Wounds

We can worship in the cuts and scrapes. Healing is a science showing foresight and purpose in creation.

by Jack Hoehn  |  27 March 2024  |

Thomas was a twin.

In ancient cultures twins were not heroes. In Zambia, a mother who had twins was thought to have been adulterous, because sex with one man usually gives one baby. So two babies at the same time was proof of two men, especially when the twins were not identical.

First-century Palestine was not different. A boy named “Tom the Twin” was likely the younger, less-favored brother, of doubtful legitimacy or ancestry. He may have grown up as Doubted Thomas, although we have heard of him as Doubting Thomas, Jesus’ disciple.

In many languages, “doubt” and “twin” are related words. For example, German “Zweifeln” and “Zwei.” Latin “dubitare” and “duo.” And English “doubt” and “double.”

It is this biblical Thomas the Twin that I characterize as a pessimist…

“Let us also go, so that we may die with Him” (John 11:16)

…and a pathologist ,

“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 20:25).

I want to suggest that this boy with the same socially questionable ancestry as Jesus himself was not a faith denier, but a scientist. He was one who wants a faith supported by evidence.

And Jesus replies to Tommy Twin, Doubted Thomas, put your finger—a spike-sized wound will only admit a finger—in my hands and feet, and put your hand into the Roman spear-sized wound on my chest. Resurrection had not completed healing of Jesus’ wounds by the eighth day post-resurrection. Thomas was allowed to study the evidence of his healing wounds.

Healing

The science of healing begins within seconds of a wound being made. The cut blood vessels and capillaries immediately constrict due to histamines and serotonins being released. Then the blood in those vessels also releases white blood cells quietly circulating, just waiting for such a catastrophe to happen. These cells, previously doing nothing, suddenly become activated by release of chemokines by injury, then become sticky and active, moving to the site of injury. If the wound introduced germs or toxic chemicals, the white cells immediately attack them to prevent infection. And they send out chemical messages calling the other cells needed to start healing a wound.

The undamaged cells next to the wound are told to start proliferating to make new cells to replace the damaged ones, and stem cells are asked to start to make connective tissue to form a scar; this usually takes two to three weeks. This involves clot formation, production of new blood vessels into the wound to form a granulation tissue, and migration and proliferation of fibroblasts to make collagen for connective tissues. Later, connective tissues will remodel themselves to form the stable scar.

Miracles

The resurrection of Jesus is the only necessary miracle for belief. Talking snakes, floating ax heads, and walking on water are optional beliefs for believers, either as events or metaphors. But that Jesus still had healing wounds more than a week after his resurrection and that Thomas could examine them to confirm that the impossible had indeed happened demonstrates for me a creator using the intelligently designed miracles of life to perform those everyday, everywhere, everyone miracles we call healing. Jesus’ wounds and Barabbas’ wounds both were healed by the same miracles we call “natural.”

The creation of the universe with life over 13.8 billion years is indeed a miracle IF random forces and Darwinian mutations with survival of the fittest were adequate for it. The creation of life condensed and reorganized into a week of wonder is a miracle IF magic is God’s method of action in this world. But life and healing remain a miracle IF it was indeed intelligently designed and patiently brought to fruition by a Designer over the same billions of years not by random unplanned actions or Darwinian improbabilities.

The story of Jesus and Thomas suggests to me that the creator, at least most of the time, does his miracles through nature, not against and not usually outside of natural processes. Jesus’ wounds were healing by the mechanisms and over the time that every natural healing occurs.

The Bible-recorded “miracles” that Jesus performed were just a speeded-up illustration of the miracles that “naturally” happen a million times a day. God is constantly turning water into wine. Lepers have been healed even by me. Bread feeds the hungry everywhere, and small fish feed the poor beside many seas. Storms always cease and become still. Miracles are not rare; they are everywhere, all-the-time events.

Jesus’ miracles are notable because they were condensed. They are not novel activities; they are signs (the Bible never calls his miracles magic; it calls them signs) and wonders because the author of nature was identifying himself. Did he walk on water? Of course he did; so have you. Ok, Jesus wasn’t walking on ice, or on a surfboard, or riding a skidoo (we think), but let the Creator be creative and use his designed universe to inform us who he is. Don’t reduce God to a magician—magic is a deception. Miracles are by design. We just forget the daily miracles of life are miraculous because they are common and repeatable.

Thomas the Missionary

So back to our Doubted Thomas, the “pathologist” who wanted to see the evidence and study the wounds before he would commit to belief. He saw, he probed, the evidence confirmed what he had been told, so he believed. Jesus became not just his teacher, but his Lord and his God.

Most of us are not scientists. We believe what we are told by sources we consider reliable. Jesus has given a blessing to us who believe the testimony of those who recorded it. But Jesus never disregards the scientists who want evidence to support their belief. Thomas now knows that Jesus is not a ghost, a moral idea, a mythical hero. Jesus is a person born through a girl’s birth canal, circumcised of his foreskin when eight days old, crucified under Pontius Pilate, who allows the twin to perform a perhaps painful examination of his still-healing flesh wounds.

The bodily resurrection of Jesus is the miracle that must be believed to come into relationship with Jesus beyond a lot of nice ideas. Scientists are encouraged to examine the evidence available and decide if this Jesus can become not just a great historical character, but also their Lord and their God.

The Apostle Thomas seems to have taken Jesus’ command to go into all the world quite seriously. “One of the oldest most deeply rooted Christian communities in the world” is India’s Thomas Christians. “When Portuguese merchants landed in western India in 1498, they were astonished to discover brown-skinned believers in an entrenched, long-thought-vanquished form of Christianity.”(See Tom Bissell, Apostle, 2016, page 215.) There is some evidence they still worshiped on Saturdays instead of Sundays and celebrated Easter the same time as the Jewish Passover. 

Saint Thomas Basilica in Chennai (Madras), India, is the supposed resting place of Thomas. What is more likely is that Thomas went to Syria in the first century, from where the Thomas Movement then sent missionaries to India by the third century. But Thomas Indians are sure it was the Apostle Thomas himself who came to their land bearing testimony of the evidence he had found. They join all post-first-century believers who claim Jesus’ words for ourselves:

“Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed” (John 20:29).

This is #6 in a series on worship guided by science. #1 is here. Jack is also known as Dr. John Byron Hoehn, MD, CCFP (Canada), DTM&H (London). His book Adventist Tomorrow—Fresh Ideas While Waiting for Jesus in its second edition continues to be the most popular book Adventist Today has published. Jack’s wife, Deanne, has published a delightful new book called Loving You—I Went to Africa, about their 13 years as medical missionaries. These books are available at SHOP in the menu at the top of the page. All sales go to support Adventist Today.

To join the conversation on this topic, click/tap here.