What if I have doubts about the resurrection?
by Robert Krumrey
We’ve just celebrated the resurrection of Jesus which is a high water mark for the Christian faith. The entire weight of our faith rests on an empty tomb. It’s the mic drop answer that addresses so many questions. How do you know Jesus is God? Resurrection. How do you know Jesus’ death paid for sin? Resurrection. Why do you think faith in Jesus is the only way to God? Resurrection. The Bible itself tells us that if the resurrection isn’t real, we are to be pitied as fools (see1 Corinthians 15:12-18). But if it is, we have cause for confident faith.
What if I’m struggling to believe that the resurrection actually happened?
A Leap of Faith?
Sometimes religious people shy away from any sort of intellectual scrutiny. They say things like, “I just feel it” or “You just gotta have faith” or “I just know it in my heart”. They think that faith is a “leap” into a place that does not include reason, and somehow that’s acceptible if you add the word “just” to everything you say. Religion is seen as a domain that is not a place for intellect. There is faith and then there is reason. This couldn’t be further from the truth.
One of the unique things about Christianity is that it is founded upon events that happened in history. We know about these events from eyewitness testimony that is put forth in the 4 gospels of the New Testament (Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John). These writings offer multiple attestations of Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection. The four reports were written and disseminated near the time and in the place that these events happened. This is an important detail, because it means that there was ample opportunity to falsify these claims and snuff out their distribution, which is not what happened. In addition to these documents, we also see the mentioning of Christ’s death by crucifixion and his resurrection in both Jewish and Roman historical documents. If you’d like to hear more about this, you can watch our latest MHU presentation on the Resurrection HERE. In this video, is a brief overview of evidences for the resurrection and several suggested books for looking deeper into its historicity.
From Unbelief to Belief
I’m not under the delusion that everyone who spends 25 minutes looking at evidence for the resurrection is going to become a Christian. I do think that honest inquiry should lead one to the conclusion that there is much evidence for Jesus’s dying and rising. I also know that the road to a genuine faith almost always includes some doubt. This was true even of Jesus’ earliest followers who saw the resurrected Lord.
In Luke 24, after the women report to the disciples that they have seen Jesus resurrected, Luke writes that “these words seemed to them an idle tale, and they did not believe them.” This wasn’t a “let’s gather more evidence” or “it’s possible and we should consider it”. It was “this is nonsense and we refuse to believe you”. Later in that same chapter, Luke describes a resurrection appearance when Jesus is present to a group of disciples. Luke reports that Jesus can see their disbelief and asks them “Why are you troubled, and why do doubts arise in your hearts? See my hands and my feet, that it is I myself. Touch me, and see. For a spirit does not have flesh and bones as you see that I have.” Then a few verses later Luke comments that “they still disbelieved.”
Even for those early disciples who were able to see Jesus’ hands and feet and touch his resurrected body, they had to travel a road from disbelief to belief. Partly this is because they were not expecting a flesh and blood resurrection. Even though Jesus had told them it was going to happen multiple times (see Luke 9 for instance), they didn’t have a philosophy of life that included resurrection as a reality.
The Road to Reality
Just because one’s philosophy of life doesn’t currently include corpses rising from the dead never to die again, doesn’t mean it isn’t true. Just like those early followers, we may not have a category for this, but those who are serious about searching for the truth must always be open to the possibility that our understanding of what is real may need an update. There is a big universe out there, and it includes both the seen and the unseen. Every serious historian agrees that there was a Jesus and that his early followers believed that he died on a cross and rose from the dead. Many of those early followers, especially the ones who claimed to be eyewitnesses, went to their deaths professing that all of this was true. The result was a radical (and peaceful) religious takeover of the Roman empire within 200 years all while under persecution.
If Jesus’ resurrection is real, your disbelief has no affect on its historicity. That’s the strange thing about reality. It doesn’t bow to our feelings or our presuppositions or our biases or even to our ignorance. It simply is. I would encourage you to seriously consider this claim and all of its implications. You have nothing to lose and everything to gain. I’ll end with the words of John, the gospel writer, explaining why he wrote his gospel:
“ Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of the disciples, which are not written in this book; but these are written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name.”
I pray that your honest inquiry into these matters will lead to a faith that will give you life in his name.