A Faith That Doesn't Fear Questions
What the so-called lost gospels reveal about Christianity's earliest witnesses
Every now and then, I get a week where the comments on Medium feel brutal.
I have long since written on Medium in addition to my home here, as a way of reaching out and joining in the discussion. Many of you have made your way from Medium, and I am very thankful you have.
This week has been one where several conversations became unexpectedly combative. That comes with the territory when writing online, and most of the time it doesn't bother me. What caught my attention, though, was how often the discussion eventually arrived at the same place.
Someone would mention a 'lost gospel' as though it settled the matter entirely.
Sometimes it is the Gospel of Thomas. Sometimes it is a documentary they watched years ago. Occasionally, it is simply the suggestion that the Church hid books which told a very different story about Jesus.
The implication is usually the same. Somewhere, buried beneath centuries of tradition, there is another version of Christianity waiting to be discovered.
I understand the concern.
If I were exploring Christianity for the first time, I would probably ask the same question.
After all, if there were other gospels, why were they excluded? Who made that decision? And what if the version of Christianity we inherited is only one voice among many?
They are all fair questions.
In fact, one of the things I learned during my years in parish ministry was that many people carry questions like these for decades without ever asking them aloud. Sometimes they worry that doubt is somehow incompatible with faith; or they assume the Church must have a ready-made answer that will shut the conversation down.
Yet I have always found the opposite to be true.
