Doubting Thomas: An Abolitionist Devotional by Chavonn Shen

Day 1 of 3: I Will Not Believe

I killed a spider
Not a murderous brown recluse
Nor even a black widow
And if the truth were told this
Was only a small
Sort of papery spider
Who should have run
When I picked up the book
But she didn’t
And she scared me
And I smashed her
I don’t think
I’m allowed
To kill something
Because I am
Frightened

—Nikki Giovanni, “Allowables”

Now Thomas (also known as Didymus), one of the Twelve, was not with the disciples when Jesus came. So the other disciples told him, “We have seen the Lord!” But he said to them, “Unless I see the nail marks in his hands and put my finger where the nails were, and put my hand into his side, I will not believe.”
-John 20: 20-21 (NIV)

Since the Uprising of 2020, I’ve been thinking a lot about this poem as far as who’s allowed to live and whose pain is seen as pain, to begin with. The speaker in this poem threw a book at the spider, crushing it, and realized that the spider wasn’t worth killing only after it was dead. They didn’t pause to think if the spider might die painfully, their fear took first place over another being’s life. The spider posed no threat, yet the person in the poem still decided that they were the one allowed to determine what counted as a threat.

Violence against Black people often stems from the fact that they’re denied humanity, thus the ones committing violence refuse to acknowledge emotions other than their own. Our humanity is constantly on trial to determine whether our pain is enough to make the other truly see us and police brutality is a gaping wound that Black people are constantly asked to explain. Every incident of violence it feels like you’re digging fingers into the wound, making it wider, without it ever having time to heal. And a lot of people won’t believe that there is a wound there at all.

Thomas said that he wouldn’t believe Jesus was alive unless he himself felt the wounds. It wasn’t enough to believe others who had seen him. It wasn’t enough to believe the experiences of women and femmes who were the first to see Jesus after the resurrection. No, Thomas couldn’t take their word for it. Unless he felt it, it didn’t exist.

Thomas refused to believe Jesus’ story unless he saw his wounds. Jesus and his wounds were denied the right to exist without that existence being called into question.

God, give us the strength to look past our fear and disbelief of others’ experiences in order to see You at their core. Amen.

Day 1 of 3: I Will Not Believe

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