Believing Is Not Seeing

We all know and have often used the saying, “seeing is believing” and that is true.  The opposite or reverse form is not true: “believing is seeing.” For years I believed that the Grand Canyon must be a beautiful, awesome, and wondrous creation of nature and then one day I saw.  For years I believed this or that, and then one day I saw.  Believing is not necessarily seeing.  Believing is a substitute for seeing.  Believing is the acceptance of what someone else says he or she has seen.  

We say we believe in God though we have not seen God.  We say we believe in Jesus Christ.  Many have so believed—but how little that belief has mattered in terms of personal character and social consciousness the sad history of Christendom makes plain (the Crusades, the Inquisition, and the stringing up of so-called witches in New England comes to mind).  There is no doubt that we do believe in Jesus Christ.  Why shouldn’t we?  People who have no scientific background believe Thomas Edison was a great scientist.  Many who know nothing of music believe that Mozart was a great musician.  Belief can be a very superficial thing.

But suppose we not only believed in Jesus, but could “see life as he saw it, perceive in it what he beheld there, look at people, and money, and friendship, and trouble, and death as Jesus looked at them” that would not be superficial.  That would re-create the life of the gospel all over again:  “One thing I know, that, whereas I was blind, now I see.”

This gift of seeing was Jesus’ aim—his whole ministry focused on helping people see—not just believe.  He didn’t want us to just believe—he wanted us to see.  Look at all the characters he encountered, from Zacchaeus the tax-gatherer to Mary Magdalene,  who had seen life one way before their encounter with Jesus, but afterwards could never see life that way again.  They said, “I can never again see life in the way I saw it before I met him.” 

The point of Jesus’ coming was to open our eyes and change our point of view, so that we could see life as he saw it.  Belief is one thing; seeing is another.  Jesus came and still comes to open our eyes to a new way of looking at life.