I lived in New Haven, Connecticut, the home of Yale University, from 1989-91. I lived one mile from the Yale Bowl, where their football games were played. Yale draws students from all over the nation (and the world), and a student must have lived on the next block from where I lived, because the car parked in front of that small house had an Oklahoma license plate. And at that time, it said on the license plate "Oklahoma is OK". I thought it was a clever play on OK being the abbreviation used in addressing a letter, but not a confident statement about how wonderful Oklahoma was. Their plates no longer have that saying, by the way.
Missouri's plates don't still proclaim "Show Me State" (as you can see, the one pictured is from 1982). But that is still the nickname for Missouri. There are a couple of different legends as to how it got that moniker. But it is a nickname that natives of Missouri apparently take to heart; it is "used to indicate the stalwart, conservative, noncredulous character of Missourians" (Wikipedia).
For the most part, that's how we are. We do believe in some things that we can't see, that we can't measure, that we can't quantify (as I have often said, you can't put a meter on two people gazing into each other's eyes in the moonlight to determine if it's love). But we tend to want proof. We tend to want verification. We tend to be assured by facts, or the agreement of others--enough others, or the "right" others--as long as it's something that makes sense. We are noncredulous (we don't belief what isn't credible). We make up our own minds. In fact, we fiercely defend our right to make up our own minds.
So are we any different from Thomas, whose legend as "Doubting Thomas" is usually seen as a put-down? Get this guy, who didn't believe this incredible thing that the rest of the disciples told him about Jesus. What kind of person wants to see with his own eyes before he'll believe something? Pretty much all of us.
Is this so far-fetched? Aren't we just like Thomas? Don't we have our own standards, our own "rules" about what we need to satisfy our sensibilities, such that we don't automatically take someone else's word? And this isn't about whether it's going to rain or not--this is about whether someone Thomas clearly saw was dead could possibly be alive AFTER being dead. Risen from the dead. And Thomas doesn't ask for anything that the rest of the disciples hadn't already experienced. He wants to see and touch Jesus' hands and side--which is exactly what the rest of the disciples got to do when they saw Jesus.
Of course he wants to see with his own eyes. So do we. Of course, what that means now is not exactly the same as what it meant then--this isn't the evening of the day when Jesus rose from the dead. But do we have eyes to see a couple of thousand years of what that resurrection has meant for the world?
John 20:19-25
19 When it was evening on that day, the first day of the week, and the doors of the house where the disciples had met were locked for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood among them and said, ‘Peace be with you.’ 20 After he said this, he showed them his hands and his side. Then the disciples rejoiced when they saw the Lord. 21 Jesus said to them again, ‘Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you.’ 22 When he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, ‘Receive the Holy Spirit. 23 If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained.’
24 But Thomas (who was called the Twin), one of the twelve, was not with them when Jesus came. 25 So the other disciples told him, ‘We have seen the Lord.’ But he said to them, ‘Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands, and put my finger in the mark of the nails and my hand in his side, I will not believe.’