{"id":439,"date":"2026-08-31T22:06:14","date_gmt":"2026-08-31T22:06:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/danburycommunitychurch.org\/?p=439"},"modified":"2026-08-31T22:06:14","modified_gmt":"2026-08-31T22:06:14","slug":"are-you-kidding-me","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/danburycommunitychurch.org\/index.php\/2026\/08\/31\/are-you-kidding-me\/","title":{"rendered":"Are You Kidding Me?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Thomas, Doubt, and a Faith Large Enough for Questions<\/em><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

By Tim Auman<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Scripture: Ephesians 2:19\u201322; John 20:24\u201329<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Thomas is, hands down, my favorite disciple\u2014faithful, skeptical, and apparently unwilling to believe everything he heard at church. When the other disciples announce that they have seen the risen Jesus, Thomas essentially responds, \u201cThat\u2019s wonderful. I\u2019m still going to need to see the documentation.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I don\u2019t hear unbelief in that response. I hear honesty. Thomas refuses to say he believes something simply because everyone around him believes it. He needs an encounter of his own\u2014a faith that has passed through his own questions, his own experience, his own heart. Perhaps Thomas has something important to teach the Church.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For too long, Christianity has sometimes treated faith as a checklist: creation, Trinity, Virgin Birth, resurrection, heaven, hell, miracles, final judgment. Check. Check. Check. But faith isn\u2019t a checklist. It\u2019s a relationship. And like any relationship, it contains moments of trust and doubt, intimacy and distance, clarity and confusion.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When Jesus finally appears to Thomas, he doesn\u2019t shame him for questioning. He offers Thomas exactly what he asked for. And Thomas responds with one of the most intimate confessions in the Gospel: \u201cMy Lord and my God.\u201d<\/em> Thomas moves from believing something about<\/em> Jesus to an encounter with the living Christ.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Maybe that\u2019s why I resist the idea that mystery is somehow the enemy of faith. Perhaps mystery is where faith learns to breathe. We are trying, after all, to comprehend God, eternity, consciousness, love, death, and the origins of the universe with a brain weighing about three pounds. It\u2019s an extraordinary three pounds\u2014but it\u2019s still three pounds.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Perhaps faith is not becoming certain about everything. Perhaps it is learning to live with wonder in the presence of what we cannot fully know.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And that is why the words from Ephesians matter: \u201cYou are no longer strangers and aliens, but citizens with the saints.\u201d<\/em> Faith is not a fortress designed to keep uncertainty out. It is a community of belonging. We are not strangers. We are not outsiders. We belong to God\u2019s Beloved Community\u2014doubts and all.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So if you have moments of Thomas-like doubt, you are among friends here. You don\u2019t have to hide your questions at Danbury Community Church. You don\u2019t have to pretend to be more certain than you are. You don\u2019t have to leave your doubts at the door. Doubt can be the sign of a living faith\u2014a faith still searching, still wondering, still reaching toward God.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The world doesn\u2019t need more people pretending to have all the answers. It needs people courageous enough to say, \u201cI\u2019m not sure. I still have questions. But I\u2019m still here.\u201d<\/em> Still seeking. Still loving. Still praying. Still showing up.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Our uncertainty does not frighten God, and our questions do not push God away. God is with us\u2014in our believing and our doubting, in what we know and what we cannot know, in our questions and in the silence that sometimes follows them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

God is with us in the great mystery of this life\u2014not waiting for us to figure it all out, but meeting us right here, just as we are. And perhaps, for today, that is faith enough.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Thomas, Doubt, and a Faith Large Enough for Questions By Tim Auman Scripture: Ephesians 2:19\u201322; John 20:24\u201329 Thomas is, hands down, my favorite disciple\u2014faithful, skeptical, and apparently unwilling to believe […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[49],"tags":[51],"class_list":["post-439","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sermon","tag-rev-tim-auman-2"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/danburycommunitychurch.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/439","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/danburycommunitychurch.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/danburycommunitychurch.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/danburycommunitychurch.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/danburycommunitychurch.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=439"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/danburycommunitychurch.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/439\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":440,"href":"https:\/\/danburycommunitychurch.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/439\/revisions\/440"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/danburycommunitychurch.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=439"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/danburycommunitychurch.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=439"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/danburycommunitychurch.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=439"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}