TITLE : SIGHT 101
We are visual people. When we talking about our understanding of the world, we even use the phrase “how we see the world.” Our sight is fundamental to how we live.
If we were dogs, it would be our sense of smell – they literally see the world primarily not through their eyes but through their noses. Bats are aural creatures – it’s through their ears that they understand the world. But, as Christians, while we may be blessed with five physical senses, we are called to understand the world not with our eyes, but with our hearts. As Michael Card poetically likes to say, God wants us to see “not with but through the eye.” Seeing past the eye means faith, and it you want to understand faith, you have to know the text that we just read, Hebrews 11:1.
Hebrews 11:1 is one of those verses in which you really see English struggle to translate the Greek. Hebrews 11:1 is one of those famous verses you’ll hear quoted often – but its okay if you hear slightly different words, because the fundamental nature of what is being conveyed is both very exact and yet not precisely in categories that we understand.
Depending on your version, any of the following are totally valid translations:
- The classic is “Faith is the evidence of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.”
- More modern translations will say, “Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.”
- I did some word study here, it’s totally fair to even say, “Faith is the foundation of things hoped for, it is the rebuke of things not seen.” – That last word is the same one that Paul uses when he says that all Scripture is profitable for reproof.
Regardless of how we translate it, the author of Hebrews is trying to make some very basic points about how we see. We can get so caught up in looking for evidence for faith, that we forget that faith does not require evidence – faith is the evidence, it is the very essence of our hope.
What I’d like to do this morning is take a few minutes to think about how we see the world, because how we see the world dictates how we will live in it. We can “see” in different categories, and they are all here in Hebrews 11:1 – 3. Verse 1 tells us that if you see only with your eye, you’ll miss out on hope. Verse 3 tells us that if you see with your ear, you might begin to hear the story behind what you see. But the rest of the chapter, as we’ll see in coming weeks, tells us that we must see with our hearts – looking beyond the forces we perceive, to the person who gives meaning to it all.
But first, as I said, I want to look at what seeing with our eyes really means.
Seeing with the eye
Several of you know that a week ago , I was driving on Route 50 near the weight station before Gilberts Corner. It was cold, the sun was right in my eyes, and my windshield was dirty. Now, I did something really stupid here.
Even though I literally could not see, I kept going in a false hope that nothing was there. Now, one of the basic mistakes people make in life is thinking that just because you can’t see something doesn’t mean its not there. If my “faith” was the assurance that I hoped the road was clear, the bumper of that Ford Explorer coming through my engine was the rebuke of things not seen! When the officer took my statement, he asked me how fast I was going. I answered, “Well, since I couldn’t see I was going slow – only about 30 MPH, but I guess that was about 29 MPH faster than I should have!”
One of the developmental stages that a baby goes through is something that psychologists call “object permanence.” When a very tiny baby plays peek-a-boo, for instance, as they cover their eyes, they literally think you aren’t there. As they get older, however, they realize that out of sight doesn’t necessarily have to mean out of mind. The fact that an object has permanence even beyond their perception is called “object permanence.”
Now, when Hebrews talks about the conviction things not seen, I see that there is a call for a form of spiritual object permanence. I don’t fully know why God chooses not to reveal himself through our eyes, but I do know that he calls us to grow up spiritually and learn to trust that he is still up there, and still in charge, even if we can’t see him with our eyes.
In vs.3, Hebrews even uses an example of where this kind of sight is necessary. Back when this was written, just about nobody would have questioned that God had made the universe. There simply wasn’t a viable alternative. But today, we do have one. Now, let me state up front, I am a creationist. Let me also say, that God is never going to ask you your opinion on the subject, ‘cause frankly there are other questions he’s more interested in, like “Did you love my son?” But this one is contentious, so just thought I’d warn you.
You see, ultimately, Scientists have taught us a different creation story, one that presumes because you cannot see God, he isn’t there. Instead, we are called to believe in a mechanical universe, governed only by rules and laws that are inviolable. It a universe without mercy, exploding stars, pulverizing rocks, amino acid soups, and miraculously life. We human beings play only the most minuscule of parts, and are at the whim of this grand thing called “the universe.”
Now, you might be surprised to hear me say, that scientists call us to believe. You are taught in school that scientists only rely on observation. The scientific method, after all, is observation and experiment. But, if you read the science as I do, you’ll see that scientists call us to believe a great number of things we can’t even hope to see.
Scientists, for example, know that visible matter doesn’t even account for 10% of the matter necessary to create the Big Bang. So, they ask us to believe in something called “Dark Matter” – stuff that you cannot see.
The big, new hot theory of forces is called String Theory. Oddly enough, I actually think it makes a lot sense – but in order for it to work, you need to accept that there are 11 dimensions. Being 3 dimensional creatures, that means there are dimensions that we can’t even comprehend , in the same way that a person living in a two dimensional piece of paper could possibly comprehend a circle, but never a sphere.
In Biology, we are taught to believe that species can evolve to form new ones. And yet, as honest scientist will tell you, there is such a thing as irreducible complexity. There are certain structures, like the eye, that are simply too complex to have developed gradually, one piece at a time. Even using punctuated equilibrium, there is just no way to jump from a single celled organism to a complex organ – unless if you have faith in the machine they call the universe.
There is a well known atheist named Anthony Flew who demanded that you need to go “wherever the evidence takes you.” After 80 years of denying that there was a creator, he finally had to concede recently that there was. He admitted that the evidence just doesn’t get you out of certain biological predicaments. Sadly, he hasn’t come all the way to believe that this creator loves him, but he had to admit there was one.
Ultimately, I figured out that both evolutionism and creationism force you to have faith in something. One calls you to faith in a machine, the other in a person. I know which one can forgive my sins.
Seeing With the Ear
In re-reading this passage, I realized that while Hebrews 11:1 gets all the press, Hebrews 11:3 really underscores the point. It is through faith that we understand that the worlds were framed by – get this – the WORD OF GOD.
Machines relate to the universe through natural laws, forces, reactions and effects, but we know people relate to people using words. The words we use tell stories that help us to understand the world.
After I went to that class up in CT a few weeks ago, Susan & I went to New York, and while we were there we went to the Hayden Planetarium at the Museum of Natural History right on Central Park West. If you have never gone there, it’s really worth the trip. The planetarium is this big glass window box with a four or five-story sphere in the center of it. The main point of that sphere is to give you some idea of scales. If you look at the sphere as the entire universe, for instance, they have a little disk that is our galaxy – the milky way. If that sphere is sun, then they have some billiard-ball sized planets that represent Mars, Venus, and the Earth. It’s all about scale, and its truly a humbling experience.
The stories that they tell there are fascinating. You will learn a lot about how our universe operates by listening to the stories they tell – but here’s the one thing I have to warn you about. Every story has an agenda, so you need to go armed with the knowledge that not all stories are created equal.
Now, I was particularly taken with their exhibit about the Big Bang. There’s a little movie at the beginning narrated by Maya Angelou, and the Center was kind enough to send me the text of that movie, and I want to read you the story that they read. Listen carefully, because while its beautifully written, there is a fundamental difference between a story of faith and a story of science. Here’s how it goes:
What happened before the birth of our universe?
Our laws of physics don’t tell us. But many scientists imagine there was a void, existing by itself or within an older universe.
In that formless void, bubbles of space, far smaller than atoms, were coming into being and vanishing again.
Thirteen* billion years ago, one of those tiny bubbles grew and suddenly ballooned out in a gigantic explosion called the Big Bang. *[NOTE: record also with twelve, fourteen, and fifteen]
Space itself exploded in cosmic fire, giving birth to all the energy and matter in our universe.
The expansion of space carried with it clouds of matter.
[NOTE: read “with it” as one phrase, followed by a slight pause before “clouds”]
The universe cooled as it expanded. Gravity pulled together enormous clumps of matter…
… the seeds of what would become galaxies. Within them, the first stars formed.
As hundreds of millions of years passed, entire galaxies fell together, in a cosmic ballet.
Smaller galaxies combined to make larger ones.
After a few billion years, our own Milky Way Galaxy took shape. It developed spiral arms, made of stars, and clouds of gas and dust.
Our Sun and Earth were born in this galaxy.
Eventually, life and intelligence arose on our planet. And we came to wonder how our universe began.
Today, using microwave telescopes, we can still see the afterglow of the Big Bang all around us.
Astronomers are mapping this faint glow. It is the oldest and most distant thing we can see, a relic of the fiery explosion that gave birth to our universe.
Now, I want to draw your attention to a few phrases. First of all, did you hear the word “void”? Make no mistake; this is a creation story no less than the one in Genesis. They’re aware of the power of story. They are tying into what we already know, but there are subtle differences. You know, in seminary, we had to read several Creation myths from other cultures, especially neighboring cultures like the Babylonians. When we did, I remember a realization that I had – outside of the Bible, in every myth we read, the universe was formed out of some pre-existent material. Our God just spoke it. He said it and it had every bit as much substance as anything else we see.
When they emphasize “’Space itself’ exploded,” you can hear the presumption that there is no person, just a force. Again, they are trying very hard not to have a concept of God, but the truth is they are presuming that there is none. It would be like trying to ask what the world looked like if there was no color – you must take a stand on God’s role in the world, and what your stand is will literally color everything you see.
I found the faith that the writers have in their tools to be amazing. There was an emphasis on “microwave telescopes” and “scientists tell us.” Truth is – they’re just observers like we are. They can see with machines, but no machine can ever see with the heart. Not to belabor the point, but tools have a purpose – they understand physical interactions. That’s what they are designed to be. But when they become objects of worship, we lose sight of the fact that they only tell us about the physical forces, so it is no wonder that they could ever detect a person behind the forces.
Someday, I’d love to read you an essay I wrote about the limitations of the scientific method as a whole. Our culture is enamored with it, that we think if our science can’t detect it, it must not exist. May I suggest to you that as good as the SM is, there are other ways of understanding the world. If you don’t believe me, try dating girl according to the SM!
In truth, good application of the scientific method is only supposed to lead us to better questions. You never actually know anything using science, you only have better predictions. In the text, like good scientists, they recorded the age of the universe as anything from 12 – 15 billion years. That’s good science, because science can come up with different answers – and to explain a physical thing that’s appropriate. But we are blessed: we have a hope that does not change. That hope is simply this: our God forgives. He loves us. He saved us.
There is no language variant in our Bible that says God “might” save us. Different interpretations to be sure, but our God is not some impersonal force leaving us at the whim of rules he set us before man ever came to be. He loves us. Especially when you truly come to understand the scale of his creation, it is even that more amazing to know that the same person who started it all chose to die just for us. His love is amazing, and it is only though faith that we can see that.
Seeing With the Heart
Next week, we’ll start Lent – a period leading up to Easter. Throughout Lent, I want to tell you the story of that person God, and we’ll be going through the rest of this chapter as we do so.
But, let me suggest to you this. As we read the story, understand that the proof for principles taught is not necessarily going to be in categories that we are used to. Our God is simply too big to fit in our understanding of the world. But you can have faith in this – he loves us. And that frame makes all the difference. Will you pray with me?
RESPONSIVE READING
Do not lose heart.
Even though our outer nature is wasting away, our inner nature is being renewed day by day.
For this slight momentary affliction is preparing us for an eternal weight of glory beyond all measure,
because we look not at what can be seen but at what cannot be seen;
for what can be seen is temporary,
but what cannot be seen is eternal.
For we know that if the earthly tent we live in is destroyed, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens. For in this tent we groan, longing to be clothed with our heavenly dwelling—
He who has prepared us for this very thing is God, who has given us the Spirit as a guarantee.
So we are always confident; even though we know that while we are at home in the body we are away from the Lord—
for we walk by faith, not by sight.
Yes, we do have confidence, and we would rather be away from the body and at home with the Lord. But whether we are at home or away, we make it our aim to please him.
For all of us must appear before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each may receive what is due for what has been done in the body, whether good or evil.
from 2 Corinthians 4:16 – 5:10
Call to Worship: Genesis 1:1-3 (Hebrew & English)
Hymns:
- Standing on the Promises
- Hymn#55
Hymn of Dedication: - Leaning on the Everlasting Arms
Title: Things Not Seen
Text: Hebrews 11:1-3
FCF: Faith in our unseen personal God gives us hope in a world otherwise trapped by mere godless machine.
SO: I want my congregation to see that how they see the world is utterly dictated by the unseen God they see behind it. I want them to understand the power of the stories they tell themselves, in the hope that they will understand knowing the stories of God gives substance to their hope.
