Seeing the Unseen

Spirituality Column #141
July 21, 2009
Current in Carmel (IN) newspaper
Current in Westfield (IN) newspaper

Seeing the Unseen
By Bob Walters

So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen. For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.
- 2 Corinthians 4:18 (NIV)

I spent three decades of my life – from my mid-teens to my mid-forties – not going to church.

I couldn’t see the value in an active faith life, couldn’t see the divine Light in the Bible, couldn’t see the Truth of Christ on the Cross, couldn’t see the point of going to church … and couldn’t see the point of view of people who did.

Oh, I knew the Jesus story and the general Christian doctrines. I’d grown up Episcopalian and was an Acolyte (altar boy) in my early teens. By seventh grade or so, I knew the Anglican Communion service by heart.

Then, I drifted away. My pastor retired, plus the Episcopal Church changed enormously in the late 1960s. It brought in a “New Liturgy” that pretty much killed what I knew about being an altar boy.

So the church changed and, being a teenager, I changed. Church and religion, for me, became a thing of the past.

My eyes, to paraphrase the verse above, were definitely fixed on things seen. Like too many people, I only believed what I could see.

And one thing I saw was how many different directions Christians seemed to be going. It was easy to criticize the appearance of Christian hypocrisy and the tangled mess of controversy that too-frequently visited preachers, churches and entire Christian denominations.

How easy it was to stay away from these imperfect Christians, and think better of myself for not being part of the “religion” problem. I would find my own truth, thank you very much. I could occasionally see love and grace and beauty in the world around me; all I had to do was figure out where that goodness came from.

What a surprise when I finally found it one Sunday morning in 2001, sitting in church with tears streaming down my face. “The eyes of my heart,” inexplicably, thankfully, opened to the Light, Truth and bigness of God’s eternity.

I’ve learned since then not to sweat the small, confusing temporal bits.

“Christian hypocrisy,” for example, emanates from the fact that while Christ is perfect and eternal, in this mortal coil none of us is. Controversy, however benign or horrible, generally amounts to failed human expectations.

So when what we see is not perfect, let’s thank God it is not eternal.

Hallelujah for the glimpses of eternal perfection God provides.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) was blind, but now can see.

The Open-Mindedness of God

Spirituality Column #94
August 26, 2008
Current in Carmel - Westfield newspaper

The Open-Mindedness of God
By Bob Walters

Adam and Eve’s sin wasn’t so much about the act of eating the fruit as it was about (1) disobeying God and (2) trying to be like God.

You can read this whole story in Genesis 2 and 3, but it seems very possible that God is more concerned about what we think than what we do.

This doesn’t mean it’s OK to sin (physical disobedience to God) as long as our faith (mental acceptance of God) is expressed. It’s not. God made that clear back in the Garden.

But in order for us to truly experience God, it is necessary to do it with more than just pure actions. We must do it with an open, not a closed mind.

We cheat ourselves if we make the mistake of putting God in a box – defining and limiting God to being what we want Him to be for our earthly and immediate desires. We have to be open to all that God can do.

It is far more than we can imagine.

Consider that God is eternal and therefore already knows everything, yet we still have freedom to seek Him or not to seek Him. It makes me think perhaps God has an open mind about us. He wants to see what we make of things.

The Bible tells me God created everyone, Jesus came for everyone, and the Holy Spirit is accessible to everyone. It excludes no one.

It also tells me that God doesn’t capture anyone. Even the 12 Apostles and Saint Paul made the decision to follow Christ, although in Paul’s case, Christ brought out the persuasive big stick (see Acts 9).

Considering whether God has an open mind, I look at our world God created and notice something astounding … no two of anything are exactly alike. Not two people, two trees, two mountains, two blades of grass, two butterflies or two snowflakes.

So why did God – who created a world of beauty and harmony and repeatedly pronounced everything as “good” (Genesis 1:4, 10,12,18, 21, 25 and 31), make absolutely everything different from everything else?

You may have a different thought on this, but I think it is because God has an open mind. The choice to follow Him is truly ours.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) points out that Genesis 2:17 identifies the forbidden fruit only as “the knowledge of good and evil,” i.e., judgment as a sin. That’s something else to think about.