Comfort for Clumsy Believers

what the disbelief of the disciples means for us

This article was published today in Aletheia Today’s Holy Days issue. I hope you’ll start it here and then click the link to keep reading it there. But don’t forget to come back and let me know your thoughts in the comments! I love having that back-and-forth with you all each week.

Photo by Ahmed Zayan on Unsplash

Every quarter or so, I have an existential crisis. 

It’s not something I typically bring up in conversation; it turns out that questions like, “What if everything we’ve believed about God and the universe is wrong?” tend to dampen the overall mood of dinner parties and coffee dates. 

Plus, it just isn’t polite Christian talk. Nobody wants to hear the late night doubts of a so-called believer—least of all me. These questions are unwelcome; these doubts, disturbing. 

But I’ve found comfort as of late in the recountings of Jesus’ death and resurrection in the Gospels. For the first time in all of my rereadings, it’s striking me that the disciples really didn’t understand the entirety of what Jesus was up to and who he was. There is evidence that, in the backs of their minds, there was always the glimmer of the same question that shimmers on my frontal lobe today: “But what if we’ve gotten it all wrong about him?”

How have I missed it until now? How did I not see that these men—just like me—grappled with the pesky whispers that poked and prodded at the foundations of their faith, their security, their eternal futures? 

I’ve always assumed that since they knew Jesus personally, it was a given that they also understood he was really the Son of God. That every moment they were in his presence, his essence of saving grace would be so palpable that they’d know for sure who they were dealing with. That there would be no way they could touch and see, eat and banter with Jesus himself and still hold on to any shred of disbelief that mumbled, “Maybe he’s just a really good guy. A stellar prophet. Ten out of ten, as far as leaders go.” 

The Disbelief of the Disciples 

But looking around at Jesus’ closest handful of friends in the days surrounding his death and resurrection, we see a group of people thrown into the confusing waters of uncertainty, fear, and doubt. Judas acts a traitor. Simon Peter denies knowing him. The disciples in the upper room refuse to believe Mary when she tells them Jesus has left the tomb. The men on the road to Emmaus can’t even see past their discouraged hopes to realize that Jesus himself is walking alongside them. In short, even though they knew Jesus and he’d told them exactly what would happen, they still couldn’t seem to bring themselves to the point of certain, unwavering belief.

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also—what do you think of this poem?

I’ve been casually tucking poems away for a future full-length poetry collection. Perhaps by the end of this year? Because of this, I haven’t been sharing poems as much on social media and Substack; I’m working more privately and keeping them close to my vest to save them for future publication.

But I would love to share some with you and get your honest-to-goodness feedback. I think I’ll be doing more of this, but keeping it behind the paywall so that they aren’t available to the whole wide web. So come on in to my “studio,” friends. I’d love to know: Do you love this? Hate this? Does anything feel unclear, not fully-formed, or especially poignant to you?

Lay it on me (nicely please 😅)—I’m here for the good, bad, and ugly.