Lord? Are you truly present among your church? I want to trust again, but don’t know if I’m able. Will the people who claim to be yours actually reflect your kindness, or will your “hands and feet” be used for harm?

I wondered: Is the Body of Christ truly alive and real?

A lifeline for me during this time were my weekly sessions with a counselor who specialized in spiritual abuse. Only a handful of people I regularly talked to in “real life” knew much of my story, so our video calls provided me with a kind, wise, and empathetic witness to my grief and confusion.

It was on one of these calls he gave me a new way of seeing an old story, one that offered a chance for healing.

The courage of Thomas

Poor Thomas. The disciple forever connected with “doubt.” He missed his first chance to see the resurrected Jesus, and then demanded proof of life. In my understanding of the story, Thomas served as an example of detached skepticism. He should’ve taken the other disciples at their word (never mind that all of them had to see the Lord before they could believe, too!). The way I’d interpreted the story, Thomas was prideful and faithless, wrongly choosing to withhold trust. He shouldn’t have needed to touch Jesus’s body to believe.

But my counselor gave me a different way to see Thomas. What if Thomas demanded proof not because he was unwilling to believe, but because he so desperately wanted to trust again? What if he wanted nothing more than to see Jesus, but didn’t know how to let his broken heart open to the pain of hope?

Had he given everything to the Lord, and didn’t know how to move forward after the confusion of Good Friday? Was his heart pierced by grief, so he had no strength left to be vulnerable again?

“If I don’t see … I will never believe.”

Perhaps these aren’t the coolly dismissive words of a doubter. Maybe they were spoken through tears instead. Maybe Thomas’s hands were clenched in agony, as he longed for what his friends said to be true. Maybe the thought of hope made him angry. Maybe he’d been a fool to trust in the first place.

I wonder what courage Thomas needed to reach out to Jesus that day.

I can find myself in this Thomas. I can grieve with him, praying his words to the one I long to see, to the one whose presence I’ve missed.

“He was unable to bear the pain of hope again,” was what I wrote in the margins of John 20, two years ago. “Thomas so badly wanted Jesus’s body to be real. That’s what I’m asking for, Lord.”

In these two years, I was able to take small steps of trust in that church in Delaware. A few old wounds were reopened in the process, but I also found safety and healing from unexpected places. Like Thomas, I was reaching out, trying to feel the Jesus I’d known and loved.

But then we had to move again. Yet again, we’d need to look for a church, wading through awkward conversations, waiting to feel connected. We got here in December, and since the beginning of the year have visited one church regularly. We’ve seen a few encouraging signs, but yet again, I’m hesitant to open my heart.

Caravaggio’s “The Incredulity of Saint Thomas,” 1602.

An invitation to doubt

I encountered Thomas again recently. And once more, he encouraged me: not to dismiss my doubts, but to honestly take them to Jesus.

This new church recently held a weekend seminar on trauma and mental health, and we had the chance to practice Visio Divina using Caravaggio’s painting “The Incredulity of Saint Thomas.”

The counselor leading us encouraged us to simply observe, to notice what drew our attention in the painting, what thoughts and feelings came up.

I very quickly registered my discomfort with how deeply Thomas’s finger goes into the wound. Why couldn’t he just place his hand on Jesus’s side, rather than in it?

But this was what the Savior said: “Reach out your hand and put it into my side.” Our speaker mentioned this word could be translated as “plunge.” This is an invitation to seek, to go beyond the surface. Thomas takes Jesus at his word.

What a contrast there is between Thomas, his probing finger and anxious face, and Jesus, who gently guides his friend’s hand towards the wound. The Savior’s face is peaceful. He doesn’t look away as Thomas’s finger enters his side, even as Thomas himself seems too uncomfortable to watch.

How kindly and gently Jesus receives him. How lovingly he embraces Thomas, taking in his grief, fear, and doubt — his anguished longing to believe.

“This is my body, broken for you.” This is what Jesus communicates to the friend whose heart is broken, whose hope is broken. He doesn’t condemn Thomas in his doubt, but gently draws him near.

As I looked at the painting, sitting at a table surrounded by strangers, I had to tamp down the grief that started to rise.

I can’t believe unless I reach out and touch it, Lord. Are you truly present in this world through your people? Is your church where I’m supposed to meet you? Is this really your body, Jesus?

I’ll be honest. I’m not sure I want to keep reaching out, keep trying to feel for proof of life. In the last couple years, I thought perhaps I’d begun to feel something familiar.

But starting over in a new place, trying yet again to find a “local body” to trust? My heart and my hope are feeling pretty fragile. Perhaps not up to the effort it takes to connect, to test out relationships, to open myself to the potential of being wounded again.

If the body of Christ is just a metaphor, I’m not sure I want it. But for now, I’m trying to see Jesus as Caravaggio painted him — not the specific features, but the posture of welcome, of gentleness and patience.

He kept his wounds after the resurrection, perhaps especially for those of us who would be wounded in our search for him.