[✝️] The Faith Anguish Numbers Threw at Me, and Honest Faith Found on ‘Thomas’s Path’

✨ Summary by Gemini 2.5 Pro 　

A reflection that began with the hard-to-accept violent records of Numbers 31, wrestled with faith while guarding against blind belief, and discovered the possibility of the most honest faith in the courage to question itself through a ‘Thomas-like path’ that honestly embraces unresolved questions and keeps struggling with them.

• Original: http://blog.naver.com/hyeogikarp/223886548534
• Naver published at: 2025/06/02 21:42 KST
• Original category: Religion

Original

🗓️ Date: 2025.6.2 Mon

✨ Summary by Gemini 2.5 Pro

A reflection that began with the hard-to-accept violent records of Numbers 31, wrestled with faith while guarding against blind belief, and discovered the possibility of the most honest faith in the courage to question itself through a ‘Thomas-like path’ that honestly embraces unresolved questions and keeps struggling with them.

💭 Diary

Faith may not be the state of knowing every answer perfectly, but rather the process itself of honestly embracing unresolved questions and wrestling with them to the end.

Doubting, asking honestly, listening to the inner voice, and exploring until I can accept it: maybe this attitude is the most honest way of faith permitted to me.

Today, while reading Numbers 31, a storm began raging inside me.

Those brutal records, the incomprehensible image of God…

The violent scenes carried out in the Old Testament under the name of that kind of “God’s will” always remained as questions that could not be easily shaken off, and in the end they were enough to seize me with anguish and anger.

Previously, I would react by just being angry and cynical and end there, but now that the emotion has calmed down, I too want to try seeking another path beyond that storm of emotion.

Ah, of course, I still despise cheap comfort or blind faith that ignores uncomfortable questions and only searches for pleasant answers. That was never what I pursued in the first place.

Today I fully set aside time and started digging deeply again into these long-standing questions. As I traced back memories of debating with Gemini 2.5 Pro, debating with o3, and debating with a seminary classmate, exploring multiple perspectives, I feel like I finally gained a big realization.

In the end, it is the realization that faith may not be the state of knowing every answer perfectly, but rather the process itself of honestly embracing unresolved questions and wrestling with them to the end.

Maybe I am walking the same path as the apostle Thomas of old. Before, I thought the special opportunity for evidence given only to him was unfair, but now I see in him one model of “honest faith.”

He did not avoid his doubt, but faced it head-on, and through that fierce process did he not reach the confession of certainty deeper than any other apostle’s: “My Lord and my God!”

The path led by his “doubt” was not the edge of unbelief, but a narrow path toward living realization.

This thought does not magically erase the problems before my eyes, but it fundamentally changed my attitude toward them.

Escaping the compulsion that I must understand everything clearly, I came to hold the expectation that growth is certainly possible even inside this long and difficult process of questioning.

Maybe what matters more than finding answers is the courage not to stop questioning.

Even if it is ultimately a journey seeking an “answerless answer,” I intend to keep walking this “Thomas-like path” of mine.

Doubting, asking honestly, listening to the inner voice, and exploring until I can accept it: maybe this attitude is the most honest way of faith permitted to me.

Of course, I have no chance to receive the greatest benefit Thomas received. I mean the irreplaceable, absolute miracle of directly touching the side of the resurrected Jesus with his finger.

This kind of “miracle that cannot be explained by coincidence” has never once been clearly observed outside the Bible. So it is natural that it will not happen to me either. This part makes me a little sad. A miracle that I have to somehow attach meaning to myself… what even is that…

But anyway, still, I will try walking even that path. What can I do? A faith that does not doubt like Thomas would lead my head into an ego-splitting state it simply cannot endure.

What form will I be standing in at the end of this path?

… How would I know? One day, out of nowhere, I might be not a “routine system designer” but a “pastor.”

✨ KPT Comment by Gemini 2.5 Pro (Persona: Jaemin)