See It to Believe It, or Believe It to See It?
Luke 24:36-49
April 26, 2009
While they were talking about this, Jesus himself stood among them and said to them, ‘Peace be with you.’ They were startled and terrified, and thought that they were seeing a ghost. He said to them, ‘Why are you frightened, and why do doubts arise in your hearts? Look at my hands and my feet; see that it is I myself. Touch me and see; for a ghost does not have flesh and bones as you see that I have.’ And when he had said this, he showed them his hands and his feet. While in their joy they were disbelieving and still wondering, he said to them, ‘Have you anything here to eat?’ They gave him a piece of broiled fish, and he took it and ate in their presence.
Then he said to them, ‘These are my words that I spoke to you while I was still with you—that everything written about me in the law of Moses, the prophets, and the psalms must be fulfilled.’ Then he opened their minds to understand the scriptures, and he said to them, ‘Thus it is written, that the Messiah is to suffer and to rise from the dead on the third day, and that repentance and forgiveness of sins is to be proclaimed in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem. You are witnesses of these things. And see, I am sending upon you what my Father promised; so stay here in the city until you have been clothed with power from on high.’
I don’t know about you, but I’m not really a puzzle person. A lot of people love puzzles, whether sudoku, crossword puzzles, word problems, and things like that. I like jigsaw puzzles, but that’s probably because they are more visual and less linear. I really don’t like linear puzzles. What I mean by that is that I just don’t’ resonate with the kind of logical progression that goes into these kinds of puzzles. They are linear in that you have to build one piece on another. My mind just doesn’t work that way. For whatever reason, I tend to be much better at seeing relationships between things as a whole, rather than looking at pieces.
As a result, I love optical illusions. You know what I’m talking about. I love pictures that look like one thing, but turn out also to be another. I’m fascinated with them. For instance, look at the illusion below:
How about this illusion? It’s a painting by Bev Doolittle titled “Pintos.” Her paintings are often of the western United States, and they often have optical illusions in them. Can you see the pintos in this picture?
Another favorite of mine is the one below that shows trees on a shoreline reflected in a lake or river:
You now, in so many ways true faith is a matter of believing in order to see. The main problem of faith for so many people is that they want to see first, then believe. People want proof for everything before they are willing to accept. There’s something about modern Americans that make it hard for us to believe first and see later.
I think it has to do with the dominance of scientific thinking; a kind of thinking that is mainly a good kind of thinking. Scientific thinking has led to so many technological, medical, and industrial advances. Our economy, in many ways, is based on this kind of thinking. But when it comes to the life of faith, scientific thinking can kill faith. Scientific thinking is skeptical thinking. It says, “prove it first, then I’ll believe. Let me see it, then I’ll believe it.”
Scientific thinking kills faith because faith often requires belief in order to see. The kind of belief that leads to faith is related to the illusions above. The illusions above only reveal another reality once we are willing to look with belief. As long as we don’t believe, we also can’t see the deeper reality that God wants to reveal to us.
What’s ironic about scientific thinking is that even science understands at times that you have to believe in order to see. For instance, let’s take the problem of light. When light shines on our eyes, the reason we see the light is that small particles of light strike the rods and cones of our eyes, allowing us to see. So light is a collection of particles, right? It’s what scientists believed for a long time. Then a few pioneering scientists ran experiments and noticed that light moved in waves, much like electricity. I don’t mean waves of particles but electric waves. They noticed that under certain experimental conditions, light moved in waves. So, which is it? Is light a collection of particles, or is it a series of waves? It all depends on what you believe. You will see what you believe in when you run experiments. If you look for particles in your experiments, you’ll see particles. If you look for waves, you’ll find waves. If you look for both, you’ll find both. What you believe is what you’ll see, even scientifically.
When it comes to the life of faith, just like in much of physics, seeing isn’t believing. Believing is seeing. It all comes down to one simple question: What do you believe you see when you look at life around you? Do you see a Spirit-filled world, or just a world?
If you think like atheists and agnostics, then all you see is the world. The thing that bothers me about many atheists and agnostics isn’t that they don’t believe. What bothers me about many of them is that they believe in only what they see, and they believe that any who don’t share their limited view are somehow naïve and not too bright. Because they don’t believe what we believe, they can’t see what we see. Their response is to denigrate what we see by saying that we are only seeing what we believe. Well,… duh! So are they. They believe in a world absent of God, so that’s what they see. I’m able to see that world, too, if I shut off my belief. It’s just that I’m also able to see and experience more.
We still see what they see. They see a world of biology, chemistry, and physics. So do we. They see the world as it is. We see that world, too. There’s nothing that they see that we don’t. The difference is that we see more than they do, not less. We see what they see, but because we believe, we can also see the spiritual world permeating the physical world
The real difference is that we see a lot that they don’t see, because we believe. They can’t see because they don’t believe, and so their sight is limited. They certainly wouldn’t see what Tommy, an atheist, eventually saw once he believed.
Dr. John Powell, a professor of religion, originally got to know Tommy from a class he taught, titled “Theology and Faith.” Tommy was the kind of student that drives professors crazy. He was obviously bright, but also disruptive. Tommy was only taking the class because he had to take a religion class as part of his liberal arts education requirements. He didn’t believe, and so he figured that the class was pointless. He would sit in the back of the class, looking defiant. Often, when Dr. Powell made a point, Tommy would smirk, laugh, or say something snarky to the person sitting next to him, causing her or him to laugh. Powell began to really dislike Tommy, but he didn’t know what to do. He didn’t want to bring attention to Tommy’s antics, especially since so many people seemed to be engaged in the class.
On the day final papers were to be turned in, Tommy knocked on Powell’s door and handed him his final paper. He smirked a bit and said condescendingly, “Professor, do you think I’ll ever find God?” Powell just looked at Tommy in silence. As Tommy walked toward the door, Powell said, “No, Tommy, I don’t think you’ll ever find God. But God will find you.” Tommy paused, then walked out. Powell was relieved to be through with him.
Several years later, Powell heard that Tommy had terminal cancer. He often thought that he should contact Tommy, but life just kept getting in the way. Then one day he heard a knock on the door. It was Tommy, but he looked drastically different. Three years before he had been tall and robust, with long, black hair. He was now gaunt and thin, with tufts of scraggly hair on a mostly bald head. Tommy said, “Got a minute?”
Powell welcomed Tommy in, sat him down, and Tommy began to tell his story. He said, “You know, when I took your class I thought I knew everything. The whole time I was in college I thought I knew everything. When I graduated from college I was ready to make my mark. Then, one day, I found a lump in my groin. It turned out to be terminal cancer. I was devastated. It was then I turned to God. I begged God to care for me, to heal me, but nothing happened. I prayed and prayed, but nothing happened. It confirmed my thoughts: God wasn’t out there. But I still remembered something you once said in class: ‘The essential sadness of life is to have lived life without really having loved.’ I decided that even if God didn’t exist, I could love. So one evening, as my father read the paper, I asked to speak to him. I said to him, ‘Dad, I love you.’ He put down his paper, and he cried. We talked all night. I did the same with my mother, my sister, and with my friends. And then it happened. Remember what you said to me years ago when I turned in my final paper? You said that I wouldn’t find God, but God would find me. God found me in my love. The more I loved people, the more God found me. Now I experience God all around me everyday.”
Powell asked Tommy to come to his class and talk about his experiences. Tommy agreed. About a week before the class, though, Tommy called and said he was too sick to do it. But he did ask Dr. Powell to do him a favor. He said, “Tell the class about my story and about God finding me. Tell the world about me” (adapted from “Tell the World about Me,” by John Powell, in Chicken Soup for the Christian Soul, 1997).
We’ve been invited to see a world of possibility that is all around us. This is what the whole idea of the kingdom of heaven is all about. The kingdom of heaven isn’t a realm we enter when we die. It’s a reality we can see, experience, and live in right now,… if we believe.
The real question is: do you believe enough to see?
Amen.
