The Thinklings

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Wednesday, March 25, 2009

"... some doubted."

Posted by Bird @ 7:52 am CDT
Filed under: Bible, Contemplation

Then the eleven disciples went away into Galilee, to the mountain which JESUS had appointed for them. When they saw Him, they worshiped Him; but some doubted.

And JESUS came and spoke to them, saying, "All authority has been given to Me in heaven and on earth. Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit ..."

Matthew 28:16-18

It's easy to pile on to the disciples; I've heard preachers do it countless times. While I'm not a big "let's slam the disciples" guy, I don't understand why the 12 (or 11 in this case) at times seem so, well, obtuse. It boggles my mind that they have seen the risen Lord, but still, some of them doubted. I think it speaks to the frailty of the human heart, and it gives me hope that even the ones closest to the risen JESUS can doubt, yet still be elect.

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Comments on ""... some doubted."":

1. Bill - 03/25/2009 8:20 am CDT

I have long since given up any kind of disciple-bashing. These guys did better than I would have done.

I think the "some doubted" part is attributable to the fact that Jesus resurrection was completely unanticipated, and the Kingdom, in the way He described it and the instructions He gave them, was not what they had expected.

Granted, He had told them He would rise from the dead, and He had been teaching them for three years. But expectations and hundreds of years of cultural conditioning are hard to overcome. Most Jewish people believed in a general resurrection at the end of the age, when God would come to set things right. Having the Messiah be resurrected "early" - one guy, the first fruits, threw them for a loop. It was completely unexpected. They had heard him speak of His rising before, but it had never sunk in what He meant: that He would rise first, heralding the beginning of the restoration and blazing the trail for the coming bodily resurrection of all of God's people.

In many ways, I think passages like this speak to the authenticity of the gospel accounts. They reflect the way people really react to things.

2. Jared - 03/25/2009 8:36 am CDT

I love the disciples BECAUSE they're morons. As you said, it gives me hope. Because I'M a moron. :-)

Ditto the Israelites.

Teaching that condescends to Scriptural jackasses effectively denies sin, especially the sin in us.
They are us, we are them.

3. Val - 03/25/2009 9:11 am CDT

I had a wonderful Sunday School teacher who did not like hearing speakers laugh at and/or make fun of the disciples for their "not getting it" sometimes. He pointed out that we had the whole Bible to use but they did not. So bashing them for not having all of the information as we do is not very fair.

4. Karl - 03/25/2009 10:23 am CDT

Ditto to Bill and Jared. And along the lines of Val's point I think our reaction to the disciples is similar to our (or at least my) frequent reaction of frustration to characters in a book or a movie who don't seem to get what is going on ("don't go upstairs you idiot!" "Don't tell HIM THAT!" etc.).

Granting them "real" existence for a moment, the point with those movie or book characters is, they don't REALIZE they are in a story. We the audience know there's a story and probably have a hint about what KIND of story it is and are maybe even privy to certain other info about other events and characters that the character doesn't have, so we are expecting everything, even the seemingly trivial, to be of significance. And we are expecting the seemingly senseless to eventually make sense and are therefore paying attention to every detail. But the characters don't know they are characters in a story that is larger than themselves so they behave more like "normal people" would and are kind of dense/oblivious.

Aren't the disciples in something of a similar position? Yeah, they knew this Jesus guy was pretty incredible and had been trying to wrap their minds around what he was teaching them and what he was saying about the Father and the Kingdom, at times getting some pretty cool moments of clarity. But they still didn't fully realize (yet) exactly what story they had landed in; a guy coming back from the dead was a pretty huge thing for them to get their minds around: was it really him, if it was him had he really died, etc.?

5. The Ancient Mariner - 03/25/2009 2:10 pm CDT

I second all this (or fifth it, or whatever) . . . clobbering the Twelve carries with it the implicit assumption that they should have "gotten it" because it should have been easy to get. The fact of the matter is, if you really put yourself in their shoes, it wouldn't have been any easier for any of us to "get it" than it was for them. It doesn't take being a moron to doubt, it just takes being an ordinary human being with an ordinary set of experiences that have taught you to be somewhat skeptical, particularly of unexpected good news. This is especially true when you consider that they didn't have the Holy Spirit; we do, and we still struggle with stuff. Take the Spirit away from us, and I tend to doubt we'd even do as well.

6. jen - 03/25/2009 5:06 pm CDT

Ditto Jared's comment. I love that the disciples rarely truly got it even when it smacked them in the face. It's why I love Peter so much, especially - his outright rejection of Jesus and ultimate redemption by the ressurrected Jesus reminds me that there's nothing I can do to keep me from redemption when I need it.

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