Is Seeing Really Believing? 

            We, in the west, live in a society where many people do not believe in God. And the reason they don’t believe is because they can’t see Him, feel Him, touch Him or, by any other physical means, prove that He exists.

            Unfortunately, many of us Christians also have difficulty experiencing God. We live much of our everyday lives with little to no awareness of Him and, when we hear the cry in the gospels, “I do believe; help me overcome my unbelief!” (Mark 9:24), something in us rises up and says, “Lord, I’m in that same place. Help me, too.”

            For many of us even within the church, God doesn’t seem to be part of our everyday experience. We don’t experience Him as a living person who talks to us, listens to us, comforts us and relates to us as Father to child, Friend to friend, or Lover to lover. We pray, but we sometimes wonder if our prayers are ascending to nowhere and no one. God has a book through which He speaks, but a book is rather impersonal, and it doesn’t always speak to us about the things that matter most to us: why is my young wife dying of cancer, how do I break my addiction to pornography, how can I find peace to replace my constant anxiety, how do I restore love to my struggling marriage? God very often seems so unconcerned - or reluctant - when it comes to what concerns me the most. I’m supposed to evangelize, but what am I inviting people to - just a ticket out of hell, all the while living this life’s hell with a forced smile and an only half-believed faith that God is good?

            God then becomes religion. He offers guidance for life in a book called the Bible. He tells us how to live life (sexual purity, no lying or stealing, treating others well, etc.), and we try our best to live as He says. We look forward to joining Him in heaven one day, we attend some church functions and do some Christian service. But when the gospel is preached Sunday evening, our hearts do not leap for joy and in gratitude, we sing and listen to sermons but our minds wander, and eventually we become more concerned about our aching backs and backsides on hard seats than we are with what is being preached. We go about our religious activities, but are often motivated by wanting to be viewed as being good Christians rather than out of a pure love and gratitude that flow from a vital relationship with a living God.

            Why is this? Why is God not more real in our ordinary lives and consciousness? The answer will be as individual as the person asking the question. There are, for example, seasons of life where God does not withdraw His presence, but He withdraws the sense of His presence in order to purify that person’s faith. Inner healing issues can also hinder our experience, especially of God’s love. If we, in rebellion, knowingly practise sin, we will have difficulty feeling the closeness of a holy God. And we can experience demonic interference. That is why individuals who struggle with faith need a spiritual parent/guide/director who can listen to their story and help them through the hindrances that they are personally experiencing.

            However, there is something else - something that grips most of western culture and keeps both non-Christians and Christians in the dark, that is, with little to no experience of God.

            Just to clarify, we are not talking about God’s actual presence in our lives. God is always present everywhere. And He lives within believers, so is always deeply present in their lives. What we are talking about is God’s presence or absence within our awareness.  

Narrow-mindedness 

            A huge problem with westerners sensing God in their everyday lives is their incredible narrow-mindedness. Which is ironic since westerners perceive themselves as among the most open-minded in the world -accepting of all the varieties of culture, race, morality and spirituality that the world has to offer. And all of that is true. But we are not talking here about refusal to accept diversity or a moral narrow-mindedness. We are talking about a literal narrow-mindedness - an inability to perceive the whole of reality, including the reality of God.

            Let me illustrate. If you are late leaving for work, your mind narrows its focus to one thing - how to get to work on time. Odds are that, if you are driving yourself to work, you will be aware of the clock on your dashboard, the pattern of traffic and where you can switch lanes to gain a few car lengths, and traffic lights and whether or not you can make it through them. You will not notice the mother at the bus stop cooing at her baby, the first robin of spring on the side of the road, the first bloom of lilac, or the fact that your lunch is not sitting on the passenger side seat because you left it sitting on the kitchen counter in your big hurry to get out the door. That is literal narrow-mindedness.

            But the fact is that westerners are not just narrow-minded when their backs are to the wall, as in the “late leaving for work” scenario. They are narrow-minded all the time. It is part of our culture to be so. Most do not know there is any other way.

            So, what is it that drives narrow-mindedness in the west?

            First, there is our incredible drivenness. Westerners are movers and shakers. We like achievement. Our dream is to climb various ladders of success. We want to get ahead at work, be respected in our social life, do good things for others so we can feel special, improve our looks, get our bodies in good physical shape, have fulfilling recreation times, and raise successful kids. We cram every waking moment with one activity after another. Or better yet, we do more than one thing at a time. We listen to the radio and do our homework, we check that report the boss wants to see next day while cheering on our children at their soccer game, we drive and talk on the phone, we eat breakfast and read the paper. Rest for us is sleep, time with our feet up in front of the TV, or a vacation away, all so we can return to our fast-paced life. Never do we conceive of rest as a lifestyle. Seldom do western Christians hear sermons on Scriptures like: 

Matthew 11:28 [Jesus speaking] “"Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.”

Hebrews 4:1, 9-11a “Therefore, since the promise of entering his rest still stands, let us be careful that none of you be found to have fallen short of it … There remains, then, a Sabbath-rest for the people of God; for anyone who enters God's rest also rests from his own work, just as God did from his. Let us, therefore, make every effort to enter that rest … 

            We do not slow down enough to take in what there is around us that doesn’t appear on our busy schedules. We do not take a moment to smell the roses and to wonder why we find their scent so delicious. We take so little time to snuggle our loved ones and just feel the miracle of their being and of the love between us. We never reflect on the meaning of our lives and where we are heading in life and why. We go to the seaside but can’t just sit in quiet and rest, soaking it all in and letting the sounds and scents and sights of nature refresh us.

Is it any wonder, then, that we miss God, who reveals Himself in the nature we take no time to rest in, and who speaks in a gentle whisper (1 Kings 19:11-12)[1] whereas we avoid like the plague the silence where such a quiet voice can be heard? If God is not on our schedule, and we narrow our awareness to only what will allow us to meet our schedule, why are we surprised by our inability to perceive God? 

Self-centred 

            A second way in which we westerners are narrow-minded is in our preoccupation with ourselves. Yes, we watch the news to find out what is happening in others parts of the world or other parts of our own society. But we are mainly concerned with how the news impacts us personally. Will this event affect the economy in such a way that my job might be jeopardized? Am I or is my family in imminent danger from mad cow disease or West Nile virus? Do all these articles on crime mean that it’s less safe for me to be out on the streets after dark? Seldom do we put ourselves in the other person’s shoes and seriously consider if there is anything we can do for them. We often fail to see others and their issues as being as real as ourselves and our issues.

            When we have problems, we clutch them to ourselves. We don’t want to bother others with them because, after all, they’re our problems. When people ask how we are, we smile and say we’re fine even though, inside, we may be crumbling to pieces. We commit suicide and those around us are shocked to discover that we were suffering to that extent. And Christians have little to no idea about what the Bible means when it says about the body of Christ (1 Corinthians 12:26): “If one part suffers, every part suffers with it; if one part is honored, every part rejoices with it.”

            As part of our concern with ourselves, we are deeply concerned about our quality of life. We are concerned with our health and the quality of health care, about having good jobs so we can have a high degree of material comfort, about having all that we desire, about how good we look physically, socially and in our careers. We believe that whatever we invest ourselves in should be personally fulfilling. Including church. If church isn’t meeting our needs, off we go in search of another. We have a theology that says Christians deny themselves, take up their cross and follow Jesus,[2] but we prefer to have it all, be healed of it all and enjoy it all without any of the hungering and thirsting,[3] poverty of spirit,[4] and persecution[5] that is part of a vibrant walk with God.

            We are also a people who love to cocoon. We like to shut out the outside world and withdraw to the safety and security of our little private worlds. The perfect picture is the person out for a walk with earphones on - present in the outside world, but actually living inside their own private world. We love having a private home, a private office, an ensuite bathroom, a private phone, a private diskman, our own TV in our own room, and our own private time and space to curl up with a good book. Less is the time we spend with others, doing nothing but enjoy their company, let alone serving others for the pure joy of service.

            If we are such a private, self-absorbed people, then how will we ever see God? Our world has shrunk so we see little beyond our own concerns, problems and ambitions. What we do see of the rest of the world we see distorted by our self-interest. Is it a surprise, then, that we have trouble believing God is real when we have trouble perceiving anything at all outside our own, self-created world? 

Practical 

            One more thing that hinders westerners from seeing God is our love affair with what is useful and practical. We go for a walk to get exercise and fresh air, not to just immerse ourselves in the creation. When people ask us about ourselves, we tell them what we do, not the kind of people we are. People who find themselves unable to do because of job loss, accident, disability and so on, grieve the loss of their value as people. If we take a moment to smell the roses, that’s all we take because it would be a complete waste of time to take an hour. “Time is money”, we say, and have little patience for activities that don’t help us get ahead in some way, shape or form. We send our kids to school so they can get good jobs, not so they can get a good education and become better people for it.

            To those in love with the practical and the useful, spirituality is not a valuable commodity. If it doesn’t help me get what I want, why would I want it? And if I don’t want it, odds are that even if I do notice something spiritual, I will quickly pass over it and forget about it because, in my opinion, it isn’t worth the time of day. 

Seeing is believing 

            Lastly, westerners don’t notice God because they are trained from young children that there is only one way of knowing - through their five senses. If they can feel it, taste it, hear it, smell it or see it, then it’s real. And truth consists only of what can be proved by the scientific method. Westerners know little to nothing about spiritual knowing or intuition, about contemplation or listening prayer. It doesn’t seem to occur to us that there are ways of knowing that transcend the physical. And those people who say they talk with God and hear Him talk with them, well, they’re just “looney”. 

Conclusion 

            So here we are, as westerners, completely ignorant about how to perceive and listen spiritually, focused mainly on ourselves and our agendas, cocooned in our own little world, unconcerned with what does not practically help us to increase our quality of life, and we wonder why we don’t notice God. We conclude He must not be there. The problem certainly can’t be with us. Can it? 

Sharon Currens