Are You Seeing Reality Clearly? No, Not as Much as you Think You Are. How Do You See It More? Here's How.

 I admit it.   I didn’t believe it.  I thought.  How could that be?  Everyone should be able to see that.   It’s there.  How could you miss it?  But it turns out it’s not there, at least the way you think about it. 

For the longest time, most human beings didn’t see blue, and not because they were color blind.   No, it’s just nobody had a word for blue.   And if you don’t have a word for something, well then it doesn’t really exist.   So, for a long time, the color blue, simply didn’t exist.

I first learned about this because of a puzzling description you find in the Greek poet, Homer.   Homer describes the color of the sea as wine-dark.  He never describes it as blue.   How could he?  The Greeks, in his day, had no word for blue.  So, when Homer looked at the sea, he didn’t see blue. He saw something that looked like red wine.  

And the Greeks weren’t alone. Blue didn’t exist in almost every language in the ancient world.  You don’t find blue in the New Testament or the Old Testament either.  You don’t find the word blue in Chinese, Hindu, Arabic, even Icelandic.   The ancient Japanese did have a word for blue, but they used the same word for green, which doesn’t make much sense.  But come on Kennedy, just because you don’t have the word for blue doesn’t mean you can’t see it.

Well, in 2006 a researcher did a study with the Himba tribe in South Africa.  Their language doesn’t have a word for blue either.   So, he created a slide with eleven green boxes and one blue one.  He asked the Himba to pick the one that was different.   The whole thing stumped them.   They couldn’t see any difference.  Now, on the other hand, the Himba had lots of words for green.   They could distinguish shades of green that completely stumped English speakers. 

Do you see what this means?  The world people see isn’t really the world that is there.   No, it’s simply the one you and I have created in our heads.  If people could miss blue for centuries, what else could we be missing? You and I don’t see the world as it is.  No, we see the world as we are, which isn’t all that great. 

And right now, as we come out of this pandemic, it can be even harder to see what is really there.  We can feel that we are living in a strange new world, one that has changed.  But the truth is that the world has always been a bit strange, in fact far stranger than any of us could ever imagine.  And yes it has changed, but in the most crucial way, it remains the same.    

So, how do you get in touch with what is truly there?  You turn to something that can help you see.  And as you do, you will see a more wondrous, more beautiful reality than you could ever have imagined.  So, what helps you see?  Here, God shows the way.  Let’s listen and hear what God has to say.

1 Peter 1:10-13

How do you see what’s really there?  How do you get in touch with reality?   Here God tells you. You look to God’s word, this book, for when you do, it gives you, bit by bit, the eyes to see the beauty, the wonder that lies at the heart of reality.   But before you can see how a book, this book could do that, you need to understand even more clearly how disconnected from reality we all are. 

This past week, I finally caught up with one of the big hits of the pandemic, the movie, My Octopus Teacher.   If you haven’t seen the film, let me give you a quick rundown.  This filmmaker, who largely makes nature documentaries, burns himself out.  He gets disconnected from his life, his emotions, everything.   So, in desperation, he remembers, how as a kid, he used to love to dive in these kelp forests right off the rocky coast in his home nation of South Africa.  So, he goes there again, living along the coast and diving in the kelp forest.  One day, diving there, he sees this strange pile of shells all stuck together on the ocean bottom.  As he goes to look, the pile literally bursts open, scattering shells everywhere as what held them together speeds away.  He realizes that pile was an octopus, but he can’t figure out what was going on, why she piled the shells around her like that.   But he feels strangely attracted to the mystery.

So, he decides that every day, without fail, he will dive in that kelp forest and look for this octopus.   And the rest of the movie, tells you how that radical decision not only heals his wounded life, but opens him to see that kelp forest as he had never seen it before.  The movie itself is amazing, especially when you realize just what an extraordinary creature an octopus is.   But along the way, the filmmaker talks realizes that everything in that kelp forest is connected.  This forest isn’t a bunch of separate plants and creatures.  It’s a living community, a communal organism even. 

Now, what’s stunning to him about this revelation is how obvious it was once he sees it.  And yet he realizes.  For decades he had missed it.   And he spent his life doing documentaries on nature.  Yet even as he did so, he literally was missing the forest for the trees.  

And what he was doing, human beings do all the time.  We create a frame for the world, and if things don’t fit our frame, well, we simply don’t notice them.   Not only that, when someone does notice them, we still don’t see it.  

Decades ago, a scientist named Suzanne Simard came up with this idea that trees in a forest were communicating with each other.  They were warning each other of certain dangers, even sharing and trading resources.   But when she presented this idea, other scientists scoffed.  That could not be.  In nature, it was dog eat dog, a merciless competition for limited resources.  Then Simard proved it was true.  She proved it was true with brilliant experiments no one could contradict.   Yet even then, many scientists struggled to believe it.  They had a frame, and a community of trees sharing with and looking out for each other did not fit it.  

And what those scientists did we do in one way or the other.  As it becomes more and more clear that how we consume energy is literally burning up the planet, we still resist that reality. Or more personally, we deny a truth about ourselves or someone we love, a truth that even as it is painfully obvious, we still find a way not to see.   

And that’s where the Bible comes in. In the words of this book, you discover the door that opens you to see, to see the truth about yourself, about everything   But, often, people look at this book, and completely miss that.  They look at it as some sort of owner’s manual for life or morality rulebook.    Now, sure it does have helpful insights for life.  It does gives you guidance on how to live morally and ethically in the world.  But that simply skims the surface.  You’ve got to break the surface to see what it really is.  And what is it really?  It’s a set of spectacles. 

A Christian thinker named John Calvin developed that particular image hundreds of years ago, and to me it explains the Bible better than any other.   Calvin said that you can look at the world around you, at the creation, and gain some knowledge of God, who, when you think about it, is Reality with a capital R.  But what you see of God is blurry.   But scripture gives you the spectacles to see it more clearly.  The Bible brings everything into clearer definition. 

And here in these words, Peter is showing you how those spectacles work.   You see the Bible only enables you to see because of the Spirit of God.  To go back to the spectacles, The Bible acts as a lens.  But a lens needs light.  You gotta have light for the spectacles to work.  

So, scripture doesn’t work alone.  It only works with the illumination of the Spirit. The evangelist D.L. Moody put it.  “The Bible without the Holy Spirit is a sundial by moonlight.”   In other words, without the spirit, it doesn’t work.  And Peter makes that clear.  At the beginning of the passage, he talks about how the Spirit of Christ guided the prophets.   Then he talks near the end how that same Spirit of God brought you that good news.   

And how amazing is this news that the Spirit gives.  It’s so amazing that angels yearn to see it for themselves.  They know that this news, this good news points to the very heart of everything.  So what is it?

Well, first, it’s exactly what Peter tells you it is.  It’s news.  The word refers to the sort of information that a messenger or herald would run to tell to the city.  Now, what do you think the herald shared?  Do you think he ran and shouted out, “Hear ye, O citizens, don’t steal from one another!”   Or “Hey citizens, be sure and love each other.”    Now, that’s nice stuff to share, but that’s not news.    No, he yelled out.  “The king has won a great victory and defeated his enemies.”  He shared news.

And what God shares in the Bible is news, news of very real acts that God has done, and not news that folks will forget in a day or two.  No, God shares the sort of news that changes the world, that changes you forever.   God gives you the sort of news that once you see it changes how you see everything.   I love the way C.S. Lewis put it.   He said: “I believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun has risen not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else.”

But what do you see?  What is the stunning new reality God shows you?   Right at the beginning of this passage, Peter tells you, but you can easily miss it.  He tells you about the grace coming to you.   Do you see how that changes everything? 

Let me make it clearer.  In the vision of the gospel, spiritual seekers don’t exist.  They can’t exist.   Why?  You aren’t ever the one seeking God.  No, God is always the One seeking you.   God is seeking you constantly.   God is approaching you in a sunrise.  God is reaching out to you in the smile of a friend.  And God has, above all, broken into the world in the flesh, as one of you.  That’s the wondrous news called the Gospel.  That’s the grace that is coming to yon: that God came and lived among you: that God gave up everything to bring you home.   

When you have a spiritual yearning, you’re simply reacting to this God who is already seeking you, whose grace is already coming to you.   You don’t do anything to receive it either.  It comes as a gift, a gift given out of infinite love for you.   

Today we celebrate the day when the Spirit came on the church.  And how did that happen?  They didn’t travel up some mountain to look for the Spirit.  They waited and the Spirit came for them.  And when the Spirit came, it changed them more radically than they could have ever imagined or dreamed.   

 And do you see what that tells you about reality.  This, everything you see, everything you don’t see, it’s all comes to you as a gift.  It comes as a gift from a radically generous and gracious God, a God who has given even his life for you.   And when you see that, when you see that everything good and beautiful is just part of an infinite outpouring of love from the source of everything, then reality becomes a very, very different place. 

And you realize.  The world has changed post-pandemic in some ways.  But it remains what it always has been, the gift of an infinitely loving and giving God. This God’s very Spirit moves around you.  His Spirit gives life to the words of this book.  This Spirit gives you wondrous news into which angels long to look.  And when the Spirit shows you that news, then, the world can never be the same, because you are not the same.  

No, this God in Jesus has opened your eyes.  This God has shown you the way.  This God has told you who you are, the infinitely loved child of God.    And when you know that, well, it puts a virus and 18 months of pandemic into perspective.   It reminds you not only of what is real, but who is real, the Real, with a capital R that lies around and beneath and even  within you.  So, prepare your minds for action.  Set all your hope on the grace being brought to you in the revelation of Jesus.  And breathe in this God, this God who is wonderfully, beautifully, infinitely real.