To See or Not to See, That is the Question

[HKHaugan]

Epi.32 To See or Not to See, That is the Question

If you have ever been out in a boat offshore in a fog in the middle of the night it can be downright scary out there. That’s true especially if you’re in an outgoing tide and the currents tends to carry you crossways. You listen for sounds, look for any kind of light in clear spots, chance assumption about the shore line. That’s what it was like on the Gulf of Mexico in a canoe years ago. I remember too, as a young boy, being in a rowboat on a huge lake in the Maine wilderness with my parents when a storm came across the lake with thunder, lightning and the worst kind of short chop rough waters. Obviously we made it through or you wouldn’t be reading this. How you deal with circumstance is not by what you see but by what you don’t see, the belief out of which come the choices, decisions and motivation to act on that belief. I’d say that pretty well sums up our experience in the visible world in which we live.

So, if there is anything that makes sense in a dark stormy world full of unsettledness and anxiety, whether in our local neighborhood or the large expanse of the planet, it is the Resurrection of Jesus the Christ. The Resurrection gives us a whole new dimension of understanding as to what lies hidden in the physically unseen. The Resurrection is all about the Person who was resurrected. It’s about His character, His values, His truth, His way of life, what He said and did. Every bit of everything that is recorded about Him in the Scriptures becomes our focus because of the Resurrection. What we see in surveying His life is a new kind of humanity spiritualized, personalized and relationalized. And that survey makes all the difference to us because it defines who we are and clears the confusion that has gripped isolated humanity until He came to show us a new way to be a person.  It all boils down to each of us personally; what we believe, who we trust and how we live our individuality.

Because of Jesus all of us know that everything we do is motivated by what we can’t see. We may live in physically visible bodies but what goes on inside those bodies is an unseen mind, heart and spirit, a unique image of God processing personal experience. So there is a big question this presents. Just what is the best way, the assured way, the secure way of measuring and moving about in this shadow world where reason, interpretation, choice, decision and motivation shape our reaction and behavior? You know, the real world we live in, the invisible world of action and reaction. Until that question is answered, human life is a confusing jumble of momentary survival strategies. Paul is quite right when he observes that “We don’t yet see things clearly. We’re squinting in a fog, peering through a mist (1Cor.13:12 Message Bible)!”

What Paul is making us aware of is that there are really two kinds of sight. The one we do with our physical eyes and the one we do with our mind and heart, our inner sight, part of which is insight. What helps our outer sight is a healthy eye in an unimpeded physical atmosphere. What helps our inner sight is unimpeded perception of who we really are and what is really happening in the unseen dimension around us. This is where the Resurrection of Jesus Christ makes the difference, a world of difference. We find we have two eyesights, what we see with our outer sight outside us and what we perceive with our inner sight inside us.

Here is where ‘the world of difference’ takes place.

Our outer sight tells us what is physically happening around us. Our inner sight tells us what we believe is happening around us. Now we are talking about an invisible process of awareness, perception, interpretation and motivation. Look at this way. If we see a car we like we may want it. Already we have gone from outer eyesight to inner sight. Our inner sight said ‘I believe I like it’ and ‘I believe I want it.’ But then other things like reason pop in. “Do I need it and can I afford it?” You may ‘choose’ to buy it and even ‘decide’ it meets your ‘needs.’ Note the italicized words and phrases. They have to do with the inner ‘eye’ which is belief in your self as an individual person (I) with ability to act on what you believe which leads into the invisible process of interpretation, reason and choice.

While car choice is a simple secular example, the actual process is spiritual. It’s called belief. Belief is the basis underlying everything we think and do. Belief is what motivates us. What we believe in determines all our choices and consequent actions. Where we live, who we associate with, the occupation we seek, the places we travel to, our entertainment, the hopes, dreams, goals and the way to achieve them are motivated by what we believe and, of course, people who have influenced us along the way.

The Resurrection of Jesus challenges our belief to shift from the invisible worldly way of self-centered survival to believe in the ultimate definition of what it means to be a person, an image of God, namely Jesus Himself. In His brief time on earth He gave us the picture of daily living that only the Creator of all things could have done. When He was asked, “Show us the Father,” He said, “I and the Father are One (Jn.10:30).” His Father was His motivation. His Father’s will was His work and His food. He is the source of reality in both the seen and unseen. He is the only One who really knows all about how the invisible internal process of earthly life and physical death works because He’s been through both. And both He did by faith. That was His Father’s will. That’s why faith in Jesus is the way to process life to have life, His life, resurrected eternal life.

Further, that reality is this: He gives us the choice to believe in Him, to trust Him as the source and to have faith in following His lifestyle as the way to live. He shows us a new kind of relational love, of personal understanding and of spiritual motivation. He calls us into a relationship with Him based on the real unseen process inside us, belief, trust and faith. These, shifted to Him from what the secular world wants, is what saves us from sin’s aloneness and self-centeredness that was our way of life. Jesus went to the Cross on our behalf to secure His life for us eternally.

In fact everything Jesus did was based on His motivation. The life Jesus lived was a life ignited by the unseen process of the Holy Spirit’s motivation. Motivation is an invisible reality. Motivation here is the key ingredient in the way people live based on values, choices and decisions. When we take the Holy Spirit’s motivation, sin no longer drives us. No longer drifting fearfully in a fog bound boat on an endless ocean. No longer tossed about on a stormy wind swept wilderness lake. The Resurrection has given us a promised “hope and a future (Jer.29:11)” with the only ‘real’ Person who ever lived. To be like Jesus is to be human as God intended when He made Adam and Eve.

Early on we quoted Paul’s observation that we don’t see things clearly in this world. He finishes that thought with His experience of the risen Jesus’ effect on Him, “But it won’t be long before the weather clears and the sun shines bright! We’ll see it all then, see it all as clearly as God sees us, knowing him directly just as he knows us (1Cor.13:12 Message Bible).” See what I mean?