Monday, January 5, 2009

is seeing believing?

Eyesight, corrective lenses, glaucoma…

We can trust what we can see, right? After all we rely on sight to drive, read, eat, etc. It is completely trustworthy… never fails…pure scientific fact

Unless we are watching a magician, or looking at a retouched photo, or the CGI in a movie, or we are near-sighted; farsighted; have a stigmatism; colorblind; we have taken some illegal drugs…commercials…info-mercials

But most of life isn’t like those extremes. I really can USUALLY trust what I see. But can we trust what we don’t see. What do we “take on faith” or believe because of experience. We turn on a light and we don’t see the electricity running up the wall, but we trust it is there; we throw a football and trust that gravity is part of how to throw it; we push the brakes even though we can’t see the brake fluid or the brake pads. The internet etc.

In point of fact we have “faith or trust” is all sorts of things we can’t see, don’t understand, and couldn’t prove to other people to save our lives. Love; Pheromones; Brain waves; Wind currents; Electrons; Light waves and particles; DNA; black holes…

Yet all these “miracles” of modern science and technology are simply taking our discoveries of reality and placing them in convenient useful packaging. Cellphones, iPods, Wi-Fi, hard-drives, gene therapy…

What then are miracles? Does Jesus just know more about reality and uses what he knows…or is he so far removed from reality that he can shape it any way he so desires? We don’t know. We can’t see him do miracles, and we can’t see how he does them even if we experience one. A lot of people stop asking because they started asking with expectations that it would always happen, and when it didn’t they just gave up.

But do we believe, without seeing, that he can do them? And do we ask him to do them? And do we give him time to do them? And do we let him say no, if he thinks it is best to not do one?

It’s interesting, the Bible says that “faith comes by hearing, and hearing from the word of God.” And yet most people pursue faith by looking instead of hearing. People say “I would believe if I saw…” And yet the Israelites in Egypt saw incredible things, but didn’t always believe. Maybe our faith would grow more if we spent more time listening to Jesus, instead of watching for him to do some big carnival miracle. Maybe we should pray instead of trying to see.

Just a thought…

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