James 1:5–8

If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask of God, who gives to all liberally and without reproach, and it will be given to him. But let him ask in faith, with no doubting, for he who doubts is like a wave of the sea driven and tossed by the wind. For let not that man suppose that he will receive anything from the Lord; he is a double-minded man, unstable in all his ways.

He who doubts? Doubts what?

That it’s all true—that Jesus is who He claimed to be.

And for the first century Christian (and for us) this all hinges on one thing—that He rose from the dead.

While Jesus was in the grave, His disciples were confused and depressed. They were, for just a few days, like a wave of the sea driven and tossed by the wind.

Then Jesus showed up.

Oh, to be a fly on the wall.

Yesterday’s lesson was on the value of trials. There is no better example of this than the back-breaking trial the disciples went through while Jesus was in the grave. Imagine the confusion. Imagine the pain. Imagine the questions they asked each other.

And it was all a set-up. When Jesus showed up and flipped the script, the release of pressure could kill a weak heart. The disciples went from total doubt to total certainty in a matter of seconds.

Actually, no they didn’t, and that’s the lesson. When Thomas refused to accept what his eyes were telling him, he was acting normally. What he said that day was what many of the other disciples could have been thinking.

The mind does not switch gears easily. Humans are wired to have a consistent, coherent view of reality (sometimes called a worldview). This keeps us sane. We process everything through the lens of our worldview. Any major disruption is not easily processed. In fact, we often ignore outright anything that contradicts our worldview. It “doesn’t make sense” so we don’t remember it.

For example, we all believe that the past is fixed. We can lie about or forget the past, but we cannot change it. If something were to come up that challenged this view, we wouldn’t quickly go, “Oh, I see,” and change our view. This new idea would be a hard sell. Almost no proof would be sufficient.

So it was with Jesus’s resurrection. Death is, by definition, irreversible. The disciples couldn’t process and accept the new reality in an instant. The mind just doesn’t work that way.

This is connected to James’s point about doubt leading to instability.

One has to have fully incorporated the resurrection into their worldview or they’re in a state of confusion.

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These weekday DEEPs are written by Mike Slay. Saturdays' by Matt Richardson. Subscribe here: https://www.ailbe.org/resources/community

The weekly study guides, which include questions for discussion or meditation, are here: https://www.ailbe.org/resources/itemlist/category/91-deep-studies

Scripture taken from the New King James Version. © Copyright 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved.