The first doubting Thomas to deal with is yourself to eliminate that part in you which refuses to allow you accept yourself. By the time you accept yourself, you will have remained with 2-3 Thomases who believe by sight and touch like the original Thomas in the Bible.
Accepting yourself secures your acceptance by others and that, whatever you do is never doubted of. Doubting Thomases are made to believe in you by consistency in what you have chosen to be believed in.
Carrying the Thomas-ness of our people at your nose tip, you would sweat until you sweat no more in order for you to be believed in. The same way it had troubled Jesus Christ to reappear in the presence of the doubting Thomas to convince him of His resurrection is the same way it can trouble you to excel maximally in what you have chosen to succeed in.
Doubting Thomases are easy to convince, remember Jesus said only one word to Thomas when He appeared at the shore; ‘come and place your fingers in the holes of the nails’ and when Thomas heard of it, he threw himself down and knelt before Jesus to confess.
It’s hard that our people get convinced to accept one before success, but they are convinced by the signs of your success such as you’re meeting with prominent leaders, winning an award, nomination to participate in an event where ordinary people are almost downloaded, to mention a few. When you happen to receive your first sign of success, the doubting Thomases immediately kneel before you in recognition of what they have been denying all along to accept in you.
Doubting you, looks simple, but it almost concentrates your consistent quest to succeed in what you are doing, and conversely, believing in you, too, looks simple, but it gives you a sense of feeling that if you fail to succeed in this, who else do you see can succeed in it? Believing in you hangs all your people’s hopes on you, in that, if you fail, it will be like the whole community you hail from has failed, and so, you will fight tooth and nail to make yourself be believed in for life.
It’s a norm that people, especially people of the same community, do not accept themselves for anything other than for an unorganized inward competition that if I accept so and so, they will reach their climaxes before me. I almost laugh at the dream chasers who solicit support and morals from our communities. Who told them our communities support people who are going? They support people who are coming, I mean people who have already killed what they have been hunting for.
To make such communities believe in you, be like a solitary buffalo (kuny-anyar), I mean be like Johannes Gutenberg, whom, people doubted of until he invented letters. By the time the country (or the world, why not?) calls you by your right name, believe me you will see a long queue of the same people who doubted of you singing songs they sing to God behind you.
But dear beloved doubting Thomases, deposit this into your vertebrae, a person being believed in while coming considers such believers like traders who trade with China because they procure commodities knowing that 90% of them is fake. You’re always doubted of in what you want to excel in until your success whitewashes it in people’s minds, and thereafter, they believe in you. Be consistent in what you are doing to make Thomases believe in you!
The author is a medical student, University of Juba.