Doubt, in a religious context, is usually viewed as a negative thing. We generally equate doubt with a lack of faith. After all, didn’t Jesus say as much to Peter in Matthew 14:31 when He saved Peter from drowning. “O you of little faith, why did you doubt?” We think that having doubts puts us into the same category as “doubting Thomas”. In John chapter 20, after the risen Lord had appeared to the disciples, they told Thomas, who had been absent, “We have seen the Lord.” (vs 25). Thomas’ reaction was to say, “Unless I see in His hands the print of the nails, and put my finger into the print of the nails, and put my hand into His side, I will not believe.” Thomas was demanding an extraordinary level of evidence. People often claim that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, but what is an extraordinary level of evidence? Thomas had heard the eyewitness testimony of several people he had known for years and had rejected it. Thomas essentially said that if he could not see it, he would not believe it. If we followed Thomas’ example, there is very little in this world that we could believe. Much of what we “know” to be true is based on someone else’s testimony. Have you seen the Nile River or the pyramids of Egypt? How do you know that George Washington was America’s first president? Jesus told Thomas that it was possible to believe even such things as His resurrection from the dead without seeing it personally. “Thomas, because you have seen Me, you have believed. Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.” (John 20:29). In 2 Corinthians 5:7 the apostle Paul said, “For we walk by faith, not by sight.” We do not have to personally see the things we read about in scripture, we have other evidence. This is when doubt can actually be a good thing, not the doubt of Thomas who would not believe until he saw the Lord with his own eyes in spite of eyewitness testimony, but the doubt of someone who searches for the truth with an open and sincere heart. In 1 Thessalonians 5:21 Paul said, “Test all things; hold fast what is good.” In 1 John 4:1 we read, “Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits, whether they are of God; because many false prophets have gone out into the world.” If we have doubts or questions about things, we can go to God’s word to find answers. Finding answers will make us more pleasing to God because we better understand His will for us and how to become what He wants us to be. Having doubts is not always bad, sometimes it leads us to truth. Those who never have doubts are the ones in the greatest danger because they have no incentive to find out if they are right or not.